iStarDB (The Astronomy Education Research Repository)
Not a member yet
2071 research outputs found
Sort by
The Design, Construction and Use of an Internet Accessible, Robotic Optical Telescope Initiative for Student Research Projects.
No full textThe aim of this project is to design, deploy and determine the potential effectiveness of a moderate cost robotic observatory for education and research projects. The use of robotic telescopes in education has been demonstrated in a number of recent high profile initiatives, such as the Bradford Telescope, and Faulkes Telescope projects. While there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that these initiatives increase student enthusiasm for science, the effectiveness of these comparatively large and expensive instruments in enabling students to easily participate in authentic research remains the subject of conjecture. At the same time, there has been a marked increase over the past few years, in the number of successful, comparatively low cost amateur observatories making valid contributions to science. Amateur astronomers have a long history of contribution to astronomical research, and recent innovations in off-‐the-‐shelf, robotic telescope hardware and software have increased this contribution even more so. Compared with the larger initiatives, the robotic telescope solutions implemented by advanced amateurs are easily replicated, and offer an interesting alternative for educational implementations. This research project will draw heavily on the recent advanced amateur experience as a model for the design and construction of a robotic observatory for outreach, engagement and valid research. The provision of a full life-‐cycle of support components
is considered important in the successful delivery of any educational outreach initiative including one that involves access to arobotic telescope. The development, deployment and evaluation of teacher training as well as the development and provision of student activities form a significant component of this project. The age of the Internet is upon us. That the next generation of school students will continue to be impressed by taking pretty pictures of celestial objects with on-‐line telescopes is dubious; that those same students will be engaged by participating in research and discovery is likely. The key aim of this project is to demonstrate the 4 potential to achieve this outcome using an effectively implemented, comparatively low cost Internet telescope solution and supporting initiatives
The Pulsar Search Collaboratory: Discovery and Timing of Five New Pulsars
No full textWe present the discovery and timing solutions of five new pulsars by students involved in the Pulsar Search
Collaboratory, a NSF-funded joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West
Virginia University designed to excite and engage high-school students in Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics (STEM) and related fields. We encourage students to pursue STEM fields by apprenticing them
within a professional scientific community doing cutting edge research, specifically by teaching them to search
for pulsars. The students are analyzing 300 hr of drift-scan survey data taken with the Green Bank Telescope at
350 MHz. These data cover 2876 deg2 of the sky.Over the course of five years, more than 700 students have inspected
diagnostic plots through a web-based graphical interface designed for this project. The five pulsars discovered in
the data have spin periods ranging from 3.1 ms to 4.8 s. Among the new discoveries are PSR J1926−1314, a long
period, nulling pulsar; PSR J1821+0155, an isolated, partially recycled 33 ms pulsar; and PSR J1400−1438, a
millisecond pulsar in a 9.5 day orbit whose companion is likely a white dwarf star
Modeling the History of Astronomy: Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho
No full textThis paper describes a series of activities in which students investigate and use the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic models of planetary motion. The activities guide students through using open source software to discover important observational facts, learn the necessary vocabulary, understand the fundamental properties of different theoretical models, and relate the theoretical models to observational data. After completing these activities, students can make observations of a fictitious solar system and use those observations to construct models for that system
Education and public outreach at the Carl Sagan Solar Observatory of the University of Sonora
No full textWe discuss the importance of small solar observatories for EPO (Education and Public Outreach), mentioning why they are relevant and what kind of equipment and software require. We stress the fact that technological advances have made them affordable and that they should be widely available. This work is a result of our experience with one: The Carl Sagan Solar Observatory (CSSO). We briefly describe its status and the solar data obtained daily with students participation. We present examples of the data obtained in the visible, Ca II and two in Hα. Data which is widely used for education. Finally we talk about the capability for remote operation as an open invitation for collaboration in educational and scientific projects
The Shadow of a Gnomon Along a Year: Routine Observations and Teaching of Apparent Motion of the Sun and the Four Seasons
No full textMany misconceptions are recognized among the various groups of students, especially in the elementary school. Among them, the apparent motion of the Sun, in spite of its daily occurrence, is subject to varied interpretations. Thus, the observation and recording of the motion of the stars in the celestial vault is a necessary task for astronomy education. The work presented here proposes the presentation of the results of observations of the apparent movement of the sun by marking the shadow of a vertical gnomon by the students in a class of sixth graders of elementary rural school of Paraná. The project itself was conducted in four stages, on dates near the March equinox, the June solstice, the
September equinox and the December solstice. In addition, lectures were developed in the classroom. Such methods sought to build concepts around the apparent movement of the Sun and the alternation of the seasons. Given the results of the activities, an evaluation was applied and the data demonstrated a desired student learning such as: the recognition of the cardinal points, the description of the apparent solar motion and the occurrence of the seasons and their alternation from astronomical observations at naked eye
Critical Episodes in Student Teachers' Science Lessons using Drama in Grades 6 and 7
