iStarDB (The Astronomy Education Research Repository)
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Student Engagement and Success in the Large Astronomy 101 Classroom
No full textThe large auditorium classroom presents unique challenges to maintaining student engagement. During the fall 2012 semester, I adopted several specific strategies for increasing student engagement and reducing anonymity with the goal of maximizing student success in the large class. I measured attendance and student success in two classes, one with 300 students and one with 42, but otherwise taught as similarly as possible. While the students in the large class probably did better than they would have in a traditional lecture setting, attendance was still significantly lower in the large class, resulting in lower student success than in the small control class by all measures. I will discuss these results and compare to classes in previous semesters, including other small classes and large Distance Education classes conducted live over remote television link
Earth Camp: Exploring Earth Change through the Use of Satellite Images and Scientific Practices
No full textEarth Camp is a NASA-funded program that gives students and teachers opportunities to explore local, regional, and global earth change through a combination of hands-on investigations and the use of satellite images. Each summer, 20 middle school and 20 high school students participate in a two-week leadership program investigating contemporary issues (e.g., changes in river sheds, water quality, and land use management) through hands-on investigations, analyzing remote sensing data, and working with experts. Each year, 20 teachers participate in a year-long professional development program that includes monthly workshops, field investigations on Mt. Lemmon in Tucson, Arizona, and a week-long summer design workshop. Teachers conduct investigations of authentic questions using satellite images and create posters to present results of their study of earth change. In addition, teachers design lesson plans to expand their students’ ability to investigate earth change with 21st Century tools. Lessons can be used as classroom exercises or for after-school club programs. Independent evaluation has been an integral part of program development and delivery for all three audiences, enabling the program staff and participants to reflect on and continually improve their practice and learning over the three–year period
Integrating Planetarium and Classroom Instruction to Engage Children in the Practices of Science
No full textChildren should be learning how to engage in science practices in ways that reflect the domain-specific nature of learning to “do science.” Our work explores methods for engaging children in science practices in astronomy, such as developing representations and models, using evidence, and organizing observations into patterns. We used research literature on learning in formal and informal environments to develop learning environment design principles that integrate classroom and planetarium instruction. These were used to develop an intervention for first-grade students. Children first participated in an anticipatory lesson in their classroom. They next visited the planetarium, where they were engaged in a modular planetarium design program that
mixed live interaction with video sequences. Finally, children applied what they learned as they engaged in activities in their classroom. Initial analysis of interviews conducted with children before and after instruction suggest the intervention was successful in
improving students’ reasoning about the Moon and illustrates successful methods of integrating a field trip with a classroom-based lesson
Citizen Science Motivations as Discovered with CosmoQuest
No full textCosmoQuest is a citizen science portal that has launched several projects that allow users to participate in mapping and discovery missions throughout the solar system. We are particularly interested in how citizen scientists move through the site and interact with the various tasks. We have piloted a survey asking citizen scientists for their motivations for using CosmoQuest and link that with their site behaviors. This is part of a larger project using online and real-life interactions to study citizen scientist behaviors, motivations, and learning with a goal of building a better community with
researchers, volunteers, educators, and developers. Such research is important to understanding how to engage new and returning citizen scientists across a wide spectrum
of projects
Beyond the International Year of Astronomy: The Universe Discovery Guides
No full textDeveloped for informal educators and their audiences, the 12 Universe Discovery Guides (UDGs, one per month) are adapted from the Discovery Guides that were developed for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. The UDGs showcase education and public outreach resources from across more than 30 NASA astrophysics missions and programs. Via collaboration through scientist and educator partnerships, the UDGs aim to increase the impact of individual missions and programs, put their efforts into context, and extend their reach to new audiences. Each of the UDGs has a science topic, an interpretive story, a sky object to view with finding charts, hands-on activities, and connections to recent NASA science discoveries. The UDGs are modular; informal educators can take resources from the guides that they find most useful for their audiences. Attention is being given to audience needs, and field-testing is ongoing. The UDGs are available via downloadable PDFs
Got Scope? The Benefits of Visual Telescopic Observing in the College Classroom
No full textThe author discusses pedagogical successes achieved in a course based on visual telescopic observation for
college students in all majors
Introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town: Probing student perspectives
No full textWe report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), which we administered as pre- and posttests to students enrolled in the course. The instrument comprised a small number of questions which probed three areas of interest: student motivation and expectations, astronomy content, and worldview. Amongst our findings were that learning gains were made in several conceptual areas, and that students appeared to develop a more nuanced view of the nature of astronomy. There was some evidence that the course had a positive impact on students’ worldviews, particularly their attitudes towards science. We also identified a promising predictor of course success that could in the future be used to identify students requiring special teaching intervention
