Introductory Astronomy Classes Research Articles

Prevalence of a growth mindset among introductory astronomy students

While many previous studies have indicated that encouraging a growth mindset can improve student learning outcomes, this conclusion’s applicability to college-level astronomy classrooms remains poorly understood owing to the variation in students’ overall and domain-specific learning attitudes. To address this, we surveyed undergraduate students in an introductory astronomy class about their attitudes towards learning astronomy over the course of five semesters. Overall, students felt an affinity for astronomy, felt moderately competent, perceived astronomy to be intermediate in terms of difficulty, and agreed strongly with standard statements reflecting a “growth mindset,” i.e., the belief that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed from birth. Their responses were stable over the course of the semester and did not appear to depend strongly on student demographics. The unexpected start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated shift to all-virtual learning correlated with a drop in their affinity for astronomy, a small decrease in their perceived competence, and an increase in the perceived difficulty of the topic. Their overall learning mindset showed negligible change during this time, emphasizing the stability of their belief in a growth mindset as compared to other measured learning attitudes. However, more nuanced questions about their behaviors and interpretations in the classroom, about how they felt “in the moment,” and about what factors were most important for their success in the class revealed significantly lower alignment with a growth mindset. This suggests that while introductory astronomy students may believe that they have a growth mindset, this mindset is not necessarily reflected in their self-reported classroom behaviors or measured responses to actual learning challenges. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Sarah Frances Whiting, pioneer of laboratory instruction in astronomy

Sarah Frances Whiting developed innovative and influential laboratory work in her introductory astronomy classes at Wellesley College in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Whiting was strongly influenced by Edward Pickering and the early physics laboratory education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article explores the early development of laboratory work in astronomy education at Wellesley and Whiting's underlying philosophy of education. By laboratory work, Whiting meant day-time work, including work with astronomical photographs and spectroscopy. Her pedagogy was encapsulated in her phrase “to sharpen the pencil sharpens the mind,” which referenced the importance of a student's familiarity with tools as well as the role of drawing in astronomical work. Whiting further modeled her instruction after the work being conducted at the Harvard College Observatory in order to prepare her students for potential future employment as astronomers.

What Physics Instructors Can Learn from Astronomy Teaching

A student says, “Even though the physics involved can be basically the same, the setup is what drives me to like astronomy more,” comparing his introductory physics class to his introductory astronomy class. Another student concurs, “Astronomy is more exciting.” What is it about astronomy that appeals to students? Is there a way to harness such enthusiasm within the context of an introductory physics class while retaining the same level of rigor? Here, we describe a study that shows that, compared with an introductory physics course for science and engineering majors, an introductory astronomy course (also for science and engineering majors) had similar gains on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), but students’ attitudes and approaches to problem solving were significantly better in the latter. Moreover, interviewed students corroborated the survey findings that the astronomy course was significantly more enjoyable and engaging. This suggests that physics instructors can learn from the way astronomy is often taught, in order to better engage students.

Video killed the writing assignment

We move pretty fast in the introductory astronomy class at Albion College (Albion, MI)—13.7 billion years of astronomy in about 15 weeks (one semester). Thus, it is virtually impossible to talk about all of the really interesting things that are happening in our solar system, our galaxy, and the universe, or about the really cool people and instruments that make our observations possible. This may or may not be a problem because students take this course for different reasons—to satisfy a graduation requirement, because it fits in their schedule, and/or because they are interested in astronomy in general.

