ED012-04
Using an Interactive, 3D Visualization to Teach Phases of the Moon

Tuesday, 8 December 2020: 19:15
Virtual
Donald Bratton1, Ariel D Anbar2, Melissa Renfrey3, Jessica L Swann4, Chris Mead1 and Mia Bodin5, (1)Arizona State University, Center for Education Through Exploration, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States, (2)Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Molecular Sciences, Tempe, AZ, United States, (3)Arizona State University, Center for Education Through Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States, (4)Mars Space Flight Facility, ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States, (5)Arizona State University, Center for Education Through Exploration, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Phases of the Moon are an important part of middle school science, yet they are also widely misunderstood by the general public. This presentation will describe and present evaluation data from a new interactive digital learning experience hosted on the NASA-funded Infiniscope.org portal that helps students to discover the way that the orbits of the Earth, Moon, Sun system lead to the phases of the Moon that we see on Earth.

An important goal in the design of this experience was that learners should be able to view the Earth–Moon–Sun system in three dimensions and from multiple perspectives. Our review of existing digital resources indicated that there was not a product that allowed such 3D interactivity within a structured lesson. The learning design of our digital learning experience reinforces this point by requiring learners to match views from different perspectives that show the same underlying arrangement. The experience is built in an adaptive learning platform, which allows for automatic feedback tailored to the learner’s inputs. This makes the experience suitable for use in asynchronous learning or in larger classrooms.

Since release, the learning experience has been launched more than 5000 times from the Infiniscope.org portal. Classroom testing has been positive. Of 285 6th and 7th grade students who used the learning experience in class and completed post-experience surveys, 80% said they would like to do more activities like this one. 218 students completed a short pre-/post-experience quiz that asked them to identify a Moon phase from a diagram and correctly draw the portion of the Moon that was in shadow. Results from this near transfer task varied by school and grade. One teacher’s 6th grade classes (n = 97) showed significant and substantial gains on this task. A second teacher’s 7th grade classes (n = 68) showed non-significant changes, but had a high pre-quiz baseline, suggesting the material had been covered more thoroughly by that grade. Two other teachers’ 6th grade classes (n = 22; 31) had lower scores and non-significant changes, which may be attributable to less dynamic and interactive classroom environments in that school. In future work, we hope to study learning outcomes from this experience with those from 2D simulation-based or non-simulation-based Moon phases lessons.

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