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R. Gelderman (Western Kentucky Univ.)
Students in general education, introductory astronomy courses have often enrolled in the course because they love the pretty pictures. Providing outdoor, nighttime observing "/tmp/tdbedit27518" 42L, 1781C courses have often enrolled in the course because they love the pretty pictures. Providing outdoor, nighttime observing experiences is one of the major draws for many successful Astro 101-type courses. However, the typical weather conditions for most of North America usually forces postponements, rescheduling, or cancellation of half or more of the attempted observing sessions. This frustrates both the students and the instructors, decreasing the enjoyment and instructional potential of the observing experience. In this poster we discuss how students in our Astro 101-type classes have benefitted from a combination of hands-on observing, planetarium software exercises, and the ability to request observations from robotic telescopes. The electronic images produced by the student's requests are minimally processed and e-mailed to each requesting student as a jpeg file. Evaluation of this combination of experiences indicates that student's appreciate the ability to collect their own images and that the sense of ownership fosters greater understanding of the astrophysics related to the observed objects.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.