Abstract
Recently, powerful new observations and advances in computation and visualization have led to a revolution in
our understanding of the structure of the Universe. As the field of cosmology advances, it is of interest to study
how student ideas relate to scientific understanding. In this paper, we examine in-depth undergraduate students’
ideas on distances and structure in the Universe as students progress through a general education astronomy
integrated lecture and laboratory course with a focus on active learning. The study was conducted over five
semesters at an urban, minority-serving institution. The data collected include individual interviews (N¼15) and
course artifacts (N 60), such as precourse homework essays, prelab surveys, and midterm and final exam
questions in a variety of formats. We find that students are fairly successful at tasks involving relative distances,
but struggle with absolute distances; have difficulty going beyond an elementary model of the Solar System as
the Sun and planets; struggle to visualize galactic halos; but successfully increase their understanding of the
hierarchical nature of structure in the Universe throughout the semester.
AbstractRecently, powerful new observations and advances in computation and visualization have led to a revolution inour understanding of the structure of the Universe. As the field of cosmology advances, it is of interest to studyhow student ideas relate to scientific understanding. In this paper, we examine in-depth undergraduate students’ideas on distances and structure in the Universe as students progress through a general education astronomyintegrated lecture and laboratory course with a focus on active learning. The study was conducted over fivesemesters at an urban, minority-serving institution. The data collected include individual interviews (N¼15) andcourse artifacts (N 60), such as precourse homework essays, prelab surveys, and midterm and final examquestions in a variety of formats. We find that students are fairly successful at tasks involving relative distances,but struggle with absolute distances; have difficulty going beyond an elementary model of the Solar System asthe Sun and planets; struggle to visualize galactic halos; but successfully increase their understanding of thehierarchical nature of structure in the Universe throughout the semester.
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