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Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have been shown to provide students with a variety of learning benefits including better conceptual understanding, improved critical thinking and data literacy skills, and increased interest in pursuing scientific careers. Additionally, CUREs provide students with opportunities to participate in authentic research experiences that have a broader impact outside of the classroom. Despite the numerous benefits, the field of astronomy has lagged behind disciplines like biology and chemistry when it comes to including CUREs in the curriculum. Not limited to astronomy, however, is the lack of research opportunities and courses offered to students enrolled in undergraduate degree programs online. In the Fall of 2020, Arizona State University (ASU) introduced the nation’s first online bachelor’s degree program in astronomy and planetary sciences (APS). To make research accessible to a more diverse population of learners, it is imperative that students in this program have access to the same opportunities to participate in authentic research as those in the parallel in-person program. In this work, we describe the development, implementation, and assessment of a fully online CURE for astronomy majors as part of the APS program. We conducted a mixed methods analysis consisting of a Likert style survey administered pre- and postcourse as well as student interviews at the conclusion of the semester. Survey results from the course’s first two offerings (N ¼ 24) indicated that students’ research self-efficacy and science identity both improved. An exoplanet-specific multiple-choice assessment (N ¼ 26) showed statistically significant improvements in conceptual understanding postcourse. Additionally, student interview (N ¼ 11) responses relayed that students felt a stronger sense of belonging to both ASU and the larger astronomy community after participation in the course. The results from this study are encouraging and suggest that student participation in this online CURE led to similar improvements across a variety of outcomes previously identified in studies of in-person CUREs spanning multiple disciplines.
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A New Curriculum Development Model for Improving Undergraduate Students’ Data Literacy and Self-Efficacy in Online Astronomy Classrooms
There is a critical need for research-based active learning instructional materials for the teaching and learning of STEM in online courses. Every year, hundreds of thousands of undergraduate non-science majors enroll in general education astronomy courses to fulfill their institution’s liberal arts requirements. When designing instructional materials for this population of learners, a central focus must be to help learners become more scientifically and data literate. As such, we developed a new, three-part, curricular model that was used to inform the creation of active-learning instructional materials designed for use in online courses. The instructional materials were designed to help introductory astronomy students engage meaningfully with science while simultaneously improving their data literacy self-efficacy (especially as it pertained to making evidence-based conclusions when presented with a variety of data representations). We conducted a pilot study of these instructional materials at nine different colleges and universities to better understand whether students’ engagement with these materials lead to improved beliefs and self-efficacy. The results of our student survey analysis showed statistically significant changes on survey items that assessed students’ beliefs about science engagement, citizen science, and their data literacy skills. Additionally, we assessed whether faculty who implemented these materials were able to easily incorporate them into existing online astronomy courses. The instructor feedback emphasized that our curriculum development model did successfully inform the creation of easy-to-implement instructional materials, generating the potential for widespread dissemination and use at the undergraduate level.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1821319
- PAR ID:
- 10383508
- Publisher / Repository:
- AEJ
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Astronomy Education Journal
- ISSN:
- 2004-2981
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.32374/AEJ.2022.2.1.043ra
