Will you use Astrobites in your course this Fall?
Use these three lesson plans and classroom materials to integrate Astrobites into your undergraduate or graduate course.
This post originally appeared on Astrobites.org on June 11, 2017 at https://astrobites.org/2017/06/11/astrobites-lesson-plans/.
Title: Incorporating Current Research into Formal Higher Education Settings using Astrobites
Authors: Nathan Sanders, Susanna Kohler, Chris Faesi, Ashley Villar, Michael Zevin, the Astrobites Collaboration
First Author’s Institution: Astrobites
Status: Accepted for publication by the American Journal of Physics [open access]
If you were reading Astrobites back in November, you may remember us asking you to share your stories about how you’ve used Astrobites in the classroom. If you reached out to us at that time: thank you! Your responses helped us to guide a great discussion that took place at the January 2017 AAS meeting, and both those activities led to a new paper that appeared on the arXiv this week.
Ashley Villar guides participants in a discussion at Astrobites’ January 2017 AAS workshop
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In this new work, authors in the Astrobites collaboration provide a rich variety of strategies for how to integrate current research methods, results, and literature in the classroom.
The paper includes three full lesson plans complete with student handouts, online form templates for collecting student work, grading rubrics, adaptations for different learning levels (introductory undergraduate, advanced undergraduate, and graduate), and more.
Fig. 2 from the paper, a screenshot of the online form template for students to submit questions for the periodic reading assignment lesson type.
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Longtime Astrobites readers will remember our brief 2012 paper in the Astronomy Education Review that tackled the same topic. What’s new in this work are the insights from all the students and educators who participated in our survey and workshop, the rich materials we’ve developed with that feedback, and knowledge and lessons learned from Astrobites first seven years of operations.
If you have used Astrobites in your classroom in the past or are thinking about doing so, we’d love to hear from you and we want to keep in touch. Please feel free to leave comments below or contact us directly at astrobites@gmail.com.
Astrobiter Mike Zevin and participants at Astrobites’ January 2017 AAS workshop
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