Air Traffic Control: Kati Ahnert (#KA1)

Format

Primarily asynchronous lecture (with some synchronous supplementary meetings)

Keywords

• OPAL
• MAGMA Video Stream
• Big Blue Button
• Air traffic live chat
• Digital exercises / homework

Description

• This course aimed to impart knowledge about the methods, technologies and procedures of air traffic control. Following the legal and technical basics, the lecture focused on the work of various air traffic controllers and their customers – the pilots. During the exercises in the lectures, the participants calculated separation distances between aircraft and determined instructions for air traffic controllers; interpreted aeronautical charts for departure, en route and approach; and discussed the methods used to calculate costs. For these exercises, we used various tools such as MATLAB, Excel or current aeronautical charts. Most of the participants in this course were students from the programs Transport Engineering with a Specialization in Aviation, Air Transport and Logistics, Transport Economics or Economics and Engineering. This course provided students with fundamental knowledge of navigation technology, airspace structure or the air traffic control profession, which they could expand on by taking a course in Navigation, Communication & Surveillance, Cockpit Technologies or Flight Planning in the following semester.

The course as an e-learning module:

OPAL course: https://bildungsportal.sachsen.de/opal/auth/RepositoryEntry/16854286343?3 (unfortunately the content has already been removed)

Course components:

• Notification system for updates on new lecture transcripts, videos, homework or video conference meetings – also as direct email messages in urgent cases
• Registration was necessary to access the course content on OPAL
• Lecture handouts with logical structure (e-learning feedback loop, exercises and homework, supplementary material)
• Lecture handouts contained the usual lecture transcript, which we expanded on for the e-learning course. Almost every slide contained additional information that would normally have been shared in the lecture hall.
   
• A blue question box appeared in the supplementary slide two to three times per week. These boxes contained questions to be discussed by the students in the forum. The aim of this was to get the students actively involved in the subject. I then uploaded the discussion questions to OPAL with my own comments.
• Feedback loop: Following the weekly forum discussions, a feedback loop was created. These are written documents summarizing the forum questions, their answers, my comments and the answers to any questions that were addressed to me via email. These were made anonymous and the answers provided to all course participants
• Handing in homework (4 times during the semester) gave the course participants the opportunity to demonstrate how well they understood the material up to that point. These were submitted via the task function in OPAL and evaluated. The results of the homework could be counted as bonus points for the written exam.
• Additional material such as weather keys were provided as PDF documents.
• The lecture transcript was uploaded every week.
• The lecture was recorded as a video, uploaded via MAGMA and made available in the OPAL course until the day of the exam. Here are two examples:
  Video 1: Lecture introduction https://videocampus.sachsen.de/m/946b05185b84bc6687b676471aa7aa28f952e0f028d4de4b54ec4bf83669f346c0c2f01c9bace6d1dc11520b98322f89690a0717015877502381084b88df457d
  Video 2: A sample exercise https://videocampus.sachsen.de/m/e0552a2f1533069167362fbcbabc472f8ef4fa5b2ba01c9a65cd04702948d49bb6bcc3aea22f3060a89708791aabef05abce0629b9c9e3b8f81db42261f39bfa
• Notes on the videos: These videos were created on my personal laptop during the time I spent working from home for the whole of the semester. To improve sound quality, I used an external microphone later on in the semester. However, the quality of the videos is low – which is why they were only used as a supplement to the course.
• To compensate for the low video quality and to enable direct contact with the students, there were four BigBlueButton video conferences held at the usual lecture time during the course of the semester. These were used to discuss the course content or any problems the students were having with the lectures (in terms of both content and organization). About a third of the registered course participants made use of these meetings.

Contact

Kati Ahnert

Voting ID

#KA1