Do You Need a Textbook to Teach Astro 101?

Details Do You Need a Textbook to Teach Astro 101? Do You Need a Textbook to Teach Astro 101?

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21724707r&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #247.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Computer Science

Learning

Scientific paper

During educational sessions at astronomy meetings, especially during Center for Astronomy Education (CAE) Teaching Excellence workshops, which I have attended and now help present, one of the questions everyone wants to discuss is which textbook to use to teach Astro 101 classes (general education astronomy courses for non-science majors). Some instructors have a favorite. Others will claim that they are all the same and that it doesn't matter.
Increasingly, however, the discussions turn to the question of whether any textbook is needed at all. Some of this discussion has been driven by the increase in the use of interactive learning strategies such as Think-Pair-Share questions, Lecture-Tutorials, and Ranking Tasks. These activities provide students a learning modality very different from the traditional lecture supplemented by homework, and raises the question of whether the learning that takes place during such interactive activities is enough to teach students what we wish them to know about astronomy.
I had been teaching an Astro 101 class for almost three years using a full suite of interactive learning strategies, when I decided to teach it without requiring the students to purchase a textbook. Comparison of test scores before and after this change shows that there is no statistical difference in student achievement whether a textbook is required or not. Details on the course and methodology used to reach this conclusion will be presented.
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0847170, a PAARE Grant for the Calfornia-Arizona Minority Partnership for Astronomy Research and Education (CAMPARE), and Grant No. 0715517, a CCLI Phase III Grant for the Collaboration of Astronomy Teaching Scholars (CATS). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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