Astrophysics at Scale: Transforming and Evaluating Undergraduate Education through Virtual and Desktop Environments

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate astrophysics education through immersive virtual reality and web-based learning tools that help students build accurate, intuitive understanding of the scale of the universe. Scale is an important crosscutting concept that unifies science disciplines and is foundational to astrophysics, yet research shows that undergraduate students commonly hold significant misconceptions about astronomical and molecular scale, even after completing a college astronomy course. This Level III Engaged Student Learning project plans to co-design and deploy an immersive learning environment in introductory astrophysics courses at North Carolina State University and Duke University. By engaging astrophysics instructors as co-designers and studying student cognitive, affective, and learning outcomes, the project plans to produce educative curriculum materials with broad potential for adoption across institutions and STEM disciplines. The goals of this project include the co-design, implementation, and systematic evaluation of the immersive learning environment across two institutional contexts, as well as understanding how humans interface with the environment. The project plans to investigate the effectiveness of immersive and web-based scale learning environments through multiple classroom observations and controlled laboratory studies, with research questions centered on students' scale cognition, scale compression, and cognitive load during mediated learning. The project also plans to advance understanding of how human information processing is influenced by visual stimuli and virtual embodiment, to help make contributions to astrophysics education, human factors, and human-computer interaction. Assessment plans include pre- and post-measures of student learning and affect, observational protocols, and iterative co-design cycles informed by instructor and student feedback. Findings and open materials, including the immersive learning environment, are planned for dissemination through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and unrestricted web access for learners and instructors nationwide. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.