Pub Date : 2023-12-21DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.123edipsb
Urban Eriksson
Messages from around the world in memory of Prof. Paulo Sergio Bretones
世界各地悼念保罗-塞尔吉奥-布雷顿斯教授的留言
{"title":"Remembering a passionate Astronomy Education Researcher","authors":"Urban Eriksson","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.123edipsb","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.123edipsb","url":null,"abstract":"Messages from around the world in memory of Prof. Paulo Sergio Bretones","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"106 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139167707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-23DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.061aer
Janelle M. Bailey, Shannon Willoughby, Bahereh Samie
The topic of space exploration receives little attention in most introductory astronomy courses. However, students come to such courses with both an interest and ideas informed by popular media–ideas that may or may not be consistent with scientific and engineering outlooks. This study explored what students recall about space exploration ideas after engaging with two short, in-class activities on the possibility of travel to Mars and the use of solar sails for exploration. We asked four open-ended questions for extra credit and coded students’ responses ($N$ = 106 to 150) for themes. Coding demonstrated that students had reasonable, if limited, understanding of factors influencing both crewed and uncrewed mission types as well as risks to crews after completing these activities.
{"title":"An Initial Investigation of Students’ Understanding of Space Exploration","authors":"Janelle M. Bailey, Shannon Willoughby, Bahereh Samie","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.061aer","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.061aer","url":null,"abstract":"The topic of space exploration receives little attention in most introductory astronomy courses. However, students come to such courses with both an interest and ideas informed by popular media–ideas that may or may not be consistent with scientific and engineering outlooks. This study explored what students recall about space exploration ideas after engaging with two short, in-class activities on the possibility of travel to Mars and the use of solar sails for exploration. We asked four open-ended questions for extra credit and coded students’ responses ($N$ = 106 to 150) for themes. Coding demonstrated that students had reasonable, if limited, understanding of factors influencing both crewed and uncrewed mission types as well as risks to crews after completing these activities.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"157 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139243334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-18DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.058aep
C. Impey
Astronomy is the oldest science, with connections to development of the most important concepts in physics. A course is described that covers its evolution from prehistory to modern cosmology, giving due weight to the philosophical implications of the subject. The pedagogy is designed to let students develop their writing and reasoning skills. The newly developed course has been delivered to three distinct audiences: non-science majors at a major public university, adult community members taking the course for enrichment, and a worldwide audience of lifelong adult learners who enroll in a massive open online course (MOOC). Class content is informed by the scholarly literature on philosophy and the history of physics and astronomy. Subject matter is divided into thirteen chronological topics: Ancient Skies, Greek Science, Revolutions, Telescopes, Gravity, Evolution, Mapping, Relativity, Quantum Theory, Stars and Atoms, Galaxies, the Big Bang, and Life in the Universe. The topics are presented at a rate of one per week during the standard university semester, and they are parsed into five two-hour sessions for the local community audience and seven weeks of self-paced video lectures for the online MOOC audience.
{"title":"Knowing the Universe: Teaching the History and Philosophy of Astronomy","authors":"C. Impey","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.058aep","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.058aep","url":null,"abstract":"Astronomy is the oldest science, with connections to development of the most important concepts in physics. A course is described that covers its evolution from prehistory to modern cosmology, giving due weight to the philosophical implications of the subject. The pedagogy is designed to let students develop their writing and reasoning skills. The newly developed course has been delivered to three distinct audiences: non-science majors at a major public university, adult community members taking the course for enrichment, and a worldwide audience of lifelong adult learners who enroll in a massive open online course (MOOC). Class content is informed by the scholarly literature on philosophy and the history of physics and astronomy. Subject matter is divided into thirteen chronological topics: Ancient Skies, Greek Science, Revolutions, Telescopes, Gravity, Evolution, Mapping, Relativity, Quantum Theory, Stars and Atoms, Galaxies, the Big Bang, and Life in the Universe. The topics are presented at a rate of one per week during the standard university semester, and they are parsed into five two-hour sessions for the local community audience and seven weeks of self-paced video lectures for the online MOOC audience.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"461 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125812127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.024ra
P. Ranadive, S. Shetye, Dhaval Dalvi, A. Sule
This article outlines the process of designing a problem for Astronomy Olympiad at high-school level, based on a recent curious astrophysical event. Betelgeuse, one of the brightest star in the night sky and a supernova candidate, started dimming in October 2019 and reached a record minimum magnitude in February 2020. This extraordinary event piqued curiosity in professional astronomers, amateur astronomers as well as mass media. The problem presented here, tries to build a quantitative model of the event for the students, based on just high school physics. This problem included three models viz., a stellar pulsation model, an exoplanet transit model and a mass loss event model. The students were asked to calculate few physical quantities or parameters to deduce the most suitable model. The entire process of problem design including constraints involved, alternative approaches explored and discarded and the final draft is laid out. It is hoped that this discussion will serve as a guiding light to fellow problem designers and question setters.
