Related papers: Do You Always Need a Textbook to Teach Astro 101?
The Lecture-Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy have been designed to help introductory astronomy instructors actively engage their students in developing their conceptual understandings and reasoning abilities across a wide range of…
This paper presents the first item response theory (IRT) analysis of the national data set on introductory, general education, college-level astronomy teaching using the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI). We used the…
The scope of this paper was to find out how the students in Computer Science perceive different teaching styles and how the teaching style impacts the learning desire and interest in the course. To find out, we designed and implemented an…
This paper reports on an investigation into the correlations between students' understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions. We…
Most students do not enroll in introductory astronomy as part of their major; for many, it is the last science course they will ever take. Thus, it has great potential to shape students' attitudes toward STEM fields for the rest of their…
We report on the initial phase of an ongoing, multi-stage investigation of how to incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) technology in teaching introductory astronomy concepts. Our goal was to compare the efficacy of VR vs. conventional teaching…
Physics education researchers have developed many evidence-based instructional strategies to enhance physics students' conceptual learning. These strategies have historically been tested using assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory…
Over 1100 students over four semesters were given the option of taking an introductory undergraduate statistics class either by in-person attendance in lectures or by taking exactly the same class (same instructor, recorded lectures,…
Both the basic educational contents for students and study programs for science teachers include several topics in physics and astronomy, from the simplest ones to others as advanced as nuclear fusion to explain stellar evolution and…
Despite the large body of research showing that students in STEM classes at all levels learn better via active learning than they do via lecture, post-secondary physics and astronomy (P&A) faculty members continue to primarily use…
The use of new technologies in higher education has surprisingly emphasized students' tendency to adopt a passive behavior in class. Participation and interaction of students are essential to improve academic results. This paper describes…
Infographic is a type of information visualization that uses graphic design to enhance human ability to identify patterns and trends. It is popularly used to support spread of information. Yet, there are few studies that investigate how…
An educational system, the tutor-web (http://tutor-web.net), has been developed and used for educational research. The system is accessible and free to use for anyone having access to the Web. It is based on open source software and the…
While Machine learning gives rise to astonishing results in automated systems, it is usually at the cost of large data requirements. This makes many successful algorithms from machine learning unsuitable for human-machine interaction, where…
Feedback has a powerful influence on learning, but it is also expensive to provide. In large classes, it may even be impossible for instructors to provide individualized feedback. Peer assessment has received attention lately as a way of…
Numerous strategies have been adopted in order to make the process of learning simple, efficient and within less amount of time.. Classroom learning is slowly replaced by E-learning and M- learning. These techniques involve the usage of…
This resource letter provides a guide to research-based assessment instruments (RBAIs) of physics and astronomy content. These are standardized assessments that were rigorously developed and revised using student ideas and interviews,…
Instructors of statistics who teach non-statistics majors possess varied academic backgrounds, and hence it is reasonable to expect variability in their content knowledge, and pedagogical approach. The aim of this study was to determine the…
Students' answers to tasks provide a valuable source of information in teaching as they result from applying cognitive processes to a learning content addressed in the task. Due to steadily increasing course sizes, analyzing student answers…
Instructional labs are widely seen as a unique, albeit expensive, way to teach scientific content. We measured the effectiveness of introductory lab courses at achieving this educational goal across nine different lab courses at three very…