Designing Digital Education Outreach for Astrobiology: You Are Not Alone
The NASA-funded Infiniscope project is developing a new technology-enabled framework to empower education outreach by astrobiologists, aligned with NASA planetary exploration missions.
The framework is built around two key technologies advanced by the Infiniscope team: Torus, a new open-source adaptive learning platform developed in collaboration with the Open Learning Initiative of Carnegie Mellon University; and Tour It, a freely available system enabling non-technical users to create rich, VR-enabled virtual tours. Torus facilitates asynchronous learning by providing fine-grained formative feedback and personalized pathways. Tour It decentralizes and demystifies the creation of virtual place-based learning experiences.
Within this framework, motivated scientists will be able to directly contribute their data and expertise to an evolving, extensible suite of digital learning experiences organized around the guiding question “Are we alone?”.
In these experiences, place-based, autonomous exploration allows learners to guide their own learning in a problem-driven manner. Learners make decisions about what type of evidence to look for, where to look for it, how to look for it, and then apply this knowledge to terrestrial analog environments and specific locations of past or planned explorations, beginning with Mars and Europa. In doing so, they employ key scientific practices like hypothesis testing; deal with scientific uncertainty; learn basic astrobiological concepts such as biosignatures and habitability; and engage the richness of NASA mission science products.
A key innovation of this framework is that the relative ease of use of Torus and Tour It make it practical for a scientist to directly create educational content. Among our co-authors are two such individuals who have successfully utilized these tools to develop and contribute to educational experiences. This presentation will introduce the design framework, describe progress to date, and demonstrate how Torus and Tour It enable contributions from individuals without extensive prior experience in learning design to contribute.
Designing Digital Education Outreach for Astrobiology: You Are Not Alone, AGU Fall Meeting 2024,
Publication: AGU Fall Meeting 2024, held in Washington, D.C., 9-13 December 2024, Session: Education / Digital Learning Innovation in Earth and Space Science Education: Promises, Pitfalls, and the Path Ahead III Oral, id. ED24B-02. Pub Date: December 2024 Hasty, Brandon ; Hunsley, Diana ; Teece, Bronwyn ; Bruce, Geoffrey ; Mead, Chris ; Anbar, Ariel D
Astrobiology,
