HR: 08:45h
AN: ED11A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: The Perils of Space: An Introduction to Space Weather for freshman non-science majors at UCLA
AU: * Moldwin, M B
EM: mmoldwin@ucla.edu
AF: UCLA, Earth and Space Sciences, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567 United States
AB: A new course was taught Fall 2004 at UCLA on Space Weather for freshman non-science majors. The course fulfilled one of UCLA's General Education Science course requirements. Enrollment was 85 students (the size of the lecture room) and the course was very well received (8.57 out of 9 for "Overall Course Rating"). The course used two books - Carlowicz and Lopez's Storms from the Sun and Suess and Tsurutani's From the Sun. Students self-reported that they read the entire Storms from the Sun and took on-line quizzes each week based on the reading. The course was mostly traditional lecture, though at least weekly we broke into small group discussions or used peer-instruction techniques in the classroom. I also assigned two dorm laboratories. The first required the students to map a dipole magnetic field. They were given a compass and magnet. The second "dorm room lab" was from Space Science Institute's Solarscapes. It required them to estimate the rotation rate of the Sun. On quizzes before the "labs" were given, but after the concept of the labs were discussed, just slightly more than a majority of students were able to answer the following two questions: (1) Draw a dipole magnetic field and (2) How do we know the sun has an average rotation rate of 27 days? These were asked again on the final exam after the labs and essentially 100% of the students were able to answer correctly. I am currently developing additional "dorm room" labs and "Lecture-Tutorials" based on the University of Arizona's Conceptual Astronomy and Physics Education Research Team's efforts in Introductory Astronomy.
UR: http://measure.igpp.ucla.edu/ESS7/index.html
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 2700 MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly