I used GalaxyZoo last term after having heard a "Cooking with Sloan"
presentation at the AAS (June, St-Louis). As part of an otherwise standard
assignment related to galaxies, each student had to classify at least 20
galaxies. They had to hand in a print-out of the page where the number of
galaxies they have classified is listed. The person who classified the most
galaxies received an astro poster (I picked up a bunch at the AAS meeting to use
as prizes. Unfortunately, there's no-one giving out such goodies at the Canadian
Astronomical Society meetings so I haven't been able to replenish my stock since
that one AAS attendance!). This exercise definitely gave the students a much
better idea of 1) the relative abundance of the different types of galaxies (no,
they're not mostly pretty spirals, despite the impression one may form from
looking at the beautiful pictures one usually sees) and the difficulty of
classification.

Cheers,


- Magdalen Normandeau.
University of New Brunswick


--- In astrolrner@yahoogroups.com, "mangala_sharma" <sharma@...> wrote:
>
> Have any of you used Galaxy Zoo (galaxyzoo.org) as a teaching tool?
>
> I found it a great success in my undergraduate introductory astronomy
> class where a third of the students are education majors.
>
> Instead of simply a lecture or an in-class activity about the Hubble
> classification of galaxies, I gave a homework assignment in which the
> students had to teach themselves the topic by exploring Galaxy Zoo,
> especially the "How to Take Part" section.
>
> My students reported that it had been an eye-opener for them :)
> Among other things, they got to use "real" astronomical images - and
> online (way better than paper-and-pencil work in class!). They
> discovered - to their astonishment - NOISE in real data, and how
> challenging signal-to-noise issues can be. Some even found cosmic ray
> events and satellite trails exciting. Most expressed surprise that
> spiral rotation could be either clockwise or anti-clockwise. This led
> to some energetic discussion in the next class about symmetries, the
> cosmological principle, human vs. computer "vision", probability, and
> preconceptions, etc...
>
> Overall, I think my students learned - and will retain - more from
> that little exercise done on their own time than they would have in
> class time discussions about galaxy shapes. Nice work, GalaxyZoo team!
>
> If you have other such online tools that can be fun and filled with
> learning for undergrads, please let me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Mangala
>
> ............................
> Mangala Sharma, Ph.D.
> Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
> Ohio University
> Athens, OH 45701
>