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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Author(s)
Katharyn Ellen Ketter Nottis, Edwin (Ned) Ladd
Alyssa Goodman, Patricia Udomprasert
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DOI:10.17265/2161-6248/2015.11.001
Affiliation(s)
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, USA
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
ABSTRACT
Research has shown that undergraduates
have problems understanding astronomical concepts, especially size, scale, and structure.
One way to evaluate understanding is to use concept inventories. Therefore, the
purpose of this study was to begin the development of the Size, Scale, and Structure
Concept Inventory (S3CI) to assess understanding of these concepts in introductory
undergraduate astronomy courses for majors and non-majors. A secondary purpose was
to determine the impact of a newly developed WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enhanced
lab on parallax, part of a suite of WWT enriched labs for introductory astronomy
courses currently under development. We present in this paper preliminary results
from the first WWT-enhanced lab on parallax. In Fall 2013, a beta version of the
S3CI was piloted in an introductory astronomy course at a small private university.
An item analysis was done and estimates of internal consistency reliability were
determined using the Kuder-Richardson Formula #20 (KR20). The impact of the newly
developed lab was also evaluated using a sub-test of six questions from the S3CI.
KEYWORDS
astronomy education, concept inventory, conceptual understanding, WorldWide Telescope (WWT), parallax
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