A Proposed Astronomy Learning Progression For Remote Telescope Observation

Slater, Timothy F.; Burrows, Andrea C.; French, Debbie; Sanchez, Richard A.; Tatge, Coty B.

doi:10.19030/tlc.v11i4.8857

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…It is very common to hear from a given teacher at only one month in any given year. It is certainly not the case that we can just "build the telescope and they will learn" (Slater et al, 2014), but rather a sustained long-term provision of support and development to teachers as they incorporate it into their practice (slowly).…”

Section: Project Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Our Solar Siblings. A high school focussed robotic telescope-based astronomy education project

Fitzgerald

McKinnon

Danaia

et al. 2018

Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education Proceedings, Vol 1, No 1

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In this paper, a robotic telescope-centric high-school level astronomy education project, Our Solar Siblings (OSS) is outlined. The project, an LCO official education partner, was formed as an institution-independent non-profit collaboration of volunteers officially in 2014, although the first version of the curriculum materials and approach was initially first designed in 2010. We outline the five goals of the project and the three approaches (formal classroom, independent student research and providing support to similar endeavours) we implement to pursue these goals. The curriculum materials, a central part of the project, are outlined as are their connections to various curriculum. The independent research project aspect and recent activity is presented. The article concludes with a brief update on the OSS evaluation which drives the educational design and the project's future directions as of 2017.

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Section: Project Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Our Solar Siblings. A high school focussed robotic telescope-based astronomy education project

Fitzgerald

McKinnon

Danaia

et al. 2018

Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education Proceedings, Vol 1, No 1

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Yet, their results did not illuminate how this experience improved students' understanding of astronomical practices. Overall, there has been little research on how to support students in learning these practices of astronomy, whether it is through direct, remote, or simulated use of telescopes as part of an astronomy curriculum (Gershun, Slater, & Berryhill, 2014;Slater et al, 2014). Further, we did not find any prior studies that provide an in depth description of student understanding of the practices of astronomy, which is an important first step before looking at how engagement in these practices supports student learning of the fusion of astronomy practices with astronomy content.…”

Section: Student Ideas and Opportunities For Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Have Astronauts Visited Neptune? Student Ideas About How Scientists Study The Solar System

Palma

Plummer

Rubin

et al. 2017

JAESE

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The nature of students’ ideas about the scientific practices used by astronomers when studying objects in our Solar System is of widespread interest to discipline-based astronomy education researchers. A sample of middle-school, high-school, and college students (N=42) in the U.S. were interviewed about how astronomers were able to learn about properties of the Solar System as a follow-up question after specific questions about the nature of the Solar System and its objects. These students often held naive ideas about the practices of astronomy, and 19% of them proposed that humans or robots have returned samples of the planets to Earth for analysis. While the college students provided more sophisticated responses to the questions than the younger students, we found that even they held naive ideas about human sample return and infrequently appealed to studying objects at a distance using telescopes. We propose that students are not receiving specific instruction that allows them to investigate the tools and practices of astronomy, which leads them to rely on their prior knowledge about science practices in other disciplines (e.g., geoscience) when queried about how scientists study the Solar System. This result implies that instruction around the limits of human and robotic spaceflight is needed to allow students to have a more scientific understanding of the practices of astronomy in studying the Solar System.

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“…Concurrently, as a potential solution to these issues, there have been dozens of attempts over the past two and a half decades to provide telescope access for education (Gomez and Fitzgerald, 2017), often under the presumption made by project personnel that, if the telescope is available and accessible, educators and students will inevitably use it for learning (Slater et al, 2014). In contrast, many of the programs developed over the past 25 years have not succeeded in their goals, with several even failing to launch after publication of their intended existence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Contributing to Attitudinal Gains in Introductory Astronomy Courses

et al. 2019

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Most students do not enroll in introductory astronomy as part of their major; For many, it is the last science course they will ever take. Thus, it has great potential to shape students' attitudes toward STEM fields for the rest of their life. We therefore argue that it is less important, when assessing the effectiveness of introductory astronomy courses, to explore traditional curricular learning gains than to explore the effects that various course components have on this attitude. We describe the results of our analysis of end-of-semester surveys returned by a total of 749 students in 2014-2015, at 10 institutions that employed at least part of the introductory astronomy lecture and lab curriculum we first implemented at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. Surveys were designed to measure each student's attitude, and to probe the correlation of attitude with their utilization of, and satisfaction with, various course components, along with other measures of their academic background and their self-assessed performance in the course. We find that students' attitudes are significantly positively correlated with the grade they expect to receive, and with their rating of the course's overall effectiveness. To a lesser degree, we find that students' attitudes are positively correlated with their mathematical background, with whether they intend to major or pursue a career in STEM, and with their rating of the effectiveness of the instructor. We find that students' attitudes are negatively correlated with the amount of work they perceived the course to involve, and, surprisingly, with the size and reputation of their home institution. We also find that, for the subsets of students who were exposed to them, students' attitudes are positively correlated with their perception of the helpfulness of the lecture component of the course, and of telescope-based labs that utilized UNC-CH's Skynet Robotic Telescope Network.

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A Proposed Astronomy Learning Progression For Remote Telescope Observation

Cited by 18 publications

References 21 publications

Our Solar Siblings. A high school focussed robotic telescope-based astronomy education project

Our Solar Siblings. A high school focussed robotic telescope-based astronomy education project

Have Astronauts Visited Neptune? Student Ideas About How Scientists Study The Solar System

Factors Contributing to Attitudinal Gains in Introductory Astronomy Courses

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