‘Astrophysics: History and Theory,’ an undergraduate, interdisciplinary, asynchronous Astrophysics course taught in the physics program

Abtract

This project produced an online astronomy course based on the free, online OpenStax textbook. When this project was conceived, about a year before the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors had no idea that in a short period of time, most college and university classes would be online.  This abrupt change in modalities of courses, from traditional, face-to-face lectures and laboratories to a more modern online format, sparked energetic discussions about  the effectiveness of online courses.  This paper describes the online astronomy course and its creation and evaluates the success of the course at conveying the concepts and theories studied in astronomy courses.   The success of this course is examined using a 100-question pretest and posttest based on content knowledge. A survey was also completed of the students to evaluate the perceived success of the online course and the acceptance of online courses. The survey was adjusted to include opinions about the in-person labs which were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.