Bucknell | Astronomy 101
Big Dipper from Earth
WWT allows students to change their point of observation in order to see parallax using familiar constellations.
The team has begun development of materials for a third lab on
iii) Globular Clusters and the Size of the Milky Way Galaxy,
and that lab will be made available here after it has been tested more extensively in Bucknell classrooms.
Assessment of Student Learning: The Size, Scale, and Structure Concept Inventory
The team has also developed a new concept inventory to measure gains in the student understanding about the topics covered in these lab activities. The "Size, Scale, and Structure Concept Inventory (S3CI)" is a multiple-choice assessment containing 24 questions designed to probe students' understanding of size, scale, and structure. Previously, no concept inventories focused exclusively on these geometrical ideas, so our team developed the S3CI to address this need.
A first version of the S3CI was administered to Bucknell students in the fall semester of 2013. Based on student responses, the team revised the concept inventory by changing the language on some questions, deleting one question, and adding another. A poster describing this work was presented at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Annual meeting in August 2014.
V2.0 of the S3CI is now available for additional testing and evaluation. It has been coded into an online format using Qualtrics survey software, and can be administered over the web. Introductory astronomy instructors interested in helping to evaluate this concept inventory by administering it to their undergraduate classes should contact Professor Ned Ladd.
Dissemination of Curricular Materials
These hands-on lab activities are designed to be usable in a wide variety of academic environments, at relatively low cost. The curricular materials have been shown to be effective in reducing student misconceptions. We have made them freely available, along with associated documentation, to the Astronomy 101 teaching community on this website. WWT is also freely available and runs on virtually any PC, so instructors at a wide range of institutions can make use of these resources.
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation (DUE-1140440).
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-1140440. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