Comparing introductory physics and astronomy students’ attitudes and approaches to problem solving

Students taking introductory physics and introductory astronomy classes, which are both gateways to a physics or physics and astronomy major, may have different attitudes and approaches to problem solving (AAPS). We examined how introductory physics students’ AAPS compare to those of introductory astronomy students, using a previously validated survey, the AAPS survey. In addition, we compared the performance of the introductory physics and astronomy students on the factors which were identified in a factor analysis in the original validation study. We found that introductory astronomy students’ overall average AAPS score was significantly more favourable than that of introductory physics students (), and the effect size was large (Cohen’s d = 0.81). We also found that introductory astronomy students’ scores were more favourable in all clusters of questions except for one factor involving drawing diagrams and writing scratch-work while solving problems. Follow-up interviews suggest that one possible explanation for less favourable scores in this factor is the context of astronomy problems, e.g. the difficulty and usefulness of drawing electromagnetic radiation. Moreover, introductory astonomy students who were interviewed indicated that they would likely draw diagrams for problems that lend themselves well to sketching, such as problems involving celestial mechanics. We also found that introductory physics and astronomy students were equally capable of solving two isomorphic problems posed to them, and that the majority of introductory physics and introductory astronomy students reported that the problem posed in the astronomy context was more interesting to them. Interviews suggest that the context of astronomy in problem solving may be more interesting for students and could be one possible explanation for the more favourable AAPS scores amongst introductory astronomy students compared to introductory physics students. Instructors of introductory physics courses should heed these findings which indicate that it may be beneficial for instructors of introductory physics courses to incorporate problems into their instruction which contain real-world contexts, which may serve to increase student interest-level, and which could help create more favourable attitudes and approaches towards problem solving.

Opportunity to Learn: Investigating Possible Predictors for Pre-Course Test Of Astronomy STandards TOAST Scores

As discipline-based astronomy education researchers become more interested in experimentally testing innovative teaching strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate introductory astronomy survey courses ("ASTRO 101”), scholars are placing increased attention toward better understanding factors impacting student gain scores on the widely used Test Of Astronomy STandards (TOAST). Usually used in a pre-test and post-test study design, college faculty might naturally assume that the pre-course differences observed between high- and low-scoring college students might be due in large part to their pre-existing motivation, interest, experience in science, and attitudes about astronomy. To explore this notion, 11 non-science majoring undergraduates taking ASTRO 101 at west coast community colleges were interviewed in the first few weeks of the course after taking the TOAST as a pre-test to better understand students' pre-existing affect toward learning astronomy with an eye toward predicting student success. The goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the incoming knowledge of students taking undergraduate introductory astronomy classes and provide guidance for how faculty can best meet those students’ needs and assist them in greater achievement. Perhaps surprisingly, there was only weak correlation between students' motivation toward learning astronomy and their pre-test scores. Instead, the most fruitful predictor of TOAST pre-test scores was the quantity of pre-existing, informal, self-directed astronomy learning experiences, sometimes occurring many years before course enrollment. This data suggests that professors should be wary of correlating low incoming pre-course scores with student apathy toward their subject.

Learning about the scale of the solar system using digital planetarium visualizations

We studied the use of a digital planetarium for teaching relative distances and sizes in introductory undergraduate astronomy classes. Inspired in part by the classic short film The Powers of Ten and large physical scale models of the Solar System that can be explored on foot, we created lectures using virtual versions of these two pedagogical approaches for classes that saw either an immersive treatment in the planetarium or a non-immersive version in the regular classroom (with N = 973 students participating in total). Students who visited the planetarium had not only the greatest learning gains, but their performance increased with time, whereas students who saw the same visuals projected onto a flat display in their classroom showed less retention over time. The gains seen in the students who visited the planetarium reveal that this medium is a powerful tool for visualizing scale over multiple orders of magnitude. However the modest gains for the students in the regular classroom also show the utility of these visualization approaches for the broader category of classroom physics simulations.

