Results From a Remote Undergraduate Research Experience Using Robotic Telescopes to Study RR Lyrae Stars

A roughly semester length undergraduate astronomy research experience course has been run three times since the beginning of 2019. It is eminently remote and online. The course is run from Australia to participants in the United States using the global telescope network provided by Las Cumbres Observatory. In this presentation we present the education research results of the most recent cohort in summer 2020 where the form of the course has stabilised and interviews and surveys, pre/post and throughout the course were undertaken. In particular, we focussed on the students' self-efficacy in astronomy, career intentions, scientific identity and broad experience in the course. For the instructors we examined their level of interaction and the barriers and affordances provided by the course.