Astro 101 Slide Sets
Instructor’s Guide
February 2015
About the Slide Sets
This series of slide sets is meant to bring recent NASA discoveries to the college-level non-major introductory astronomy classroom. An introductory astronomy course for non-majors is often a student's only exposure to post-secondary science, so we hope that including recent discoveries in that environment will help students understand the excitement of the evolving field.
The Astro 101 slide sets compile short, topical presentations on new developments from NASA SMD Astrophysics missions relevant to Astronomy 101 topics. We intend for these slide sets to help Astronomy 101 instructors include the latest developments (discoveries not yet in their textbooks) into the “big-picture” context of their courses.
These slide sets have been developed in consultation with a panel of Astronomy
101 instructors, NASA science educators, and mission scientists.
Development and Coordination: NASA Astrophysics Science Education and Public Outreach Forum
Slide Set Content
Each slide set includes three main components, Standard Content slides, Resources slide, and Bonus Content slide, as outlined below:
- TheStandard Contentis distributed over four slides, which are structured the same across all slide sets.
· "The Discovery"
· "Discovery Method"
· "Big Picture"
· "How this discovery changed our view"
- TheResourcesslide points the instructor and interested students tothe peer-reviewed discovery paper(s), NASA and mission-specific press releases, interesting animations or graphics, and other relevant materials
- Bonus Contentis different for each slide set. This is a slide the instructor may choose to include in his/her presentation because it gives some insight about how science is done. Example bonus content may include: researcher biographies and photos, novel observing techniques, or unique collaborations.
Get the Latest Slide Sets
NASA Astrophysics Missions regularly report new findings. As time and resources permit, we plan to post new sets on a quarterly basis. Please check back periodically. New slide sets will be available at https://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources-for-the-higher-education-audience/.
Acknowledgements
The Astro 101 Slide Sets are a collaborative effort between members of the NASA Astrophysics education and public outreach (E/PO) community and the NASA Astrophysics Science Education and Public Outreach Forum. We also gratefully acknowledge the Astronomy 101 instructors whose input on the needs of the higher education community helped shape these sets.
Contributing NASA Astrophysics E/PO programs include those from the following NASA Missions: Chandra, Fermi, GALEX, Hershel, Hubble, Spitzer, Swift, WMAP.
The Astrophysics Forum is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate under Cooperative Agreement NNX09AQ11A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, and Johns Hopkins University.
Contributing Team Members: Higher Education Liaison, Greg Schultz (Astronomical Society of the Pacific); NASA Content Additions, Bonnie Meinke (Space Telescope Science Institute), William P Blair, Luciana Bianchi (Johns Hopkins University), James Manning (NASA Astrophysics Forum); Graphic Design: Pam Jeffries (Space Telescope Science Institute).
Feedback
We welcome the feedback of instructors who have used the slides sets. If you’d like to take a few minutes to tell us which ones you used, how you used them, and what the outcomes were, and to give us your thoughts about them, we welcome feedback at . And please look for a short survey here too.