A Google Earth Grand Tour of the Terrestrial Planets

ABSTRACTGoogle Earth is a powerful instructional resource for geoscience education. We have extended the virtual globe to include all terrestrial planets. Downloadable Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files (Google Earth's scripting language) associated with this paper include lessons about Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and Mars. We created “grand tours” of these bodies, guiding students to explore atmospheres, magnetospheres, landscapes, and interiors. The tours benefited from a study of 364 students in an introductory astronomy class. We compared learning outcomes for students using Google Earth versus static portable document format (PDF) files. In pre- and immediate posttests, there were small but statistically significant (p-value < 0.05) learning gains from the use of Google Earth; however, these did not persist in a long-term follow-up. There may have been insufficient differences between viewing text and images in Google Earth placemark balloons versus identical text and images in a PDF document. Consequently, we revised our tours, adding many more three-dimensional models, draped maps, and movies. We also assembled a table of links to virtual globes for other planets and moons, and a virtual solar system model, thus building a comprehensive teaching resource for introductory lunar and planetary science courses.

Teach Astronomy A Comprehensive Online Astronomy Education and Outreach Resource

A web site called Teach Astronomy (http://www.teachastronomy.com) has been created to serve astronomy instructors and their students, amateur astronomers, and members of the general public interested in astronomy. The content includes astronomy articles from an introductory level textbook and from the online resource Wikipedia, short video clips, astronomical images, podcasts, and recent news stories. This article describes the technology behind the delivery of those learning resources, which is relevant to the capabilities and limitations of the web site. One key innovation is the Wikimap, a Flash-based tool that presents the visual results of a real-time clustering analysis of hundreds or thousands of text items, displaying the item that best matches the search term and most closely related items. The clustering is carried out in a Lucene index, and it can operate on any database containing items of text. The astronomy content is routinely updated, in some cases daily. Due to the prevalence of smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices, a simplified non-graphical version of the interface was developed using custom style sheets. Teach Astronomy has a large following of students taking introductory astronomy classes and members of the public with a recreational interest in astronomy. In the past year, there have been 250,000 unique visitors. Currently we are developing a new interface that uses HTML5 instead of Flash to display the Wikimap, an app version of the website for use on smartphones and tablets, and tool to support an instructor and learner community.

Balloon and Button Spectroscopy: A Hands-On Approach to Light and Matter

Without question, one of the most useful tools an astronomer or physicist can employ to study the universe is spectroscopy. However, for students in introductory physics or astronomy classes, spectroscopy is a relatively abstract concept that combines new physics topics such as thermal radiation, atomic physics, and the wave and particle nature of light and matter. In response to this conceptual hurdle, we have developed an exercise where balloons represent stars, buttons represent photons, and students produce and interpret spectra by sorting colored buttons.

Students from non‐dominant linguistic backgrounds making sense of cosmology visualizations

AbstractThis article presents the results of exploratory research with community college students from non‐dominant linguistic backgrounds (NDLB) in an introductory astronomy class as they collaborated to reconstruct dynamic cosmology visualizations through drawing. Data included student discourse during the drawing activity, post‐activity interviews, and the drawings themselves. This work comes from the theoretical perspective that revealing student competence should be an essential part of science education research, and is guided by sociocultural theory. Results indicate that dynamic cosmology visualizations can support the development of cosmological literacy by facilitating heterogeneous sense‐making strategies. The activity of drawing the visualizations in groups created fluid, hybrid spaces where students could grapple directly with cosmology content while trying on the language of science. In light of these findings, the author argues that carefully incorporating collaborative activity around the interpretation of visualizations into learning environments can improve access to cosmology content for learners, particularly those who come from non‐dominant linguistic backgrounds. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54: 29–57, 2017

Learning from the Starry Message: Using Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius in Introductory Astronomy Classes

Every introductory astronomy class encounters Galileo during the course as the first man to systematically study the sky with a telescope. Every Astronomy 101 student meets Galileo as one of the major catalysts behind the shift from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system and as one of the great minds behind the scientific method. But most of the time Galileo is just an inset on page 17 with one of the canonical portraits, appearing in students' lists of six early astronomers that need to be memorized for the first exam. I have tried to find ways to overcome such shallow educational experiences in introductory astronomy. In order to bring students to a real encounter with Galileo, I have assigned reading of an excerpt from Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, “The Starry Message,” followed by an inclass discussion of the text.

