Activities-based Astronomy: An Evaluation of an Instructor’s First Attempt and its Impact on Student Characteristics

Straits, William; Wilke, R. Russell

doi:10.3847/aer2003003

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Research on conceptual change in undergraduate astronomy is growing, though it often uses a different approach than the K-12 investigations [10]. For example, research at the undergraduate level has focused on the development and testing of specific assessments, such as concept inventories, to measure knowledge change [24][25][26][27] or on using such assessments to compare the results of different instructional strategies [28][29][30][31][32].…”

Section: Conceptual Change In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She found through interviews that the labs appeared to contribute to self-efficacy in astronomy primarily through verbal persuasion, but did not affect general science selfefficacy as measured by a survey. Straits and Wilke [32] observed a decrease in general science self-efficacy after an activities-based introductory astronomy course, as determined by a subset of survey questions. Slater et al [48] investigated changes in content knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy during an astronomy course for preservice elementary teachers, using in part the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument, Form B (STEBI-B) [49].…”

Section: Domain-specificity: Self-efficacy In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the preservice teachers' content knowledge improved significantly, their self-efficacy toward (general) science teaching and attitudes toward science did not. All of these studies involved instructional designs intended to facilitate high cognitive engagement, and two [32,47] measured knowledge change through the Astronomy Diagnostic Test, a multiple-choice measure of general astronomy content knowledge [50]. However, none of these researchers made any explicit connections to warm conceptual change using a model such as the CRKM [1].…”

Section: Domain-specificity: Self-efficacy In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Meeting students halfway: Increasing self-efficacy and promoting knowledge change in astronomy

Bailey

Lombardi

Cordova

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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Two motivational factors-self-efficacy and interest-may be especially relevant to deepening students' understanding of astronomy. We examined the relationship between students' self-efficacy for, interest in learning about, and changes in their knowledge of stars, as measured by the Star Properties Concept Inventory (SPCI). Approximately 700 undergraduate students taking introductory astronomy responded to surveys at the start and end of their semester-long course. A sequential multiple regression analysis showed that self-efficacy post explains an appreciable percentage of variance in SPCI posttest scores, more than twice the percentage explained by all the pretest variables (SPCI, self-efficacy, and interest) combined. Knowledge and self-efficacy improved significantly over instruction; interest did not. Follow-up analyses revealed that instructors whose classes increased in self-efficacy also had the greatest increases in knowledge scores. Interviews with these instructors suggest they provide their students with more opportunities for mastery experiences with elaborated, performance-related feedback, as well as strong positive verbal persuasion and vicarious experiences through peer instruction. Through increased understanding of the relationship between motivational constructs (e.g., self-efficacy, interest) and knowledge, we can both improve our models and better inform instruction.

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Section: Conceptual Change In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Domain-specificity: Self-efficacy In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Domain-specificity: Self-efficacy In Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Meeting students halfway: Increasing self-efficacy and promoting knowledge change in astronomy

Bailey

Lombardi

Cordova

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, misconceptions about the relative sizes of the earth and moon and the distance between them and about the relative sizes of the solar system and the galaxy are common. Visualization is therefore important throughout the course as we study the relationships between and the evolution of astronomical bodies (Straits and Wilke, 2003). Unless students can shift perspective to visualize celestial objects from other points of view, they are unable to understand or learn about the causes of the various celestial and astrophysical phenomena.…”

Section: Grappling With Visualization In Astronomy (Pilachowski)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoding astronomical concepts

Durisen

Pilachowski

2004

New Drctns for Teach & Learn

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Familiar refrains from nonscience majors taking introductory astronomy classes are, "This stuff is too difficult for a 100-level class," and "I usually get As, but I've been studying harder for this class than any other, and I still have a D!" Many students at the freshman level do not realize that modern astronomy is a rigorous physical science, not just the "naming of stars" or the taking of pretty Hubble Space Telescope pictures. Contemporary astronomy is more properly called astrophysics, literally, the study of the "nature" of celestial objects, what they are like physically and how they behave. Even a descriptive treatment of an object invokes unfamiliar concepts from all areas of science, and it involves exotic phenomena and mind-bogglingly enormous scales that stretch the imaginations of the astronomers themselves.One advantage we have over many other freshman-level introductory science offerings is that there is no part of astronomy that our students must know. This allows us freedom to experiment with content and methods, although it brings a concomitant responsibility to offer students an informative and exciting glimpse of not only what we know about the universe around us but also how we know it.In this chapter, we discuss our efforts to overcome common bottlenecks to learning in astronomy courses. The bottleneck described by the first author (Durisen) concerns difficulties students have in understanding how the analysis of light is used to extract useful astronomical information and their more general failure to grasp how astronomical knowledge is constructed. The second author (Pilachowski) then discusses the second bottleneck, which involves helping students visualize astronomical concepts.

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“…Both Straits & Wilke (2003), and Adams & Slater (1998) found that students generally like activities-based learning and Straits & Wilke (2003) saw the most improvement with activities that aided visualization of motion and spatial relations. No studies have focused on the effects of activities that include use of a professional observatory setup on learning quality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Jacobi¹,

Newberg²,

Broder³

et al. 2008

Astronomy Education Review

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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.

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Activities-based Astronomy: An Evaluation of an Instructor’s First Attempt and its Impact on Student Characteristics

Cited by 8 publications

References 9 publications

Meeting students halfway: Increasing self-efficacy and promoting knowledge change in astronomy

Meeting students halfway: Increasing self-efficacy and promoting knowledge change in astronomy

Decoding astronomical concepts

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

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