{"title":"Adapting Betelgeuse’s Dimming Event to A High School Level Astronomy Exercise","authors":"P. Ranadive, S. Shetye, Dhaval Dalvi, A. Sule","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.024ra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.024ra","url":null,"abstract":"This article outlines the process of designing a problem for Astronomy Olympiad at high-school level, based on a recent curious astrophysical event. Betelgeuse, one of the brightest star in the night sky and a supernova candidate, started dimming in October 2019 and reached a record minimum magnitude in February 2020. This extraordinary event piqued curiosity in professional astronomers, amateur astronomers as well as mass media. The problem presented here, tries to build a quantitative model of the event for the students, based on just high school physics. This problem included three models viz., a stellar pulsation model, an exoplanet transit model and a mass loss event model. The students were asked to calculate few physical quantities or parameters to deduce the most suitable model. The entire process of problem design including constraints involved, alternative approaches explored and discarded and the final draft is laid out. It is hoped that this discussion will serve as a guiding light to fellow problem designers and question setters.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129893650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.052resana
C. Impey, Victoria Pereira, Alexander Danehy, M. Wenger
Video is an excellent vehicle for astronomy education and outreach. Usage patterns and user demographics are presented for short videos covering a variety of astronomy topics, delivered to public audiences from three websites, three YouTube channels, and three massive open online classes, or MOOCs. The data spans over a decade in some cases. The modality of the content ranges from short lecture presentations of sub-topics in astronomy to longer scripted pieces created by students to Q&A sessions held by the MOOC instructor with live audiences of 100-200. In the aggregate, the videos have attracted 1.2 million views, and those viewers have watched 77,300 hours of astronomy content. Most of the viewers are not based in the United States. Viewership rose dramatically at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. The videos watched by lifelong learners taking a MOOC show a decline in usage as they progress through the online course. But on these YouTube channels, when viewers can choose among the topics, the most popular are cosmology and exoplanets. Suggestions are made for the effective ways to create and disseminate astronomy videos.
{"title":"Video as a Vehicle for Astronomy Education and Outreach","authors":"C. Impey, Victoria Pereira, Alexander Danehy, M. Wenger","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.052resana","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.052resana","url":null,"abstract":"Video is an excellent vehicle for astronomy education and outreach. Usage patterns and user demographics are presented for short videos covering a variety of astronomy topics, delivered to public audiences from three websites, three YouTube channels, and three massive open online classes, or MOOCs. The data spans over a decade in some cases. The modality of the content ranges from short lecture presentations of sub-topics in astronomy to longer scripted pieces created by students to Q&A sessions held by the MOOC instructor with live audiences of 100-200. In the aggregate, the videos have attracted 1.2 million views, and those viewers have watched 77,300 hours of astronomy content. Most of the viewers are not based in the United States. Viewership rose dramatically at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. The videos watched by lifelong learners taking a MOOC show a decline in usage as they progress through the online course. But on these YouTube channels, when viewers can choose among the topics, the most popular are cosmology and exoplanets. Suggestions are made for the effective ways to create and disseminate astronomy videos.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123775501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.051aep
A. Shaner, S. Buxner, D. Kring
The Exploration of the Moon and Asteroids by Secondary Students (ExMASS) program provides pre-college students the opportunity to conduct authentic, inquiry-based research with assistance from their teacher and a professional scientist. This paper presents an overview of the ExMASS program and results of ongoing program evaluation. The goals of the ExMASS program are to 1) provide an opportunity for secondary students to engage in multiple practices of science, 2) foster positive student attitudes toward science, and 3) enhance student lunar and asteroid science content knowledge. Evaluation data affirms the program is meeting these stated goals. In particular, assessment of student attitudes toward science show statistically significant increases in positive attitudes post program. The validity of the survey has been shown previously through factor analysis (Shaner et al., 2018). This paper includes a discussion of the continued assessment of student attitudes toward science (n = 125 students), showing statistically significant changes in both personal connections to science and the importance of science in society.
