I am very happy that you have decided to join me this semester. Before we begin our semester of study together, it is important that you review all of the material in this Orientation and in our course syllabus [1]. These two resources will prepare you to be successful in this course and will make the journey through our course significantly easier for you.
Optimally, you should complete the Orientation before the first week of class so you are prepared.
The following is an overview of the activities that you should complete during the Orientation. Detailed directions and submission instructions are located on the page containing the assignment within this orientation.
Tasks | Page of Orientation |
---|---|
Personalize your Canvas profile and set notification preferences. | Canvas Activities |
Introduce yourself and meet the rest of the class. | Canvas Activities |
This Orientation complements and expands on the information provided in the syllabus [1]. If you haven't read it, be sure to review that document carefully! It is linked from this website is also be available in Canvas.
If you have any questions, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not e-mail), located in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
My name is William Brune. I am a distinguished professor of meteorology and have been a faculty member at Penn State for 35 years.
The atmosphere creates and sustains life. It's amazing and it's important to know how it works. I love teaching this course because it contains all the essential elements of the science behind the weather. I have been fascinated by the weather ever since I was a little kid, sitting on the curb in front of my house in Houston, Texas, watching the huge thunderstorms build and build and build until you knew the rain was coming soon and heavy. Usually I got inside before I got soaked, but not always! As a physics graduate student, I tried to focus on astrophysics, but I knew I loved studying the atmosphere the most because it is so complex and so relevant to our lives, so as soon as I could, I returned to studying and teaching about the atmosphere here at Penn State. I have taught Meteo 300 in residence four times, three in the past five years.
My research specialty is atmospheric chemistry, but to understand the chemistry, you need to understand the atmosphere and all of its physics. My research group consists of graduate students, research associates who have Ph.D.s, engineers, and undergraduates - sometimes even sophomores. We have participated in more than 40 field studies of the atmosphere using both towers on the ground and airplanes. We have studied the atmosphere in places as far north as northern Sweden and as far south as New Zealand, and many places in between. We have done tower-based studies in several cities, including New York City, Houston, and Mexico City, and in forests, including the California Sierra Nevadas and rural Alabama. On aircraft, we have flown all over the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the northern Atlantic Ocean. In 2012, we were part of the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry study and spent our time flying around thunderstorms in the central United States. That was fun! The aircraft encountered lightning while flying through anvil clouds of thunderstorms and we were able to measure the changes in atmospheric composition caused by lightning and weaker electrical discharges. Now we chase thunderstorms looking for weak corona electrical discharges that form on the tops of trees under thunderstorms.
This course will be conducted entirely online. There are no set class meeting times, but you will be required to complete weekly assignments. Registered students in this course will need to navigate between several environments. These include:
The instructional materials in this site include lessons, plus the Orientation. Each lesson contains an introduction, reading assignments, links, assessments, etc.
Canvas is the learning management system currently being used by Penn State University. In Canvas, registered students may consult course calendars; communicate with instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students; submit assignments; receive feedback from the instructor and teaching assistant; take online quizzes and surveys; and check assignment scores and course grades. A link to Canvas appears on every page.
This page provides information about Canvas, Penn State's online learning management system.
If you are new to Canvas, it is strongly recommended that you complete the PSU: Canvas Student Orientation [3].
You may also want to review the Canvas Student Guide [4] to acclimate yourself further, and watch the following (6:47) video:
200 - Canvas Overview for Students [5] from Canvas LMS [6] on Vimeo [7].
In this video, you will get a brief overview of the Canvas user interface. The Canvas user interface has three main components: the Dashboard, Global Navigation, and Sidebar. The Dashboard is the first thing you see when you log into Canvas. It provides a high-level overview of all your courses. The Dashboard has two different viewing options, the course view or the recent activity stream. The Dashboard course view includes a course card for each of your favorite courses. Each card can include up to four tabs, which represent the four main Canvas features for student course activity: Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, and Files. These tabs mimic visibility and order in Course Navigation, so, for instance, if an instructor hides the Announcements link, the Announcements tab will not be displayed. The total number of activities are indicated on the appropriate tab with a number icon. You can directly access these recent activities by clicking the tab.
You can change a couple settings for your course cards by clicking the card Settings icon. First, you can create nicknames for your courses to help you organize your dashboard. In the Nickname text field, enter the nickname for your course. Click the Apply button. The new nickname will appear. Course nicknames appear in the Dashboard, Course Navigation Menu, course breadcrumbs, and notification e-mails and only changes the name of the course for the individual user who created the nickname. If users need to know the original name of the course, they can hover over the nickname and the original name will appear. To remove a nickname, open the card settings and remove the nickname. The Nickname field will display the original name of the course. Click the Apply button to save changes. You can also change the color of your course cards. In the card settings, select the color you would like to assign to the card. You can also enter a HEX code for any color. Then click Apply.
