AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 135 Making Astronomy Real
Oral, Thursday, January 8, 2004, 2:00-3:30pm, Regency V

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[135.06] Adding Audio Supported Smartboard Lectures to an Introductory Astronomy Online Laboratory

U. G. L. Lahaise (Georgia Perimeter College)

SMART Board(TM) and RealProducer(R) Plus technologies were used to develop a series of narrated pre-lab introductory online lectures. Smartboard slides were created by capturing images from internet pages and power point slides, then annotated and saved as web pages using smartboard technology. Short audio files were recorded using the RealProducer Plus software which were then linked to individual slides. WebCT was used to deliver the online laboratory. Students in an Introductory Astronomy of the Solar System Online laboratory used the lectures to prepare for laboratory exercises. The narrated pre-lab lectures were added to six out of eight suitable laboratory exercises. A survey was given to the students to research their online laboratory experience, in general, and the impact of the narrated smartboard lectures on their learning success, specifically. Data were collected for two accelerated sessions. Results show that students find the online laboratory equally hard or harder than a separate online lecture. The accelerated format created great time pressure which negatively affected their study habits. About half of the students used the narrated pre-lab lectures consistently. Preliminary findings show that lab scores in the accelerated sessions were brought up to the level of full semester courses.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.