中学生探索月球和小行星计划(ExMASS)为大学预科学生提供了在老师和专业科学家的帮助下进行真实的、探究式研究的机会。本文介绍了ExMASS计划的概述和正在进行的计划评估的结果。ExMASS计划的目标是:1)为中学生提供参与多种科学实践的机会;2)培养学生对科学的积极态度;3)增强学生对月球和小行星科学内容的了解。评估数据确认该计划正在达到这些既定目标。特别是，对学生对科学态度的评估显示，在课程结束后，积极态度在统计上显著增加。先前通过因子分析显示了调查的有效性(Shaner et al.， 2018)。本文包括对学生对科学态度的持续评估的讨论(n = 125名学生)，显示了个人与科学的联系和科学在社会中的重要性在统计上的显著变化。
{"title":"ExMASS: Implementation and evaluation of an authentic, inquiry-based research experience for secondary students","authors":"A. Shaner, S. Buxner, D. Kring","doi":"10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.051aep","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2023.3.1.051aep","url":null,"abstract":"The Exploration of the Moon and Asteroids by Secondary Students (ExMASS) program provides pre-college students the opportunity to conduct authentic, inquiry-based research with assistance from their teacher and a professional scientist. This paper presents an overview of the ExMASS program and results of ongoing program evaluation. The goals of the ExMASS program are to 1) provide an opportunity for secondary students to engage in multiple practices of science, 2) foster positive student attitudes toward science, and 3) enhance student lunar and asteroid science content knowledge. Evaluation data affirms the program is meeting these stated goals. In particular, assessment of student attitudes toward science show statistically significant increases in positive attitudes post program. The validity of the survey has been shown previously through factor analysis (Shaner et al., 2018). This paper includes a discussion of the continued assessment of student attitudes toward science (n = 125 students), showing statistically significant changes in both personal connections to science and the importance of science in society.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125106803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-22DOI: 10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.040op
M. Kersting
Increasingly, topics of general relativity enter mainstream media and popular culture. In parallel, scientists and educators try to find suitable instructional approaches to teach these topics in schools. A recent opinion piece in this journal argued for the need for more quantitative and formal approaches in GR education at the secondary school level. To provide a complementary perspective, I wish to make a case for the importance of qualitative and conceptual approaches, arguing that students benefit from opportunities to reason qualitatively. In doing so, I draw on my research and historical case studies to illustrate the importance of qualitative reasoning in GR. Discussions about the challenges and opportunities of different instructional approaches are meaningful because they help our community better understand why and how we should teach GR. As such, this opinion piece contributes to our joint efforts to improve the quality of general relativity education at the secondary school level and beyond.
