This I think is really important as we heard in Lee-Anne's presentation at CALMET that she want's more learning to come from the experienced forecasters to be shared with the newer forecasters. There was PhD thesis from a researcher in the US that explored how forecasters learn form each other and how important that exchange is ...
So what are the helpful interventions we can make?
I noticed from Maja's presentation that these communities are often informal, and the formal life of the organisation sometimes seems unaware of the importance of these informal structures in learning and proficiency development. As trainers we are involved in the formal side - how can we intentionally help?
There are some trainers who are also operational forecasters ... so they may be part of the informal activities and communication. What do you think? How can we assist forecasters in a forecaster office to develop their skill and there ability to critically reflect on their skill.
One thing I think we can do is to develop the role of the student and student expertise in out courses. When people ask a question in a course there may be appropriate times as a teacher give the question back to the group. The idea being to get people used to the idea of sharing questions and answers with their peers. As a teacher we are a source of expertise in the classroom - what sources do the students have when they are back on the bench? During the course we can connect students to resources and sources of expertise - that they can then use.
This in one idea - from the perspective of a classroom course - what experiences and ideas do you have?
(I also wonder if thinking about what will work for forecasters we also think about what will help us as trainers develop)
It's too bad Brian Motta from the US NWS couldn't make it to CALMet. He was going to share the NWS Chat tool with us. NWS Chat is a tool that was developed by forecasters to share info across the organization and with external partners (the media, emergency managers, etc.). When an event is ramping up, they can quickly share insights, ask questions, confirm observations, discuss their diagnosis, and on and on. It's become a very active and integral part of their communications flow. And it was grown from the ground up based on a few people's ideas and needs and has now become an invaluable tool for informal learning and sharing.
ReplyDeleteI introduced a chat tool for the Met Office a couple of years ago. We used the chat tool in the Met Office's internal Moodle site. It is used chiefly by forecasters in regional offices and although some of the chat is social it is also used to inform and to discuss weather events.
ReplyDeleteThe US NWS and the Met Office's chat tool is internal so here's a suggestion - since we have a number of "international meteorological servers" all running Moodle. Could we set-up "some" regional chat tools on these Moodle servers. This would allow forecasters, in similar locations, to easily contact each other and "perhaps" discuss the weather?
I also think that a chat tool can be a great way to bring dispersed forecasters into a community of practice. But I also think that community begins within the office. I noticed in the USA that in some forecast offices, every forecaster used every COMET module that was published. But moreover, they also conducted many other local learning activities, including training events, mentoring, and research activities. They were BUSY learning all the time because they had a culture of learning and sharing. How can we contribute to local learning as trainers and foster cultures of learning? Providing tools can be one way, but we can also provide good models for discussing forecast events, whether successes or failures, so that learning can occur more effectively from these experiences. This is similar to one of Mark’s points. CoP ideas, and also the ideas of Case-Based Reasoning (see another blog post made by me on Active Learning), can give some guidance for this.
ReplyDeleteI have used a chat tool as part of an 'e-learning week' event. Its aim was for ECMWF experts to reach out to forecasters and developers in the various NMHS (mainly Europe). It worked very well as its scope was to make the participants feel as though they were part of a 'virtual classroom' where they could benefit from discussing with the experts.
ReplyDeleteI think what Pat mentioned about models in his comment is absolutely crucial. Sometime people want to share their experience but have no models to look at for inspiration and one way for us to help is indeed to show them ways in which they can achieve what they would like to do.
One lesson I have learned from using the chat tool is that one should never assume that people know how to interact in an informal way remotely.
I just came across a nice article introducing the concept of 'communities of practice'. Enjoy:
ReplyDeletehttp://wenger-trayner.com/theory/
Looks like a good summary of the concept and how to implement it. Etienne Wenger is one of the originators and proponents of the idea. I highly recommend the book that he lists as the first reference.
ReplyDelete