NOAO/KPNO, NSO, DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY AND STEWARD OBSERVATORY AND NRAO The University of Arizona

JOINT COLLOQUIUM

DR. HARRY SHIPMAN University of Delaware Department of Physics and Astronomy

"Astronomy Education Research: What is it, and how does it help us teach Astro 101 even better?"

Thursday, November 14, 2002 4:00 p.m. Steward Observatory Lecture Hall Room N210

Refreshments at 3:30PM in the Lobby

ABSTRACT

The North American astronomy community has distinguished itself by its commitment to teach astronomy to students at large through a course popularly known as "Astronomy 101." This course reaches large numbers of college students, many of whom are future national leaders, politicians, CEO's, and state government officials. For many students, Astronomy 101 is one of a few post-high school encounters with science. Teaching science to nonscientists is not easy, and astronomy instructors have the additional challenge that the astronomical universe is much vaster than the usual realm of human experience. The emerging scholarly field of astronomy education research is the study of how students learn astronomy. This talk will describe several specific questions that astronomy education researchers are asking about student learning, and how these questions are related to contemporary research in cognitive science and understanding the brain. The talk will then turn to a few specific topics in the Astronomy 101 course, and discuss some classroom-tested, ready-to-use teaching strategies which improve student understanding. For example, the usual lecture-based approach produces only limited success in helping students develop coherent and correct explanations of such phenomena as the phases of the moon and the seasons. Data shows that when students have hands-on experience with the right kinds of three-dimensional models, working in cooperative groups, that their understanding is considerably improved. Education researchers and cognitive scientists have shown, particularly, that it is important that student learning is put into context. I will share data from a teaching sequence which uses the problem-based learning model (PBL) to teach students to understand how astronomers search for black holes, both in the nuclei of galaxies and in double star systems. This research has been supported by the Division of Undergraduate Education of the National Science Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Harry Shipman will be giving an astrophysics research talk on White Dwarf Stars at noon on November 14.

Joint Colloquium Series Webpage