Gh.Vass, Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, gvass@roimar.imar.ro
The Astronomy On-Line is considered the biggest world's astronomy event on the WWW and it was started in July 1996 under the EAAE/ESO programme for the European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture, 1996. It started on October 1, and had a "hot" phase during November 18-22, 1996. Romania was also present at that experiment with a National Steering Committee (NSC), and we have done first step in such an European action. In the following we will summarize the principal results obtained under that experiment.
General results
Astronomy On-Line was a learning experiment based on educational research projects. (The AOL homepages: http://www.eso.org./ astronomyonline/ and also www.algonet.se/~sirius/eaae.htm). The aim of the initiative was to narrow the gap between the public and science and technology in their European dimension. It is co-ordinated by an International Steering Committee (ISC) and it was proposed by European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE) in co-operation with European Southern Observatory (ESO) in 1995. It intended to study (a) how students experience the new media in their learning, (b) how they utilize the communication facilities and (c) the computational facilities available (in Europe). The conclusion is prepared based on the reports from National Committees (NSC). A preliminary such conclusions was done by Jari Multisilta from Tampere University of Technology, Finland (http://www.pori.tut.fi/~multisil) and a short resume will be given in the following.
The experiment have had three parts: 1) Collaborative projects with astronomical observations, 2) Network based learning, and 3) Research objectives. It spent from October to December 1996 and involved about 720 groups and approximately 5000 students from 39 countries from Europe. The students was between 12 and 23 years old, and also teachers and astronomers.
The collaborative projects proposed was: a) to observe the lunar eclipse on September 27, b) to observe the partial solar eclipse on October 12, c) to study the Sun and the terrestrial aurora (sunspot, flares, etc. and variation of the Earth's magnetic filed), d) to study actively the relation between the Sun and the Earth (solar wind and the terrestrial disturbances). It has three phases of activities: 1- to use students to experiment with www (treasure hunting with www, navigation technique), 2- involve more activities (talks with professionals in real time; use astronomical database & software), 3- the "hot" phase, intensive work: group communications using e-mail & bulletin boards.
The network based learning imply that learning environments is loaded at least partly from the network. The learning environment is a collections of topics and educational activities which enable the student to learn-by-doing. From technical point of view the elements needed are learning materials such that: hypertext, cognitive tools, communication tools and external information resources. But there has not yet been many implementations of learning environments that can be described as being network based. It can be shown that a few learning environments utilize communication technologies. Usually they utilize local learning environments (local hard disk or CD-ROM). For astronomy such sites are http://adsabs.harvard.edu; http:// www.missouri.edu/~physastr/edwards.html; ftp://showme.missouri.edu/pub/astros. For physics could be the journals issued on the www from Institute of Physics Publishing, http://www.iop.org. The key factor for using networked information are: -availability (for example, slow connections prevents the use of large materials), - reliability (correctness of the information), and - usability (how to find relevant information that can be understand with ones background).
The research objective was an educational study to evaluate the learning process in AOL. The main research objectives were the following:
- How do students experience the new medium in their learning?
- What is the level of international collaboration and the usage of communication tools in the collaboration?
- What was the role of experts in the learning process?
- What was the availability of local resources?
- How much did the students previous knowledge influence their learning outcome?
and so on (less important from general point of view).
The research was done by implementing an on-line questionnaire on www. For the preliminary results I will make an excerpts from the J.Multisila's report ("Evaluation - the Questionnaire" from Astronomy On-Line Newspaper Article, 17-04, January 24, 1997):
- The questionnaire contained of 28 statements that students were asked to evaluate on scale 1 to 5 (totally agree, totally disagree). In addition, there were 7 questions where students had to characterize in a five point scale themselves as a learner (active or passive, theoretical or practical, quick or slow, explorer or listener), the WWW as a learning environment (active or passive, information database or a learning tool) and the navigation in AOL web site (easy or difficult). There were also 7 questions that described the equipment (place where they used the AOL web site) and the background of the students (age, reference group, gender). Finally there were 5 questions where the students could answer verbally to explain their expectations from AOL, the most positive and negative experience from AOL and the main problems they had during the AOL.
