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<br />115 <br /> <br />Second, the Internet version can be used as a refresher for students who <br />attended the course or have worked through the outline. This is important for <br />maintaining skills and, in some cases, reviewing technical details that might <br />not have been grasped in the first encounter. <br />We hope to someday develop a large library of cases that would be <br />available on the World Wide Web. In the limited time at the NWSTC, it is <br />impossible to work through many cases and, generally, some of the case <br />studies are skipped or skimmed over in the interests of time. It is possible, <br />with appropriate human and computer resources, to put a large number of <br />cases on to the Web with great detail, enabling forecasters to work through <br />the cases that will help them the most. In this medium, cases can be added <br />quickly so that something new is available all the time, helping forecasters <br />and students to find new challenges in working through the problems. Once <br />a forecaster has worked through an example, he or she will know the answer, <br />limiting the value of the individual resource. <br />Certainly, there are drawbacks to the WorlO Wide Web as a training tool. <br />Some materials, such as homework analysis exercises, don't transfer well to <br />the electronic setting. Interaction between students and instructors is not as <br />rapid and extensive as it is in a classroom, and discussion among students is <br />next to impossible. One cannot tailor the course to anyone student's specific <br />needs, and considerable attention must be given to the maintenance and <br />upgrades of both the course materials and the hardware on which it resides. <br />Thus, the role of researchers as trainers becomes strained. In general, the <br />people who have taught the course have been full-time research meteorolo- <br />gists and, as a result, development and maintenance of training course <br />materials takes away from their research efforts. Since part of the intent was <br />to have current researchers training forecasters, a paradox develops. If the <br />Web instructors are to do an adequate job of training, they will need <br />assistance in putting materials together and on line, or they will not have the <br />time to do the research that is the basis for having them participate in <br />training! <br /> <br />Maddox, Rodgers, and Schwartz <br /> <br />Brooks, Doswell, <br /> <br />Feedback to Research <br /> <br />Researchers often have had their research agendas set or changed by <br />issues that come up in the FFFC. As an example, precipitation efficiency (the <br />amount of rain that falls out of a storm divided by the amount of water vapor <br />entering the storm) is an important topic for estimating precipitation potential <br />of an environment. Recently, the broader question of moisture budgets of <br />thunderstorms was investigated, due to discussions in the FFFC, using a <br />