LCOGT is pleased to announce a new platform for high-quality, peer-reviewed astronomy education activities has been launched today by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development. astroEDU is a platform that allows educators to discover, review, distribute, improve and remix astronomy education activities, and offers a free peer-review service by professionals in education and science. astroEDU came about through a partnership between LCOGT, Universe Awareness and IAU.
Hundreds of thousands of astronomy education activities exist, but their quality is highly variable. Using the familiar peer-review workflow of scientific publications, astroEDU will improve the quality, visibility and accessibility of these astronomy education activities. Because astroEDU is endorsed by the International Astronomical Union is also lends credibility to these activities.
astroEDU aims to provide a way that educators to discover, review, distribute, improve and remix astronomy education activities, and offers a free peer-review service by professionals in education and science.
astroEDU activities
Each astroEDU activity has a robust structure including educational goals, learning objectives, target audiences, budget and evaluation strategy.
We only accept educational activities and not generic materials like power points, videos, interactive apps. However, we encourage teachers, educators and education specialists to submit activities which use these different types of resources. However, we welcome activities which have been contructed to use such resources in an educational context.
The astroEDU portal includes a simple, yet versatile search where users can look for the activities and filter the results according to their needs, for example, age, topic, school level, time taken, or cost.
Peer review
Each of the activities available on the astroEDU website has been peer-reviewed by an educator and an astronomer to ensure a high education and scientific standard. The astroEDU website is a freely accessible, online database which uses a framework that enables broad distribution in a range of different formats – from print-friendly PDFs to mobile device document formats.
The review process is what makes astroEDU different from the many repositories of educational resources that have previously existed. We do not want the review process to stop once the activities have been published online. The community has a very important role to play in sharing their experiences of using these activities in educational settings, and making suggestions about these activities based on these experiences. Each activity web page has a comments box which we encourage everyone to use. The editors are very keen on having activities evolve through this type of interaction.
Be involved
One of the main goals of the astroEDU project is to promote the use of excellent educational activities worldwide. We encourage educators to adapt the activities published on astroEDU according to their different linguistic and cultural needs.
astroEDU is currently available in English, although we welcome submissions in any language. It is anticipated the platform will be offered in other languages in early 2014.
astroEDU is now seeking activity submissions, volunteers for referees and feedback to improve the platform.
Edward Gomez is one of the managing editors of astroEDU along with Pedro Russo (Universe Awareness). More details of the management structure can be found on the astroEDU about page.
astroEDU was launched at the Galileo Teacher Training Workshop hosted by ESA in Leiden on 28 Nov 2013