Astronomy for astronomical numbers: A worldwide massive open online class

&lt;p&gt;Astronomy: State of the Art is a massive, open, online class (MOOC) offered through Udemy by an instructional team at the University of Arizona. With nearly 24,000 enrolled as of early 2015, it is the largest astronomy MOOC available. The astronomical numbers enrolled do not translate into a similar level of engagement. The content consists of 14 hours of video lecture, nearly 1,000 Powerpoint slides, 250 pages of background readings, and 20 podcast interviews with leading researchers. Perhaps in part because of the large amount of course content, the overall completion rate is low, about 3%. However, this number was four times higher for an early cohort of learners who were selected to have a prior interest in astronomy and who took the class in synchronous mode, with new content being added every week. Completion correlates with engagement as measured by posts to the online discussion board. For a subset of learners, social media like Facebook and Twitter provide an additional, important mode of engagement. For the asynchronous learners who have continuously enrolled for the past 15 months, those who complete the course do so quickly, with few persisting longer than two months. The availability of a free completion certificate had no impact of completion rates when it was added midway through the period of data analyzed in this paper. This experiment informs a new offering of an enhanced version of this MOOC via Coursera, along with a co-convened “flipped” introductory astronomy class at the University of Arizona, where the video lectures will be online and class time will be used exclusively for small group labs and hands-on activities. Despite their typically low completion rates, MOOCs have the potential to add significantly to public engagement with science, and they attract a worldwide audience. &lt;/p&gt;

EXAMINATION OF PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDING LEVELS OF KEPLER’S LAWS WITH RANKING TASK QUESTIONS

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service science teachers’ understanding levels of Kepler’s second and third laws. The participants of the study were 38 pre-service science teachers who attended introductory astronomy class in their teacher education program. The participants’ understandings of Kepler’s laws were examined by their answers to ranking tasks, which required participants to rank the situations given in the question, and then to explain the reasons behind their answers. The findings showed that the participants’ understanding levels ranged from partial understanding with alternative conceptions to sound understanding. Moreover the number of the participants with partial understanding with alternative conceptions exceeded the participants with sound understanding. The participants’ explanations to ranking tasks also indicated that although participants knew the classic statements of Kepler’s laws, they had also alternative conceptions. Five different alternative conceptions were identified from the participants’ explanations. Two of them have not been reported in previous studies. Key words: Kepler’s laws, pre-service science teachers, ranking tasks, understanding levels.

Teaching Astronomy Using Tracker

A recent paper in this journal1 presented a set of innovative uses of video analysis for introductory physics using Tracker. In addition, numerous other papers have described how video analysis can be a meaningful part of introductory courses.2–4 Yet despite this, there are few resources for using video analysis in introductory astronomy classes. In this paper we describe the use of Tracker in introductory astronomy to analyze a “video” consisting of a series of still images of star fields and sunspots. Because astronomy focuses on concepts unfamiliar to most students, the visualization that video analysis provides can be especially valuable.

The Impact of Stereo Display on Student Understanding of Phases of the Moon

Understanding lunar phases requires three-dimensional information about the relative positions of the Moon, Earth, and Sun, thus using a stereo display in instruction might improve student comprehension of lunar phases or other topics in basic astronomy. We conducted a laboratory ! 15 sections on phases of the Moon as part of the introductory astronomy classes. Half of the laboratories were taught using stereo visualizations projected by a portable GeoWall system running the AstroWall software, while the other half of the laboratories were identical, but without stereo. We found that both sets of laboratories showed a statistically significant gain in student comprehension, but that there was no statistical difference between the stereo laboratories and the nonstereo laboratories. We conclude that there is no advantage to using a stereo display in teaching about lunar phases.

