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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-23 14:28 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2008 Meeting
Section: Educational Physics
Title:
EUFAR (European Fleet for Airborne Research) - Authentic training and learning experiences
Authors:
Aurora Bell
Affiliation:
National Meteorological Administration, Bucharest, Romania
E-mail
aurora.stan@meteo.inmh.ro
Keywords:
learning through doing,atmospheric sciences, postgraduate students
Abstract:
The National Meteorological Administration in Romania hosted last year a special training “learning through doing” event in atmospheric sciences for postgraduate students.
The event, a summer school, took place in July 2007, in Iasi, and the topic was on “Boundary Layer Research with Instrumented Aircraft”. It was the first summer school organized by the Education and Training activity of the European Fleet for Airborne Research, an integrated infrastructure initiative of the 6th framework program of the European Commission. The trainees were young scientists at postgraduate level and the approach was to blend the academic lectures on “in situ measurements” and their background science, with the field experiment.
The students had full control in designing their own experiment, and the professors gave credit to their assumed responsibility. An instrumented ATR 42 aircraft performed 5 flights with students on board. The operators and pilots supported the design and data collection during the school. Each experiment had briefings and de-briefings for the flights, and the “instant” decisions and changes in the experiment, according to the real structure of the atmosphere were justified. Each group made a study and a report, and filled evaluations forms of the whole event. This summer school facilitated the use of very advanced technology by young scientists in Europe, and focused on research in “group” versus individual work.
This presentation is aimed to encourage future young scientists to approach this difficult domain of experimental research with instrumented aircrafts.
This presentation shows the challenges of the approaches in learning and training used in this event and shares the conclusions, evaluations and benefits of “hands on training”, in an era where “distance learning” tries to overcome all the financial issues.
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