Speaker
Willem Keppens
Description
This work reports on the administration of an online, interactive survey, assessing the estimates of N=201 high school students on astronomical scales. Five questions were asked, two of which probing estimates on the relative sizes of astronomical bodies, and three on the relative distances between them. We investigated the effects of different question formulations and customised visualisations on these estimates. Results show that students generally underestimated all relative distances. There was a significant difference in the magnitude of the estimates between the two question formulations. The effect of the visualisations was clearly larger for size-related questions than for distances.
| Education level | Age 15-18 (Secondary education) |
|---|---|
| Physics topic | Astronomy and Astrophysics |
| Research focus | Student conceptions / Preconceptions / Misconceptions |
| Research method | Analytic Physics Education Research (Quantitative research) |