No full textUsing drama to teach science has been promoted as a fruitful teaching method yet there has been almost no theorisation and little research. This paper reports a South African study analysing lessons of four student teachers, all General Education and Training (GET) drama majors. Student teachers each used drama simulations and non-drama lessons to teach the same science concepts to similar classes of learners in grades 6 and 7. Data were collected from video transcripts of lessons using drama, researchers' field notes and student teachers' documentation supplemented by post-lesson interviews with student teachers, class teachers and groups of learners. Critical teaching episodes, identified for the four drama lessons, showed positive impact of student teachers' organisation of simulated drama but that they often failed to link scientific phenomena, concepts and processes with learners' simulated actions. Student teachers often over-directed the drama and restricted greater learner autonomy and space for open dialogic classroom discourse that might have helped embed knowledge. Implications for initial and in-service training of science teachers and future research are discussed
A Comparison Of The Effectiveness Of Two Instructional Techniques In A Planetarium Setting
No full textField trips are a ubiquitous part of modern school programs and can offer exciting, engaging, and authentic experience for students to learn science. There has been extensive research on how to best integrate field trips with classroom instruction so they can reach their full potential. Planetaria are often ignored in this literature, which is unfortunate as they are more didactic and structured environments than other informal spaces such as museums, but can still offer positive affect and learning gains to students outside of the classroom. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the unique aspects of learning in planetaria as informal settings. This is done by testing a curriculum on apparent celestial motion that integrates the planetarium and classroom environments based on the School-Museum Integrated Learning Experiences in Science (SMILES) (Griffin, 1998) framework for integrating classroom and museum learning. Data in the form of interviews, class work, audio-visual recordings, and surveys were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods to find examples of the 6 strands of informal learning (National Research Council, 2012) and suggest revisions to the SMILES framework for use with planetaria. The results showed examples of all 6 strands of informal learning, suggesting the SMILES framework was appropriate for planetarium field trips. However, weaknesses in students’ descriptions of apparent celestial motion, reasoning skills, social interactions, and language use suggested revisions to the SMILES framework for use with planetaria. These revisions included addressing choice and control normally seen in museum settings in the classroom, preparing students for language in addition to concepts seen while on a field trip by providing teachers with a script or list of vocabulary to be addressed in context, have students collect data from the show and explicitly use it with scientific practices the classroom afterward to support multiple exposures to ideas and help them avoid using authority of facts gathered at the planetarium as a sole means of justifying answers, model specifically those scientific practices in the classroom, and address a single overarching topic in planetarium show or delineate changes between topics to avoid confusing students
Investigating Student Ideas about Cosmology II: Composition of the Universe
No full text"Continuing our work from a previous study (Coble et al. 2013), we examine undergraduates’ ideas on the composition of the Universe as they progress through a general education astronomy integrated lecture and laboratory course with a focus on active learning. The study was conducted over five semesters at an urban minority-serving institution. The data collected include individual interviews (N 1⁄4 15) and course artifacts (N 60), such as prelab surveys, and midterm and final exam questions in a variety of formats. We find that students easily obtain a superficial knowledge of the origins of the chemical elements and the existence of dark matter and dark energy, which they are generally unaware of pre-instruction. However, they are hindered in their ability to reproduce the argument for the existence of dark matter at least in part because of weaknesses in their graph-reading abilities.
The Effect of Color Choice on Learner Interpretation of a Cosmology Visualization
No full textAs we turn more and more to high-end computing to understand the Universe at cosmological scales, dynamic visualizations of simulations will take on a vital role as perceptual and cognitive tools. In collaboration with the Adler Planetarium and University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HiPACC), I am interested in better understanding the use of visualizations to mediate astronomy learning across formal and informal settings. In this research, I use quantitative methods to investigate how 122 post-secondary learners are relying on color to interpret dark matter in a cosmology visualization. The concept of dark matter is vital to our current understanding of the Universe, yet we do not know how to effectively present dark matter visually to support learning. I employ an alternative treatment post-test only experimental design, in which members of an equivalent sample are randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups, followed by treatment and a post-test. Results indicate a significant relationship between the color of dark matter in the visualization and survey responses, implying that aesthetic variations like color can have a profound effect on audience interpretation of a dynamic cosmology visualization
Investigating Student Ideas about Cosmology I: Distances and Structure
No full textRecently, powerful new observations and advances in computation and visualization have led to a revolution in our understanding of the structure of the Universe. As the field of cosmology advances, it is of interest to study how student ideas relate to scientific understanding. In this paper, we examine in-depth undergraduate students’ ideas on distances and structure in the Universe as students progress through a general education astronomy integrated lecture and laboratory course with a focus on active learning. The study was conducted over five semesters at an urban, minority-serving institution. The data collected include individual interviews (N 1⁄4 15) and course artifacts (N 60), such as precourse homework essays, prelab surveys, and midterm and final exam questions in a variety of formats. We find that students are fairly successful at tasks involving relative distances, but struggle with absolute distances; have difficulty going beyond an elementary model of the Solar System as the Sun and planets; struggle to visualize galactic halos; but successfully increase their understanding of the hierarchical nature of structure in the Universe throughout the semester