- Altogether, 89 responses were received before the deadline, a few days after the termination of the Hot Phase. This must be considered as a small number of responses when compared to the number of all students participating in AOL. There are many possible explanations why we did not succeed to get more responses. However, from the feedback available we can say that many students had problems with slow communication lines, strict timetables and language. In the next chapter we try to summaries the collected data
Characteristics of the responses
- The answers are distributed geographically quite heterogeneously all over Europe .......
- Only 12 percent of all respondents were under 16 years old - the rest were older. This could be explained by the language problems. ........
- 15 percent of the respondents were members of astronomy clubs, 32 percent were secondary school students, 18 percent were college students, 10 percent were university students. The responses from teachers were about 15 percent of all the responses. There were about 15 percent female respondents.
Connections and Website navigation
- It seems that the most popular place where the AOL was mainly used was home (30 percent of all responses). This can also be seen from the most popular connection type that was fast modems: 52 percent of all respondents informed that they used a 9600 bit/s or higher modem. 10 percent of all respondents did not know the connection type at all. They probably used a computer in a public library or on another school than their own.
- However, in the verbal responses quite a few mentioned that the main problem in AOL was slow connection lines. On one hand, AOL Web pages had much graphics that takes a long time to load over some modem lines. On the other hand, because of the graphics the navigation in AOL Web site were found to have been easy (65 percent of all responses).
Usability and reliability
- 65 percent of all respondents reported that they found easily activities that corresponded their level of knowledge.
- The reliability of the information in AOL was not a problem because it was known that the activities and information pages were designed by professional astronomers and teachers. This is an important factor for the continuation of the project. Some groups informed that they had not had enough time to do all the collaborative projects during the AOL, but instead they had printed the projects and will do them later by themselves.
Communications
- Many respondents expected to get in contact with other students interested in astronomy. In general, the communication were considered to be the most positive feature and also a weakness of AOL: there was the real-time discussion channel but it opened too late
- One of the problems in AOL was the cloudy skies. ..... However, the problems was at least partially solved by providing color pictures in AOL Website for example from the lunar eclipse.
Learning
- Interestingly, it appeared that females do not find solving scientific problems as interesting as males. Local resources were all seen as important factors for learning. It seems that the role of the local teacher was extremely important because the local teacher could integrate the AOL to the other work at school and to the schools curricula.
- The activities were generally not seen as too theoretical and the theory behind the activities was understood very well. In this study computers were seen as a tools for learning (they make the studying easier and efficient) and they are not used too much in learning. What is more, AOL courage quite a many to study more about Internet.
Future of Astronomy On-Line;
It is now just about 2 months since the Hot Phase of AOL; took place and many of the organizers have been busy thinking about how this unique project can best continue in the future. Of course, it is still there! The entire structure is available and anybody who wants to use the large material stored on the AOL; Web-pages, is welcome to do so. Note in particular that the href=" /communication/whiteboard/". Whiteboard may be used at any time for chats among participants. However, a programme like AOL must develop in order to remain useful and interesting. The ISC is thinking about this and expects that it will soon be possible to provide specific indications of possible AOL activities in 1997, for instance events similar to the href="../collaboration/soleclipse/" Solar; and href="../collaboration/luneclipse/" Lunar Eclipses last autumn. Moreover, it turns out that a new Programme under the auspices of the EU Commission, known as Thematic Network might provide a useful frame for AOL in the future. A corresponding first approach has been already made to the appropriate EU office, and we are now awaiting a preliminary response from Brussels. Another obvious possibility would be to continue AOL under the auspices of the Fifth European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture in late 1997. However, it is quite clear from the experience last year that AOL ought to become a permanent feature with semi-regular highlights in the form of special projects, for instance in connection with particular astronomical events. (ISC)
Final Report on AOL; Romanian National Steering Committee (RNSC)
I will give some of the problems and conclusions about AOL activity for 1996.
