Improved Undergraduate Astronomy Laboratories with A Modern Telescope Control System
Abstract
We are in the middle of a cooperative astronomy education project to improve undergraduate laboratories at RPI (a PhD granting institution) and Siena College (a nearby liberal arts college). We have completed an overhaul of a 40-year-old, 16" B&C telescope on the RPI campus, and have made it available for hundreds of students at both schools, and once per week to the public. We have written an assessment test which was distributed to the students at the beginning and end of the Fall 2006 semester, which will be used as a baseline to determine whether the laboratory activities, which are currently under development, improve student learning in the Fall 2007 semester next year. The studio-style, hands-on, inquiry-based laboratories will be designed to challenge student misconceptions. In order to handle a large number of students using the main telescope and a limited number of smaller telescopes, we will cycle students through concurrent activities. This is enabled by the rapid acquisition and imaging of targets made possible by the upgrade to the control system of our 16" telescope. We demonstrate the productivity of our newly refurbished telescope, show the baseline results of our assessment, and present samples of activities under development. This project is funded by an NSF CCLI grant, 05-11340.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006AAS...20921806M