{"title":"A case for conceptual approaches in general relativity education","authors":"M. Kersting","doi":"10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.040op","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.040op","url":null,"abstract":"Increasingly, topics of general relativity enter mainstream media and popular culture. In parallel, scientists and educators try to find suitable instructional approaches to teach these topics in schools. A recent opinion piece in this journal argued for the need for more quantitative and formal approaches in GR education at the secondary school level. To provide a complementary perspective, I wish to make a case for the importance of qualitative and conceptual approaches, arguing that students benefit from opportunities to reason qualitatively. In doing so, I draw on my research and historical case studies to illustrate the importance of qualitative reasoning in GR. Discussions about the challenges and opportunities of different instructional approaches are meaningful because they help our community better understand why and how we should teach GR. As such, this opinion piece contributes to our joint efforts to improve the quality of general relativity education at the secondary school level and beyond.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123584386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-22DOI: 10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.038ra
H. Bekaert, A. Steegen, H. Van Winckel, W. Van Dooren, Marco Nicolini, A. Sippel, Christos Staikidis, I. Thiering, M. De Cock
In the context of the European Erasmus+ project Teaching ASTronomy at the Educational level (TASTE), we investigated to what extent secondary school students of four participating countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece and Italy) have insight in the Apparent Motion of the Sun and Stars. The systematic design of the AMoSS test instrument allowed us to detect differences in understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars. We administered the test with 12 multiple choice questions to 13-17 years old students of 5 European secondary schools (N=348) during a science lesson in school. We also asked them to explain their choices. We found similar results in the four countries: most students only demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars for different times during the day, different times during the year and different locations of the observer on Earth. Moreover, we see a clear distinction between the responses to the Sun-related and the star-related questions. In general, the questions about the Sun are answered more correctly than the questions about the stars. By using one classification system for the four countries we were able to compare written explanations in different languages. In combination with a latent class analysis, we identified different mental models that students use to answer questions about the apparent motion of the Sun and stars.
{"title":"Comparing students’ knowledge of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars in four European countries","authors":"H. Bekaert, A. Steegen, H. Van Winckel, W. Van Dooren, Marco Nicolini, A. Sippel, Christos Staikidis, I. Thiering, M. De Cock","doi":"10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.038ra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.038ra","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of the European Erasmus+ project Teaching ASTronomy at the Educational level (TASTE), we investigated to what extent secondary school students of four participating countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece and Italy) have insight in the Apparent Motion of the Sun and Stars. The systematic design of the AMoSS test instrument allowed us to detect differences in understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars. We administered the test with 12 multiple choice questions to 13-17 years old students of 5 European secondary schools (N=348) during a science lesson in school. We also asked them to explain their choices. We found similar results in the four countries: most students only demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars for different times during the day, different times during the year and different locations of the observer on Earth. Moreover, we see a clear distinction between the responses to the Sun-related and the star-related questions. In general, the questions about the Sun are answered more correctly than the questions about the stars. By using one classification system for the four countries we were able to compare written explanations in different languages. In combination with a latent class analysis, we identified different mental models that students use to answer questions about the apparent motion of the Sun and stars.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124816617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.032ra
A. Dobaria, J. Bailey, T. Klavon, D. Lombardi
Students often encounter alternative explanations about astronomical phenomena. However, inconsistent with astronomers’ practices, students may not be scientific, critical, and evaluative when comparing alternatives. Instructional scaffolds, such as the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagram, where students weigh connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanations, may help facilitate students’ scientific evaluation and deepen their learning about astronomy. Our research team has developed two forms of the MEL: (a) the preconstructed MEL (pcMEL), where students are given four lines of evidence and two alternative explanatory models about the formation of Earth’s Moon and (b) the build-a-MEL (baMEL), where students construct their own diagrams by choosing four lines scientific evidence out of eight choices and two alternative explanatory model out of three choices, about the origins of the Universe. The present study compared the more autonomy-supportive baMEL to the less autonomy-supportive pcMEL and found that both scaffolds shifted high school student and preservice teacher participants’ plausibility judgments toward a more scientific stance and increased their knowledge about the topics. Additional analyses revealed that the baMEL resulted in deeper evaluations and had stronger relations between levels of evaluation and post-instructional plausibility judgements and knowledge compared to the pcMEL. This present study, focused on astronomical topics, supports our team’s earlier research that scaffolds such as the MELs in combination with more autonomy-supportive classrooms may be one way to deepen students’ scientific thinking and increase their knowledge of complex scientific phenomena.
