Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2012
Volume 57, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, March 31–April 3 2012; Atlanta, Georgia
Session D3: Invited Session: Research in Cosmology Education |
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Sponsoring Units: FEd DAP Chair: Lynn Cominsky, Sonoma State University Room: Hanover CDE |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
D3.00001: Exploring Students' Ideas About Cosmological Concepts Invited Speaker: Janelle M. Bailey As scientists seek to understand the nature of our Universe, we can also explore our students' understanding of cosmological concepts. What ideas about the origin, evolution, and fate of our Universe do students bring with them to the classroom? In this talk, I will describe an ongoing study in which students' preinstructional ideas are examined. Topics under investigation include the age of the universe; structure and composition, including dark matter and dark energy; the Big Bang; and how astronomers come to understand these topics. Approximately 1000 students have responded to open-ended questions at the start of their introductory astronomy courses. Analysis of the responses, through an iterative process of identifying self-emergent themes, suggests that students have a number of common ideas. For example, students frequently conflate structure terms such as solar system, galaxy, and universe or do not understand the relationship between the terms; believe the universe to be infinitely old; and may not be aware of dark matter or dark energy. Additional themes, as well as the frequencies of typical responses, will be discussed, and future research efforts. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
D3.00002: Using The Results From Research on Undergraduate Learning in Cosmology to Create an Immersive Web-Based Curriculum Invited Speaker: Kim Coble Powerful new observations and advances in computation and visualization have led to a revolution in our understanding of the structure, composition, and evolution of the universe. These gains have been vast, but their impact on education has been limited. We are bringing these tools and advances to the teaching of cosmology through research on undergraduate learning in cosmology as well as the development of a series of web-based cosmology learning modules. In addition to the open-ended written surveys administered at multiple institutions, additional data from a single minority-serving institution includes in-depth student interviews, homework assignments, lab responses, and exams gathered throughout an introductory astronomy course. Topics include the structure, composition, and evolution of the universe as in in the open-ended surveys, with an additional study of student perceptions of distances. Results are consistent with the surveys at the beginning of the course and indicate that while students do make strides toward scientific understanding over the semester, they frequently retain some critical misunderstandings. Furthermore, results indicate that using ``authentic'' lab experiences with ``real'' data can address the common student pre-course ideas that scientific conclusions are simply ``made up.'' Informed by our research on student learning, we have created a series of cosmology learning modules in which students master the scientific concepts and reasoning processes that lead to our current understanding of the universe, through interactive tasks, prediction and reflection, experimentation, and model building. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
D3.00003: A Research Informed Approach to Teaching Cosmology to Our Society's Future Leaders Invited Speaker: Edward Prather We recently completed a large-scale, systematic study of general education introductory astronomy students' conceptual and reasoning difficulties related to cosmology. As part of this study, we analyzed a total of 4359 surveys (pre- and post-instruction) containing students' responses to questions about the Big Bang, the evolution and expansion of the universe, using Hubble plots to reason about the age and expansion rate of the universe, and using galaxy rotation curves to infer the presence of dark matter. We also designed, piloted, and validated a new suite of five cosmology Lecture-Tutorials. We found that students who use the new Lecture-Tutorials can achieve larger learning gains than their peers who did not. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 0833364 and 0715517, a CCLI Phase III Grant for the Collaboration of Astronomy Teaching Scholars (CATS). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. [Preview Abstract] |
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