Many college students whose majors do not pertain to a STEM sub-discipline (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) may only end up taking one science course in their entire undergraduate career. For many of these students, introductory astronomy is an interesting and popular choice. Professors of these courses often have the intention of improving their student’s general attitudes towards science and astronomy. This may look like encouraging them to pursue interests in science outside of the classroom. In today’s day and age, it may also more greatly relate to helping young adults understand how science impacts their everyday lives. However, professors often find themselves uncertain as to how, and in what ways, student attitudes are actually affected in such classes. In addition, some interest lies in determining whether students from different majors or different demographic groups have significantly different experiences in these courses.
We designed a two-part survey related to student attitudes towards science and astronomy based on previous research work with similar populations. The questions address several categories of student interest and interaction with science and astronomy. A pre-survey is administered towards the beginning of the semester, and a post-survey is intended to be sent out shortly before final exams. For this presentation, we discuss the ideas behind the survey design and categorization of the included questions. We also present some results from the pre-survey, as administered to an introductory astronomy class at Miami University this semester. Future work will include collecting and analyzing the post-survey data in order to produce a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the classes on the students. Many different directions of analysis also remain to be explored in the pre-survey data. This work will hopefully motivate future research to continue in exploring student attitudes in astronomy and other related disciplines.
Author: Orion Kolev
Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Blue, Physics
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