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| Paper: |
Astro 001: Interactive, Online, and with a Sci-Fi Storyline |
| Volume: |
389, EPO and a Changing World: Creating Linkages and Expanding Partnerships |
| Page: |
379 |
| Authors: |
Herrmann, K.A.; Palma, C.; Charlton, J.C.; Narayanan, A. |
| Abstract: |
We present a new, fully on-line astronomy course for undergraduate non-science majors at Penn State that was offered for the first time in Spring 2007 with an enrollment of 422 students. The entire course content is conveyed through an interactive story, capitalizing on the many multimedia astronomy resources publicly available on the Internet. The four units of the course (Basic Astronomy and the Nighttime Sky, Our Solar System, Stars and the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology) deliver the same content as a traditional Astro 001 course. Each unit follows the educational adventure of a different fictional Astro 001 student who has been “abducted” by aliens. The four units are united by a character, the Riddler, who poses riddles about various aspects of astronomy, and whose identity and purpose is revealed gradually as a reward for completion of various subtopics. This initial offering of the course was entirely web-based except for traditional evening in-class exams. Our first offering was very successful: it was very popular with the students, the exam grades were about 10 percent higher than usual, and we expect an even higher enrollment in our second offering in Fall of 2007. This Spring we used the Astronomy Diagnostic Test (ADT), but plan in the Fall to use a different preand post-assessment that will benchmark each of the four content units. Our future plans include adapting the course into a shorter form to be delivered in middle schools. We gratefully acknowledge funding from STScI IDEAS grant HST-ED-90284-01-A and a Zaccheus Daniel travel grant. |
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