{"title":"Students’ Scientific Evaluations of Astronomical Origins","authors":"A. Dobaria, J. Bailey, T. Klavon, D. Lombardi","doi":"10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.032ra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.032ra","url":null,"abstract":"Students often encounter alternative explanations about astronomical phenomena. However, inconsistent with astronomers’ practices, students may not be scientific, critical, and evaluative when comparing alternatives. Instructional scaffolds, such as the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagram, where students weigh connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanations, may help facilitate students’ scientific evaluation and deepen their learning about astronomy. Our research team has developed two forms of the MEL: (a) the preconstructed MEL (pcMEL), where students are given four lines of evidence and two alternative explanatory models about the formation of Earth’s Moon and (b) the build-a-MEL (baMEL), where students construct their own diagrams by choosing four lines scientific evidence out of eight choices and two alternative explanatory model out of three choices, about the origins of the Universe. The present study compared the more autonomy-supportive baMEL to the less autonomy-supportive pcMEL and found that both scaffolds shifted high school student and preservice teacher participants’ plausibility judgments toward a more scientific stance and increased their knowledge about the topics. Additional analyses revealed that the baMEL resulted in deeper evaluations and had stronger relations between levels of evaluation and post-instructional plausibility judgements and knowledge compared to the pcMEL. This present study, focused on astronomical topics, supports our team’s earlier research that scaffolds such as the MELs in combination with more autonomy-supportive classrooms may be one way to deepen students’ scientific thinking and increase their knowledge of complex scientific phenomena.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114623145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.043ra
Molly Simon, E. Prather, I. Rosenthal, Michael P. Cassidy, J. Hammerman, L. Trouille
There is a critical need for research-based active learning instructional materials for the teaching and learning of STEM in online courses. Every year, hundreds of thousands of undergraduate non-science majors enroll in general education astronomy courses to fulfill their institution’s liberal arts requirements. When designing instructional materials for this population of learners, a central focus must be to help learners become more scientifically and data literate. As such, we developed a new, three-part, curricular model that was used to inform the creation of active-learning instructional materials designed for use in online courses to help introductory astronomy students improve their ability to make evidence-based conclusions when presented with a variety of data representations, while increasing their self-efficacy with respect to engaging meaningfully in science. We conducted a pilot study of these instructional materials at nine different colleges and universities to better understand whether students’ engagement with these materials lead to increases in self-efficacy, and whether faculty who implemented the materials were able to easily incorporate our active learning materials into their existing online astronomy courses. Overall, we found a statistically significant improvement in students' self-efficacy after engaging with our instructional materials in their online courses. The results of the item-by-item analysis indicated that students’ beliefs improved most on the questions that assessed their ability to make meaningful contributions to scientific research, and their confidence using data representations to interpret an array of scientific questions. The instructor feedback emphasized that our curriculum development model could successfully inform the creation of instructional materials that were easy to implement in existing online astronomy classes, and supported course learning objectives, creating the potential for widespread dissemination and use at the undergraduate level.
{"title":"New Curriculum Development Model for Improving Undergraduate Students’ Data Literacy and Self-Efficacy in Online Astronomy Classrooms","authors":"Molly Simon, E. Prather, I. Rosenthal, Michael P. Cassidy, J. Hammerman, L. Trouille","doi":"10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.043ra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32374/aej.2022.2.1.043ra","url":null,"abstract":"There is a critical need for research-based active learning instructional materials for the teaching and learning of STEM in online courses. Every year, hundreds of thousands of undergraduate non-science majors enroll in general education astronomy courses to fulfill their institution’s liberal arts requirements. When designing instructional materials for this population of learners, a central focus must be to help learners become more scientifically and data literate. As such, we developed a new, three-part, curricular model that was used to inform the creation of active-learning instructional materials designed for use in online courses to help introductory astronomy students improve their ability to make evidence-based conclusions when presented with a variety of data representations, while increasing their self-efficacy with respect to engaging meaningfully in science. We conducted a pilot study of these instructional materials at nine different colleges and universities to better understand whether students’ engagement with these materials lead to increases in self-efficacy, and whether faculty who implemented the materials were able to easily incorporate our active learning materials into their existing online astronomy courses. Overall, we found a statistically significant improvement in students' self-efficacy after engaging with our instructional materials in their online courses. The results of the item-by-item analysis indicated that students’ beliefs improved most on the questions that assessed their ability to make meaningful contributions to scientific research, and their confidence using data representations to interpret an array of scientific questions. The instructor feedback emphasized that our curriculum development model could successfully inform the creation of instructional materials that were easy to implement in existing online astronomy classes, and supported course learning objectives, creating the potential for widespread dissemination and use at the undergraduate level.","PeriodicalId":424141,"journal":{"name":"Astronomy Education Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128185377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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