As an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, I have developed a new laboratory course for introductory, non-science-major astronomy students. The one-quarter course consists of nine, two-hour labs. The labs are based upon education and cognitive science research that shows that learning is fundamentally influenced by context, and has a strong social component. The labs are inquiry-based, active, hands-on activities and students work in teams of three to stimulate teamwork and foment discussion. The steps involved in each lab represent a model for "doing science" -- observation, prediction, experimentation, and evaluation. During the labs, students gain experience with the scientific model: what constitutes evidence, how experiment can be used to answer questions, how to build an argument from evidence, and how to work collaboratively. The new suite of labs applies a core set of astrophysical concepts repeatedly throughout the quarter; light and spectra, gravity, and orbits are each covered in multiple labs, in varying contexts and at increasing levels of sophistication. Experience in the first two years of the course indicates that students are more engaged with the material and are developing deeper conceptual understanding of the physical principles of astronomy relative to their peers in traditional lab courses. Approximately 20 percent of all undergraduates at this major public research university take this course. Thus, these labs develop an appreciation of the scientific process in an important constituency for public-funded science, future taxpayers.
In Winter Quarter 2007, I taught Astronomy 3 ("Nature of the Universe") at UCLA. The course had 215 students; 88% were freshman or sophomores and 90% were non-science majors. Much of my course design and development efforts focused on bringing a small classroom feel to a larger lecture hall. In particular, I established an interactive learning environment by providing each student with a set of four colored flash cards, each card printed with a letter (A through D). During each lecture period, I presented the students with 3 or 4 multiple choice questions regarding the day's material. I wrote questions that centered on conceptual material, which mirrored the conceptual approach of my exams. Students were given 30 seconds to consider, then voted. Upon a quick scan of the classroom, I was able to judge how well the class was doing with the material. In cases when the students were split, I had them discuss for 2-3 minutes and then vote again. In most instances, the incidence of the correct response increased as a result of the peer discussion. Informal feedback from the students indicated that they really liked the technique, as they were able to gauge their learning against their peers. This approach also led to a very attentive, interactive classroom, as students were positively encouraged to speak and interact with me and each other, largely removing the passive aspects of the lecture setting. Overall the students performed very well on the conceptual exams, which were 75% multiple choice and 25% short answer response. I was very pleased that I was able to establish a small class, discussion section feel in so large a course.
The course material was geared towards development of student understanding of (1) basic physical principles and their application to astronomy, (2) the interaction between Earth and the Universe (especially in terms of energy sources), and (3) the observational underpinnings of the Hot Big Bang cosmology.
In summer term 2004, I taught the six-week summer session Astronomy 10 introductory course at UC Berkeley. As the professor, I developed the curriculum, wrote exams and homework assignments, lectured and led class discussions, and supervised two graders. The summer session meets two hours a day, four days a week with class sizes of around 25 students. This was an ideal setting for me to develop my interactive approach to the introductory course, as the timing of the course effectively rules out the traditional passive, lecture approach. Students spent much of the class working together in small groups on tutorials, worksheets designed to provide structure and immediate student engagement with concepts discussed in that day's class. Each day also featured a small group order of magnitude problem to build student confidence in their ability to reason via estimation and model building.
In Fall Semester 2001, I was the Graduate Student Instructor of the upper division infrared observing lab course for astrophysics majors at UC Berkeley. My duties included training the students to use the department's 30-inch telescope at Leuschner Observatory and cryogenic infrared imager, IRCam. I ran roughly one-third of the discussion portion of each weekly class meeting, and graded the students' journal-article style lab writeups. In addition, I wrote one of the five observing labs, Surface Brightness and Extragalactic Astronomy. In this lab, students selected several galaxies, planned science and calibration targets, took images in three colors (JHK), measured the brightness of the night sky, constructed mosaicked galaxy images, and made plots of surface brightness versus radius for comparison to model intensity profiles.
In Spring 2008, I taught Astronomy 278, a special topics graduate seminar course on learner-centered teaching techniques. My goals for the course were to: (1) expose graduate students to the science education and pedagogical literature, (2) foster critical thinking about the exercise of teaching a college science course, and (3) prepare future instructors to design their own courses. The seminar was based around weekly readings from the educational literature, with reading material focusing on astronomy but drawn widely from science and general education research. Weekly meetings included student-moderated class discussion of the readings and hands-on, small group activities such as generation of course goals, syllabus evaluation and design and a case study in development of a simulated college astronomy course.
November 13, 2008