Related papers: Technology to scale up diversity in astronomy educ…
We shall describe the various activities done by us in Covid Times including outreach and educational workshops in Physics and Astronomy. We shall discuss the caveats in virtual teaching of Astronomy and the lessons learnt in the process.
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…
Since 2017 the Italian Space Agency (ASI) participates to so-called "Alternanza Scuola-Lavoro" (i.e., "school-work synergy") outreach projects promoted by the Italian government, and the ASI Space Science Data Center (SSDC) actively…
For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables. The immersive sky simulator of the twentieth century, the…
Astronomy is changing. Large projects, large collaborations, and large budgets are becoming the norm. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one example of this new astronomy, and in operating the original survey, we put in place and…
There are vast educational research works that highlight the serious difficulties that students present in learning astronomical subjects, as well as the prevalence of a traditional education distanced from the observational and…
The Inclusive Astronomy (IA) conference series aims to create a safe space where community members can listen to the experiences of marginalized individuals in astronomy, discuss actions being taken to address inequities, and give…
In this review, we explore the historical development and future prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning in astronomy. We trace the evolution of connectionism in astronomy through its three waves, from the early use of…
In the current era of data-intensive science, it is increasingly important for researchers to be able to have access to published results, the supporting data, and the processes used to produce them. Six years ago, recognizing this need,…
This article introduces a set of distance education astronomy laboratory exercises for use by college students and instructors and discuss first usage results. This General Astronomy Education Source (GEAS) exercise set contains eight…
We report the outcomes of a survey that explores the current practices, needs and expectations of the astrophysics community, concerning four research aspects: open science practices, data access and management, data visualization, and data…
The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an open access digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant, successfully serving the…
Everything we know about the environment around us is thanks to light, a kind of electromagnetic radiation. Astronomy takes advantage of it and all the electromagnetic spectrum with the help of many devices to record them and determine from…
Virtual Teaching Assistants (VTAs) powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to enhance student learning by providing instant feedback and facilitating multi-turn interactions. However, empirical studies on their…
We explore the potential of enhancing LLM performance in astronomy-focused question-answering through targeted, continual pre-training. By employing a compact 7B-parameter LLaMA-2 model and focusing exclusively on a curated set of astronomy…
The authors investigate how teaching art and astronomy together has the potential to inspire new art forms, enhance scientific public outreach, and promote art and science education. The authors teach an astro-animation class at the…
Eight years after the ADS first appeared the last decadal survey wrote: "NASA's initiative for the Astrophysics Data System has vastly increased the accessibility of the scientific literature for astronomers. NASA deserves credit for this…
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…
Four years after the last LISA meeting, the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) finds itself in the middle of major changes to the infrastructure and contents of its database. In this paper we highlight a number of features of great…
We present IACTalks, a free and open access seminars archive (http://iactalks.iac.es) aimed at promoting astronomy and the exchange of ideas by providing high-quality scientific seminars to the astronomical community. The archive of…