Thirty Meter Telescope International Training Workshop: this team of scientist/engineer educators designed and taught an inquiry lab activity through ISEE’s Professional Development Program

L-R: Donal O'Sullivan, Megan Ansdell, Lu Shen

Venue: TMT International Training Workshop, UCSC

Team members:

Megan Ansdell (Design Team Lead): Graduate Student, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Donal O'Sullivan: Graduate Student, Astronomy, Caltech

Lu Shen: Graduate Student, Physics, UC Davis

Audience: 42 graduates and postdocs from international institutions

Activity Name: Galaxy spectra resolution and pixel scale

Learning Goal (author Megan Ansdell):

Our content goal was for learners to understand the principles of adequately sampling a continuous signal in discrete elements (spatially, temporally, or spectrally) to unambiguously recover an astrophysical signal. Our rubric focused on whether students could identify the alias/false signals in the data and then design their sampling to avoid these alias/false signals (the exact rubric varied depending on the activity). One aspect of the design that did a good job of enhancing learners' content knowledge was asking them to pick an activity that was outside of their area of expertise, although I hear this became a problem during the facilitation aspect of the activity. One aspect of the design that could be improved in terms of enhancing the learners' content understanding is making the investigation more focused on sampling and making it clearer that they should not be focused on the astrophysical phenomenon.

Funding for this group provided by: NSF AST #81343