To view the recent activity stream, click the toggle to the right. The recent activity stream view contains a stream of recent notifications from all your courses, including announcements, discussions, assignments, and conversations. New or unread activities are shown by the blue indicator dot. You can view the details of each activity by hovering in the notification area and clicking the Show More link. To collapse recent activity, click the Show Less link. You can directly access your recent activities by clicking the link. To remove a notification, click the remove icon.
Another interface component is the Global Navigation, which is a static menu on the left side of the page that gives you direct access to your courses and other information in Canvas. This menu is accessible from any page within Canvas. To modify your user settings or profile, click the Account link. You can also specify your notification preferences, upload personal files, or manage ePortfolios here. Click the Logout link to Logout of Canvas. To hide the slideout menu, just click the menu link again or click the close icon. Click the Dashboard link to return to the Canvas Dashboard at any time.
By clicking Courses, you can access your individual courses or view a list of all courses in which you are enrolled. Here, you can customize the courses that display on your Dashboard and in your Courses list by clicking the stars next to the course names. Click Groups to access any groups in which you are enrolled or to view a list of all your groups. Click the Calendar link to view the global calendar, which shows an aggregated view of all assignments and events from each of your courses. The Inbox link will take you to your Conversations. You can compose and send new messages to other students and teachers here, or view any existing conversations. And click the Help link to access help resources, including the Canvas Guides, the Canvas Community, or Canvas Support. If you ever have a problem with Canvas, be sure to click the “Report a Problem” link to get help from a support agent. This link may not be available to all Canvas users.
The last interface component is the Sidebar. On your dashboard, the sidebar includes a To Do list, Coming Up feed, Recent Feedback, and a View Grades button. The To Do list helps you keep track of assignments that you need to complete. Click any assignment link and Canvas will direct you to the appropriate page. You can also click the close icon next to any item to ignore the assignment. The Coming Up feed lists upcoming assignments and events within your courses. Under Recent Feedback, you will see the latest comments from instructors or peers on previously submitted assignments. Click the View Grades button to quickly access the grades for any of your courses. Note that when viewing Canvas with a small screen resolution, any sidebar content aligns with the bottom of the page.
Now, let’s visit a course and take a look at the course interface. The course interface consists of 4 main components: the Course Navigation, the Content Area, the Breadcrumb Navigation, and the Sidebar. The course navigation menu provides links to the different areas of your course. Your instructors have the ability to customize this menu, so it may vary slightly from course to course. This menu can be collapsed by clicking the menu icon. The content of the course will be displayed in this Content Area. The Breadcrumb Navigation shows your current location within a course and allows you to easily move to a previous screen. The Course Sidebar is similar to the Canvas Sidebar. It includes a View Course Stream link to see recent course activity, as well as your To Do list, Coming Up feed, and Recent Feedback comments.
You've now completed this Canvas Overview for Students. For additional information on this or any other topic about Canvas, just visit guides.canvaslms.com. You can also ask questions and engage with other Canvas users by visiting community.canvaslms.com.
The Canvas Help Center provides extensive, up-to-date documentation [8] on making sure your computer is configured properly for Canvas. Failure to follow these recommendations may result in significant issues while viewing materials, taking assessments, and using drop boxes. Use of unsupported browsers is at your own risk.
Profile and User Settings let you control your personal information in Canvas. Take a few minutes to personalize your Canvas profile by following the instructions below.
Task | Instructions |
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Personalize your Canvas Profile |
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Set your notification preferences |
You have the option to select how, when, and for what information you would like to receive notifications. This can be very helpful when keeping track of items such as discussion posts, assignment due dates, and exams. Visit the Canvas Notification Preference Support page (link is external) [10] and follow the instructions for setting up your notification preferences. The video below this table provides additional information. To ensure that your Canvas e-mail messages forward to your regular e-mail account immediately, check the "Notify me right away" option (the checkmark) for each item under "Conversations" in Notification Preferences. |
Set your timezone |
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Download the Canvas App | For information on using the app by device, please see the following:
|
The following video (4:28) provides information about Canvas Notification Preferences.
112 - Notification Preferences [13] from Canvas LMS [6] on Vimeo [7].
Click for Transcript of Notification Preferences in Canvas
In this video, you will learn about Notification Preferences, which help you manage the frequency and mode in which you receive notifications from Canvas. Canvas supports notification through e-mail, SMS text message, and other external services. Canvas users can choose to receive notifications immediately, daily, weekly, or never.