Technology talks: Clickers and grading incentive in the large lecture hall

Two sections of an introductory astronomy class were given different grading incentives for clicker participation for two consecutive semesters. In the high stakes classroom points were awarded only for correct answers, in contrast to the low stakes classroom in which points were awarded simply for participating. Self-formed groups of four students each were recorded in both sections several times during the spring 2007 semester and their conversations were transcribed and categorized into nine topics to analyze the variations between the sections. Performance on clicker questions and tendency to block vote were correlated with class grades and gains for the pre- and post-test scores on the Astronomy Diagnostic Test.

Effect of Night Laboratories on Learning Objectives for a Nonmajor Astronomy Class

We tested the effectiveness on learning of hands-on, night-time laboratories that challenged student misconceptions in a non-major introductory astronomy class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We present a new assessment examination used to assess learning in this study. We were able to increase learning, at the 8.0 sigma level, on one of the moon phase objectives that was addressed in a cloudy night activity. There is weak evidence of some improvement on a broader range of learning objectives. We show evidence that the overall achievement levels of the four sections of the class is correlated with the amount of clear whether the sections had for observing, even though the learning objectives were addressed primarily in activities that did not require clear skies. This last result should be confirmed with future studies. We describe our first attempt to cycle the students through different activity stations in an attempt to handle 18 students at a time in the laboratories, and lessons learned from this.

Development of a Concept Inventory to Assess Students’ Understanding and Reasoning Difficulties about the Properties and Formation of Stars

Stars are one of the most frequently covered topics in introductory astronomy classes. From a constructivist framework, one must know what conceptions students bring with them to the classroom in order to effectively facilitate deep conceptual learning about stars. This study investigated the beliefs about stars that students hold when they enter an introductory astronomy course and used that information to develop a concept inventory that can be used to assess those beliefs pre- and post-instruction. First, students’ pre-instructional beliefs were investigated through the use of student-supplied-response (SSR) surveys, which asked students to describe their ideas about topics such as what is a star, how is starlight created, how are stars formed, are all stars the same, and more. More than 2,200 students participated in this portion of the study over four semesters. Responses were inductively analyzed in an iterative process and coded for themes. Calculated frequencies show that although many students (80%) know that stars are made of gas, a third to half of the participants (32-44%, depending upon the question) believe that starlight is created (or energy otherwise emitted) as a result of the star burning. Nuclear fusion, the true energy source in stars, is identified by fewer than 10% of the students. Interviews with seven volunteers confirmed that the responses seen on the SSR surveys were consistent with verbal explanations. The second portion of the study involved the design and testing of the Star Properties Concept Inventory. After item development and testing on Versions 1 and 2, interviews with 18 participants about their responses to Version 1, and an expert review by 26 volunteer astronomy instructors, Version 3 was created and tested during the Fall 2005 semester. Results from approximately 500 students who took Version 3 show that those students in an introductory astronomy course for nonscience majors increased their scores significantly over the semester, whereas a control group (students in an introductory earth science course for nonscience majors) showed no increase. These results support the purpose of this concept inventory to investigate the effectiveness of instruction on the topic of star properties and formation.

Different Reward Structures to Motivate Student Interaction with Electronic Response Systems in Astronomy

Electronic response systems (clickers) are used in introductory astronomy classes as a real-time assessment tool. Different reward structures for student responses to clicker questions are used to motivate individual participation or group collaboration before responding. The impact of two reward structures on student behavior and learning is investigated. This study finds that a success-bonus incentive (in which individual participation points are doubled when the class attains a threshold success rate) strongly motivated students to collaborate, whereas a participation-only credit (no success-bonus) incentive resulted in one-third of the students answering individually without collaboration. With a participation-only incentive, students who answered individually (self-testers) were found to have more positive attitudes toward astronomy and science, and higher self-confidence in their learning than students who interacted before answering without a success-bonus incentive (collaborators). These collaborators experienced downward shifts in attitudes and self-confidence, in contrast to the static attitudes and self-confidence of self-testers. The implication is that students with little or no background in science prefer to answer collaboratively rather than independently and that these students are also negatively impacted by a one-semester introductory astronomy course.