Conceptualizing astronomical scale: Virtual simulations on handheld tablet computers reverse misconceptions
No full textConcepts in fields such as astronomy often invoke scales of space and time that far exceed any that are perceived in daily life. Consequently, learners sometimes develop inappropriate intuitions of scale that in turn impede an understanding of related ideas. We investigate whether exposure to virtual 3D simulations of the solar system advances students’ understanding of phenomena for which misconceptions often dominate. Here, high school students used handheld tablet computers (Apple iPad) driven by a
pinch-to-zoom display to manipulate virtual representations of the solar system. Learning was gauged
using a normed concept inventory of multiple choice questions that offered common misconceptions among the answer options. The experiment compared two conditions. One used a simulation where scale relationships in the solar system were exaggerated, so as to focus on surface features of the planets (much like the orrery models often used in astronomy instruction), while the other used a simulation that displayed scale relationships more appropriately.We found that, in either case, even brief exposures to instruction based on pinch-to-zoom simulations of the solar system advanced students’ understanding in areas where traditional instruction is notoriously ineffective. Furthermore, displays that used more realistic depictions of scale were more successful in addressing students’ misconceptions when scale played an important role in the concept
Dynamic Visualizations As Tools For Supporting Cosmological Literacy
No full textMy dissertation research is designed to improve access to STEM content through the development of cosmology visualizations that support all learners as they engage in cosmological sense-making. To better understand how to design visualizations that work toward breaking cycles of power and access in the sciences, I orient my work to following “meta-question”: How might educators use visualizations to support diverse ways of knowing and learning in order to expand access to cosmology, and to science? In this dissertation, I address this meta-question from a pragmatic epistemological perspective, through a socio-cultural lens, following three lines of inquiry: experimental methods (Creswell, 2003) with a focus on basic visualization design, activity analysis (Wells, 1996; Ash, 2001; Rahm, 2012) with a focus on culturally and linguistically diverse learners, and case study (Creswell, 2000) with a focus on expansive learning at a planetarium (Engeström, 2001; Ash, 2014).
My research questions are as follows, each of which corresponds to a self- contained course of inquiry with its own design, data, analysis and results:
1) Can mediational cues like color affect the way learners interpret the content in a cosmology visualization?
2) How do cosmology visualizations support cosmological sense-making for diverse students? 3) What are the shared objects of dynamic networks of activity around visualization production and use in a large, urban planetarium and how do they affect learning?
The result is a mixed-methods design (Sweetman, Badiee & Creswell, 2010) where both qualitative and quantitative data are used when appropriate to address my research goals. In the introduction I begin by establishing a theoretical framework for understanding visualizations within cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and situating the chapters that follow within that framework. I also introduce the concept of cosmological literacy, which I define as the set of conceptual, semiotic and cognitive resources required to understand the scientific Universe on a cosmological scale. In the first chapter I use quantitative methods to investigate how 122 post- secondary learners relied on mediational cues like color to interpret dark matter in a cosmology visualization. My results show that color can have a profound effect on the way that audiences interpret a dynamic cosmology visualization, suggesting a closer look at learning activity. Thus in the second chapter I look at how the visualizations are used by small groups of community college students to make sense of cosmology visualizations. I present evidence that when we look past linguistic fluency, visualizations can scaffold cosmological sense-making, which I define as engaging in object-oriented learning activity mediated by concepts and practices associated with cosmological literacy. In the third chapter I present a case study of an urban planetarium trying to define its goals at a time of transition, during and after the development of a visualization-based planetarium show. My analysis reveals several historical contradictions that appear to impel a shift toward affective goals within the institution, and driving the implementation of visualizations, particularly in the context of immersive planetarium shows. I problematize this result by repositioning the shift toward affective goals in the context of equity and diversity. Finally in my conclusion I present broad recommendations for visualization design and implementation based on my findings
A Brief History Of Publishing Papers On Astronomy Education Research
No full textWhile some research had been done on K-12 and planetarium astronomy teaching from the 1930's to the 1980's, the growth of research on college physics education offered astronomy education researchers a model for examining techniques for teaching introductory college astronomy survey "Astronomy 101" courses as well. This early research was published in widely scattered journals and rarely reached the practitioners of astronomy education. The need to inform and unite the community of astronomy educators led to the birth of the journal "Astronomy Education Review," whose history and sudden death is analyzed. This paper provides a short history of publishing astronomy education research results and provides context for the advent of the new “Journal of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education” (JAESE)