To get started, click the Account link in Global Navigation. Then click Settings. In the User Settings and Profile Picture video, we discussed Ways to Contact in the right sidebar. To see how to add e-mail addresses and phone numbers to your settings, please refer to that video. Ways to Contact will play a role in where Notification Preferences are sent.
Web Services will also play a role in Notification Preferences. If you scroll down to the Other Services section, you will see a list of services that you can link to your Canvas account. When you register with other web services, you allow other users to connect with you via web services. You should already have accounts with any of the web services you wish to use before registering them in Canvas. By default, Canvas does not disclose your information to other users within the system unless you give consent. One of the services you can connect to is Twitter. By connecting to Twitter, you will receive notifications via Tweets according to your notification preferences. To connect to Twitter, click the Twitter button. A window will pop up asking for permission to connect your Twitter and Canvas accounts. To allow this, click the Authorize Twitter Access button. If you are not already logged in to your Twitter account, you will need to enter your login information. You will then be redirected back to Canvas. This process will be similar for each web service provided. You will see your Twitter information in Ways to Contact under the Other Contacts heading in the sidebar. You will also notice that the Twitter button appears in the Registered Services column. Remove a Registered Service by clicking the remove icon next to the service. A popup will appear to confirm that you want to unregister the service. Click OK to unregister. The web service will then appear in the Other Services column. After unregistering an external service, you can reregister it at any time. You can follow these steps to connect to or disconnect from any of the external services. Or, for detailed instructions on how to connect to specific external services, please refer to the Canvas Guides.
After you have added Web Services, you will want to set your Notification Preferences, which you can do by clicking the Notifications link in the user navigation on the left side. On this page, you can select how and when you want to be notified when various events occur within your course. Notification preferences are divided into activity categories: Course Activities, Discussions, Conversations, Scheduling, Groups, Alerts, and Conferences. Along the top of the page, you will see your different contact methods; your e-mail addresses, phone number, and other registered services, like Twitter, in this case. You will need to go through each category and set how and where you want to be notified. When you hover over a cell to change your preference, four icons will appear.
1. By selecting the Checkmark icon, you will be immediately notified of any change for the activity.
2. By selecting the Clock icon, you will be notified daily of any change for the activity.
3. By selecting the Calendar icon, you will be notified weekly of any change for the activity
4. By selecting the X icon, you will not be sent notifications for the activity.
The notification preferences you set here will apply to all of your courses. You should also notice, on the bottom of the page, a note indicating the day and time when your weekly notifications will be sent. This time varies between users.
You've now completed this video tutorial on Notification Preferences. For additional information on this or any other topic about Canvas, just visit guides.canvaslms.com. You can also ask questions and engage with other Canvas users by visiting community.canvaslms.com.
This site includes the majority of the instructional materials for this class. There are a few things you should know about this website.
This site uses a "tab" interface to organize content. The tabs are used as follows:
This course uses many equations. In order to view the equations, you must use one of the following browsers. This list supersedes the list of browsers found on the Technical Requirements page.
If you use any other browsers, there will be pages that do not render properly.
You can customize your browser to zoom in on the equations by following the steps below.
Below is an example of a formula. Right click (Mac users Ctrl-click) on the formula to access the Zoom settings.
Penn State defines academic integrity as "the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and responsible manner." Academic integrity includes "a commitment not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation, or deception." In particular, the University defines plagiarism as "the fabrication of information and citations; submitting others' work from professional journals, books, articles, and papers; submission of other students' papers, lab results or project reports and representing the work as one's own." Penalties for violations of academic integrity may include forfeited assignments, course failure, or disqualification from a degree or certificate program. More information is available by reading the Academic Integrity and Research Ethics policies [15]of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
We expect that the text and graphics you submit as part of your assignments are original. We reserve the right to use the plagiarism detection service Turnitin.com [16] to assure the originality of course assignments. You may build upon ideas, words and illustrations produced by others, but you must acknowledge such contributions formally. Unacknowledged contributions are considered to be plagiarized. This guide explains when and how you should acknowledge contributions of others to your own work.
Different disciplines adopt different standards for citations and references. Moreover, almost every professional publication enforces its own variation on the standard styles. The most widely used styles include:
So, which one should I use?
Just as each discipline adopts different standards, each instructor and/or course may require you to use a different citation style. Please refer to the syllabus to learn what standard you will be expected to comply with. If it is not listed there, do not hesitate to contact your instructor.
Regardless of the style you use, we do expect two things:
Penn State also makes available to all faculty and students an iStudy Module entitled Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, and Copyright. [26]
To be sure you are able to access reserve readings and other library resources in this course, visit the library’s Online Students Use of the Library [27] site. This guide outlines all that Penn State libraries offer you as an online student. It is strongly recommended that you watch the Library Orientation Videos [28] and visit the Services for Students [29] page.