Because of unsatisfactory state of the communication substructure, we found out with some delay about AOL; actually we heard about it from Bulgarian in October 1996. One of AI researchers, Gabriel Stefanescu, was in Bulgaria and due to the kindness of Bulgarian colleagues, especially of Dr. Milcho Tsvetkov, began to draw up a Web/AOL page for Romania, set up on the server in Bulgaria (www.wfpa.acad.bg/romania). In the Web page placed in Bulgaria only some information about the Astronomical Institute (background, structure, activity) could be included.
The Astronomical Institute (AI) of the Romanian Academy took the initiative to rapidly set up NSC, in which included persons who could then contribute to connections in this program. We benefited by the immediate help of Dr. Richard West (Germany). Because the AOL program was already under way, RNSC did not attempted to obtain any financial support for endowments with a view to an actual participation. RNSC profited by the development of the AOL program to promote the present European standing in the areas of astronomical education and research; this promotion was carried out among the authorities and school communities within the RNSC's possibilities. Unfortunately, the AI was just beginning to set up an Internet connection which become functional only starting with January 1997 (roastro.astro.ro and sgi.astro.ro). Consequently, the IA could not contribute to the technical support for this participation. The information on the possibility and ways of participation in AOL was brought to the knowledge of the pupils and teachers in the high schools connected to the "Soros Foundation for Open Society" network (sfos.ro) by the AstroClub of the high school in Eforie Sud, which is directed by one of the NSC members, namely Florin Serbu (www.sfos.ro/licee/lefo/). This high school is the only school we know that has accessed various AOL pages. The possible participation to the students from Physics faculty from Bucharest was organized by Mircea V. Rusu, but with limited success, because of the same problem: difficulties of the connection to the Internet. An attempt to obtain help from the Soros Foundations was denied because "the Faculty belongs to the University program not to the high school one!" In spite of that students from the Physics Faculty, pupils and amateurs observed and made some measurements on the partial solar eclipse of 12 October, 1996, but their commentaries reached too late to be included in the Web page.
Although Romania's participation in AOL was entirely formal, on account of the substructure handicap, RNSC believes that AOL has been a good training for future similar programs, which we are looking forward to, fully aware of their great utility.
ROMANIAN NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEE:
Dr. Magdalena Stavinschi, Senior Researcher
Astronomical Institute, Romanian Academy,
Str. Cutitul de Argint 5, 75212 Bucuresti 28, ROMANIA,
Director, vice-president of the Romanian National Committee for Astronomy
tel./fax: (+401) 337 33 89 E-Mail: mstavinschi@roimar.imar.ro
AOL-Romania duties: Chairman, Academic relations, International relations
Dr. Gheorghe Vass, Senior Researcher,
Astronomical Institute, Romanian Academy,
Str. Cutitul de Argint 5, 75212 Bucuresti 28, ROMANIA,
Romanian Representative for IAU 46 Commission - Teaching Astronomy
tel./fax: (+401) 337 33 89 E-Mail: gvass@roimar.imar.ro
AOL-Romania duties: Co-Chairman, High Schools relations
Dr. Mircea V. Rusu, Professor, Atomic and Nuclear Physics Dept.
Faculty of Physics, Bucharest University
Bucuresti-Magurele, Po.Box: MG-11
tel.: (+401) 772 71 77 fax: (+401) 312 31 27 E-Mail: mrusu@meganet.ro
AOL-Romania duties: Universities relations
Dipl. Physicist Gabriel Stefanescu, Research Ass.
Astronomical Institute, Romanian Academy,
Str. Cutitul de Argint 5, 75212 Bucuresti 28, ROMANIA
tel./fax: (+401) 337 33 89 E-Mail: gstefanescu@roimar.imar.ro
AOL-Romania duties: Web-Master
Dipl. Physicist Florin Serbu, Teacher, Head of the:
Grupul Scolar Eforie Sud, Str. Negru Voda 102,
8714 Eforie Sud, ROMANIA,
tel. (+40) 41 741 566 E-Mail: florin@lefo.sfos.ro
Internet: http://www.sfos.ro/licee/lefo
AOL-Romania duties: High Schools relations
Mircea V. Rusu, Physics Faculty, Bucharest University, email: mrusu@meganet.ro Gh.Vass, Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, email: gvass@roimar.imar.ro