Development and assessment of a Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) for online astronomy majors

Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have been shown to provide students with a variety of learning benefits including better conceptual understanding, improved critical thinking and data literacy skills, and increased interest in pursuing scientific careers. Additionally, CUREs provide students opportunities to participate in authentic research experiences that have a broader impact outside of the classroom. Despite the numerous benefits, the field of astronomy has lagged behind disciplines like biology and chemistry when it comes to including CUREs in curriculum. Not limited to astronomy, however, is the lack of research opportunities and courses offered to students enrolled in undergraduate degree programs online. Arizona State University (ASU) is a leader in online education and, in the Fall of 2020, introduced the nation’s first online Bachelor’s degree program in Astronomy and Planetary Sciences (APS). To make research accessible to a more diverse population of learners, it is imperative that students in this program have access to the same opportunities to participate in authentic research as those in the parallel in-person program. In this work, we describe the development, implementation, and assessment of a fully online CURE for astronomy majors as part of the APS program. We conduct a mixed methods analysis consisting of a Likert-style survey administered pre- and post-course as well as student interviews at the conclusion of the semester. Survey results from the course’s first two offerings (N = 24) indicated that students’ research self-efficacy and science identity both improved. An exoplanet-specific multiple-choice assessment (N = 26) showed statistically significant improvements in conceptual understanding post-course. Additionally, student interviews (N = 11) responses relayed that students felt a stronger sense of belonging to both ASU and the larger astronomy community after participation in the course. The results from this study are encouraging and suggest that student participation in this online CURE led to similar improvements across a variety of outcomes previously identified in studies of in-person CUREs spanning multiple disciplines.