Inclusive and Flexible Education in Meteorology and Geophysics

Our Section of Meteorology has launched a project to offer students with disabilities and chronic illnesses more flexible and accessible learning opportunities. The goal is to enable students to review the learning content at their own pace and according to their individual needs.

Background and Need

The Section of Meteorology offers various Bachelor’s and Master’s courses in Meteorology and Geophysics. Particularly in introductory courses and interdisciplinary lectures, such as the course on Physical Climatology, many students from other fields and external participants take part. Although interest in climate and weather has grown in the context of climate change, the materials have rarely been made accessible so far. We aim to change this with the project to reach a diverse audience.

Planned Measures

In the first phase, we are redesigning the Introduction to Meteorology lecture to make it available as an Open Educational Resource (OER). This allows students to follow, deepen, and interactively engage with the content online. Additionally, we are working on:

Creation of Materials: We plan to create interactive H5P elements, animated GIFs, sketches, and videos that will be made available in an ILIAS course with responsive design.
Accessibility Level: These materials will be tested for accessibility, based on the BITV self-test. Initially, we are focusing on visual and hearing impairments, but we are also considering other needs, such as avoiding flickering elements (epilepsy).
Experience Report: After the project’s completion, we will share our experiences with other educators. This will take the form of a guide that documents how to create accessible materials and the challenges involved. We also plan to publicly present our experiences in the form of a poster or a talk.

Target Audience

The project is aimed at a broad audience: students of Meteorology and Geophysics, students from other fields, and those interested in climate and weather. We especially want to support people who have difficulty attending regular lectures due to physical limitations or other obligations.

At the same time, we aim to reach other educators with our project and demonstrate, through a guide and experience report, how inclusive, accessible education can be integrated into the creation of learning materials.

Upon successful completion of the project, we plan to expand the developed modules and materials to other courses and make them available to other departments. The materials will be regularly evaluated and continuously improved to provide a long-term, sustainable contribution to inclusive and flexible education.