Abstract:

In the last twenty-five years, a Meteorology syllabus has been developed from a very broad battery of short questions and has been used to explain Meteorology in two degrees at the University of Vigo, Spain of different scope, one more formal mathematically, the Physics degree, and another with a lower formal mathematical level, Environmental Sciences degree. The short questions allow students to build their answers by synthesizing what was explained in class and choosing the most relevant and precise answer to the questions. Through a review of the seven partial tests plus a global test of the last thirteen promotions of different generations that have used the same syllabus and short questions, we study the differences both in results and in response quality between generations and between degrees. The results indicate that the higher the formal and theoretical level, the quality of the response is higher, being more synthetic, and precise, indicating a greater real understanding of the subject. The results suggest that these questions should be adjusted according to the formal level of the students and the generational evolution of their ability to understand written text.

Keywords:

Learning meteorology, Short answer questions.