If you have questions, just ASK! [30] a librarian! The ASK! page will connect you to librarians in a manner that meets your needs; e-mail, phone, or chat for a quick response.
Here are some quick tips to keep in mind when preparing to be successful in an online course:
You should plan to devote at least the same amount of time to your online courses as you would to attending lectures on campus and completing assignments. Other good study habits, such as attending class (logging on) regularly and taking notes, are just as important in an online course as they are in a lecture hall!
You should plan to devote 10-12 hours per week to completing lesson readings and assignments. Your learning will be most effective when you spread this participation out and engage with the course on a daily basis, if possible.
Take every opportunity to interact with the content, the instructor, and your classmates by completing assignments and participating in discussion forums and group activities!
Keep in sync with what's going on in the course and stay on top of deadlines and upcoming assignments.
Ask for guidance when you are in need of clarification. You can also use the Discussion Forum to ask general questions about the course set-up or content.
The links below will connect you with other resources to help support your successful online learning experience:
This website provides links to many resources on everything from taking notes online to managing your time effectively. Please note that you must be a World Campus student to receive some of the support services mentioned on this website.
As a student, you have access to several resources to help you improve your understanding of the course material, or better use technology needed for your courses. This website provides instructions and links for accessing online tutoring, writing help, and assistance with learning technology.
This blog features posts by Penn State staff and students on a wide variety of topics relevant to online learning. Learn from online students and alumni, as well as staff members dedicated to student success, how you can get the most out of your online course experience.
The iStudy online learning tutorials are free and available to all Penn State students. They cover a broad range of topics including online learning readiness, time management, stress management, and statistics - among many others. Check out the extensive list of topics for yourself to see what topics may be of most use to you!
This website provides access to an extensive free online training library, with tutorials on everything from creating presentations to using mobile apps for education. There is a wealth of information here - all provided free of charge to Penn State faculty, staff, and currently enrolled students.
I am a firm believer in academic freedom and freedom of speech. Nonetheless, I want to encourage conversation and dialogue (within our formal assignments as well as in your various discussions with classmates) that are based on a framework of mutual respect and a desire for continued and deeper understanding of the issues at hand and also the multiple perspectives represented.
Healthy debate and exploration are encouraged in your discussion posts. At the same time, you must support your well-thought-out claims and analyses with accurate and appropriate references. I will dock points when the rules of decorum are disregarded. Keep these guidelines for class interactions in mind as you interact with classmates and your instructor.
You may have questions that come up while taking this course. Use the information below to guide you in seeking answers.
If you have questions about the course content or activities, please post them to the Course Questions Discussion Forum (instead of using private e-mail) in Canvas. That way, everyone in the course can benefit from seeing the question and the answer! While you are there, feel free to post your own response if you are able to help out a classmate!
If you have a question that you would prefer not to share with the rest of the class, you are welcome to contact me by e-mail, via Canvas.
You have reached the end of the Orientation! Double-check the to-do list on the Orientation Welcome page to make sure that you have completed all of the activities listed there before beginning the course.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo300/node/777
[2] https://psu.instructure.com
[3] https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1780857
[4] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4121
[5] https://vimeo.com/74677642
[6] https://vimeo.com/canvaslms
[7] https://vimeo.com
[8] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1284
[9] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1285
[10] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1286
[11] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1559
[12] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1666
[13] https://vimeo.com/75514816
[14] http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/download.htm
[15] http://www.ems.psu.edu/undergraduate/academic-advising/forms-and-procedures/academic-integrity
[16] http://turnitin.com/en_us/home
[17] http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
[18] http://psu.libguides.com/apaquickguide
[19] http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
[20] http://psu.libguides.com/mlacitation
[21] http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/
[22] http://psu.libguides.com/CSE
[23] http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html
[24] http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/
[25] http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
[26] http://istudy.psu.edu/tutorials/academicintegrity/
[27] http://guides.libraries.psu.edu/onlinestudentlibraryguide
[28] http://guides.libraries.psu.edu/c.php?g=516093&p=3540088
[29] http://guides.libraries.psu.edu/c.php?g=516093&p=3540332
[30] http://ask.libraries.psu.edu/?stream=8
[31] https://student.worldcampus.psu.edu/academic-support-resources/strategies-to-improve-online-learning
[32] http://student.worldcampus.psu.edu/student-services/tutoring-technology-resources
[33] http://studentblog.worldcampus.psu.edu/
[34] http://istudy.psu.edu/
[35] http://lynda.psu.edu/