Increasing student motivation in astronomy; Online and in the classroom

Student motivation is a perennial problem in all stages of education. Most students find astronomy a fascinating and intriguing topic, but even in astronomy courses, it can be a struggle to maintain student motivation. Students are extrinsically motivated, often by grades, but extensive research shows that intrinsic motivation leads to more positive outcomes, such as a growth mindset, better grades, lower academic misconduct, and more fulfilment in goals and achievements. The shift to predominantly online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has also played a significant role in student motivation. This workshop is based on my design of astronomy assessments and courses to increase student motivation. I will outline my approach to addressing specific problems in introductory courses by leveraging research on student motivation. One aspect of this approach is giving students choice in part of their assessment; this is exemplified in the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” assessment I have developed. Another approach is designing a course in such a way that students can choose which astrophysics Python exercise they complete. Participants are encouraged to engage in discussions about courses they teach where student motivation could be an issue: how is low student motivation manifesting itself (e.g., poor academic integrity, low student attendance), and how can it be addressed? Intended Audience: Undergraduate Physics Educator

A unique assessment to motivate students in astronomy courses

CONTEXT In this presentation, I will outline my approach and development of a novel assessment item for introductory astronomy courses. This assessment has been implemented in two courses. The first course, PHYS1160 Introduction to Astronomy, is a wholly online general education course where the student cohort is numerous and diverse (averaging around 500 per teaching period). Typical of many online courses, this “designed for online” course does not have any synchronous activities or invigilated assessment; prior to 2020, the learning activities consisted of readings, low-stakes formative quizzes, discussion forum contributions, a quiz, and an essay. The second course, PHYS1116 Astrophysics, is a more rigorous course where the student cohort is small (around 10-15 students in its first teaching period) and consists of science students. PHYS1116 has one face-to-face tutorial, while all lectures are delivered online asynchronously. Serious cases of academic misconduct are historically common in PHYS1160, particularly for the essay, and this presentation will focus on my replacement assessment of the essay in this course. Motivation is a factor that influences the likelihood of academic dishonesty (Krou, et. al., 2021). This assessment also aims to motivate science students to pursue astronomy. INTERVENTION A new assessment item was designed to increase student motivation by allowing greater freedom of choice and creativity. In this new assessment, PHYS1160 students are assigned multiple NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) images but select only one to focus on for their assignment, while PHYS1116 students select their own unique image. The style and structure of the assignment is the decision of the student. Students hand in a plan to receive feedback from tutors before submitting their final version. Extensive documentation, including examples, rubrics, past submissions, and FAQs are provided to aid students, given the perceived vague nature of the task. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Student and tutor feedback on the assessment has been positive. Students believed the assignment helped them to understand the topic, develop their communication skills, and exercise their creativity. Comments about freedom of choice and learning interesting concepts were frequent. Tutors commented that the assignment was more interesting to read than a standard essay, there were fewer plagiarism cases, and the plan helped students significantly. This feedback guides how the assessment is improved for the future. The resource has been peer-reviewed and accepted into the Australian Council of Deans of Science online resource repository (Jackson, 2021). REFERENCES Krou, M.R., Fong, C.J., & Hoff, M.A. (2021). Achievement motivation and academic dishonesty: A meta-analytic investigation. Educational Psychology Review, 33(2), 427–458. Jackson, K. (2021, November). Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) written assignment. Australian Council of Deans of Science Resource Repository. https://www.acds.edu.au/resource/astronomy-picture-of-the-day/

Latina Lift Off: How Inclusive Innovation Helps Latina Undergraduate Students Rise

In this workshop, we will discuss how Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Lake Forest College is supporting and encouraging the academic success of our Latina, first-generation students. Our approach includes an Inclusive Innovation class, a rich entrepreneurial mindset curriculum, and real-world, high-impact projects. Year over year, our center has seen an increase in Latinx students choosing our program, rising to nearly 1/5 of total students. We believe Inclusive Innovation meets the aims of a liberal arts education. And we believe other small liberal arts colleges can replicate our efforts in a way that benefits both their students and their local community. We intend this session to be an open dialogue and a highly participatory conversation with participants

Intimacies and distances: mobility, belonging and the use of information and communication technologies by young Cameroonians in Cape Town

Advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are making it increasingly easy to build and maintain social links across distance, by effecting a compression of space and time, and allowing friends and family members to remain in ever-closer contact, even though they may live geographically far apart. These distanced relationships facilitated by ICT represent an important site of anthropological inquiry, even as they present methodological challenges to the accepted conceptions of fieldwork and the field. In this thesis I present the results of an ethnography of the use of ICT by Cameroonian students living in Cape Town, South Africa between June 2011 and June 2013. The research question guiding my work reads as follows: "Do (and if so, how do) Cameroonian students in Cape Town transcend geographical and social boundaries through their use of information and communication technology?" I argue that the Cameroonian students who I met during my fieldwork in Cape Town used ICTs to build and maintain relationships within their community (or multiple communities), and to draw upon their social networks to (re)negotiate and transcend geographical and social boundaries. I also argue that while they do this they simultaneously contest and reinforce hierarchies of various forms, be they politico-geographical, social or economic. In the course of my fieldwork, it became increasingly evident that the young people who helped me in my inquiries used these technologies to intimately entangle, as well as distance, themselves from others in their communicative environment and relationships. I draw on my fieldwork to illustrate the ways in which they do this. I argue that these people negotiated relationships of marginality, belonging, obligation and responsibility through the ways in which they used ICTs, and that they drew on the functions of ICTs, particularly the social networking site, Facebook, to actively construct their identities. I conducted the main body of my fieldwork between June 2011, and June 2012. However, at the time of submitting the draft of my thesis in July 2013, I was still in contact with the people who helped me in my research, and therefore was engaged in fieldwork throughout the course of the research and writing process. This study forms part of a larger project entitled: "Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), mobility and the reconfiguration of marginality in South(ern) Africa". I hope to contribute to this larger project with this ethnographic study of the use of ICTs by Cameroonian students in Cape Town in the context of their mobility, varying levels of marginality, and their social networks and community relations, by seeking to answer the research question

All the Sovereign\u27s Agents: The Constitutional Credentials of Administration

[...] This Article suggests that agency institutions should be measured against the notion that popular sovereignty demands not consensus and consent, but instead institutions that permit citizens to understand themselves as coequal participants in the collective decision-making process. Part I situates administrative agencies in an understanding of liberal democratic constitutionalism that eschews outmoded notions of popular sovereignty and natural law. It will then explain how adequately conceived notions of the separation of powers and the rule of law cannot serve as indefeasible objections to administration. Part II makes a positive case for agency authority by drawing from the insights gained from political theory’s representative turn. It will first define this important intellectual development and then explain how administrative agencies might fit comfortably within a representative system. The Article concludes by showing how theories of representation can inform some enduring debates in administrative law and suggesting some changes that might enhance the legitimacy of agency action. This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction