10 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
a day or two after you complete your class coverage of the chapter. (Note:
Students can also do these quizzes on their own in the “study area” of
How About Exams?
Quizzing will help your students a great deal, but it still tests only small chunks of
material at a time. To really ensure that your students put together everything they are
learning, we suggest that you also give at least one longer midterm and a final exam.
Personally, we tend to favor two midterms and the final exam, mainly to give
students more “practice” at studying. Ideally, the exams should count enough toward
the final grade so that students will be forced to study and learn, but not so much as to
put overwhelming pressure on those students who may have fears of in-class testing.
Here are a few other notes that may be of interest:
• Remember that a midterm is a learning experience, while a final exam is a
testing experience. That is, students can learn from their mistakes on a
Instructor Guide for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Eighth Edition 11
For example, students who fail with a score of 50 (out of 100) can use the
rebate points to raise their score to 75—making it much easier for them to
get a B or A average overall when they do well for the rest of the term. (The
The Test Bank
It’s not easy to write good test questions, so we encourage you to take advantage of
the Test Bank available with this textbook (in both printed and computerized form).
Why reinvent the wheel when others have already gone to great lengths to write
exam questions? You may use questions from the Test Bank directly, modify them
as you wish, or simply use it to get ideas for questions you write yourself.
The First Day of Class
Okay, so you’ve set all your policies, made your syllabus, and now you are ready
to face students on the first day of class. What should you do? We believe that
your primary goals on the first day should be: (1) make sure students understand
your expectations, and (2) motivate them by starting in on the big picture ideas of
Chapter 1. A few notes:
• Be sure not only to go over your syllabus, but also to point students to
“How to Succeed in Your Astronomy Course,” which follows the
12 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
• Let’s say the above another way: Tell your students that you can provide
them with the key to their success in your course: They must put in real
Suggested First-Day Assignment
Feel free to hand out this assignment as is or modify it as you wish.
Assignment 1 (due by second day of class)
1. Begin with a brief, clearly organized list that includes your name, student ID
number, a telephone number where you can be reached during the semester,
3. Write two or three paragraphs briefly describing what you learned from your
“Web surfing.” What was your favorite feature of the MasteringAstronomy
Structuring Class Sessions
After the first day, you can and should expect students to come to class prepared.
The structure of each class period will depend on how frequently you meet and
how long the class lasts. Nevertheless, we recommend a few general strategies:
• Remember that students may be coming to your class with other things on
their minds. Help them get on track by spending a few minutes at the
Instructor Guide for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Eighth Edition 13
• Expect your students to do the assigned reading, and show that you expect it
by avoiding direct repetition of what is in the book during your lectures; focus
your class time on the more difficult concepts. Note: You can reinforce the
need for your students to come prepared by requiring them to complete the
online Reading Quiz (and perhaps also the Visual Quiz) for a chapter before
Evaluating Your Teaching
We recommend that teachers always ask their students for feedback on what is
working and not working in their teaching, and this is especially important in
Post-Lecture Evaluations
This evaluation exercise asks for anonymous feedback at the end of a class period.
It is best tried after you’ve “hit your stride” in the class, but early enough in the
term so that you can still incorporate what you learn from the feedback—for
example, you might try it after a class about a third of the way into your course,
then repeat it around the two-thirds point. Here’s how it works:
Stop a couple of minutes before the end of the class period and ask students to
briefly answer the following three questions before they leave. You can either ask
them to write their answers on a piece of scratch paper or hand out a prepared
form. Either way, be sure that the feedback is anonymous:
1. What constructive criticism do you have on how this class is taught?
14 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
Feedback on Homework
We have also found it very useful to ask students for feedback that they can turn
in with their homework assignments. We do this by including the following
optional question at the end of each homework assignment:
Question X. Comments (please answer, but this will not be graded): How long
did this homework assignment take you? Please comment on the assignment
and the class in general. For example: Do you feel you understand the
material? Do you feel that what you are learning will be beneficial to you?
Do you have other comments or suggestions?
If you feel that anonymity is the only way to get honest responses, you can ask
students to turn in their answers to this question separately from their graded
Notes on Interpreting Evaluations
We all put a great deal of effort into teaching and would like our evaluations to
show appreciation for all we do for the students, so it can be very disappointing
when student evaluations tell you that you’re not the greatest teacher in the
history of the planet—or something even worse! This can be especially true if you
are new to teaching, and thus have not yet developed the thick skin of old-timers.
We therefore offer a few suggestions on how to get the most out of your teaching
evaluations:
• First—and perhaps most important—remember these are comments on a
task that you have assigned and not comments on you as a person.
Especially if you are new to teaching, the personality that comes across in
• Students will write all kinds of strange things on course evaluations, so
use a filter to decide which comments truly represent constructive
criticism and which comments can be safely ignored. For example,
Instructor Guide for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Eighth Edition 15
compliment!) A good guideline can be the amount that students write—
those who make the effort to give you extensive comments usually have
something worthwhile to say.
• Develop your thick skin: No matter how well you teach, some students
will write horrible things about you that you don’t deserve. This may be
because they just didn’t “click” with you, or because they happened to be
having a bad day when you handed out the course evaluation, or because
Suggestions on Making Your Lectures Interactive
We’re now ready to discuss how you can attempt to break out of “lecture mode,”
changing learning from a passive to an active experience. This is particularly
important in large classes, but the methods described below are also effective in
smaller classes. Some of these ideas are formally developed pedagogical tools
Basic Interactions
You may have noticed the following curious effect: The more students you have in
your class, the fewer actively participate in basic question-and-answer interactions.
16 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
female or minority students. Here we offer a few suggestions on how to improve
simple interactions without changing your class structure very much. First we’ll
discuss methods you can implement right away with any technology, and in the
following section we’ll talk about the use of “clickers.”
• First, note that success in all interactive teaching depends on keeping
control over your classroom—it is important that students do not become
rowdy or discourteous. To help you keep control over your classroom, we
suggest that you emphasize the importance of the guidelines on common
courtesy discussed in the Appendix with our sample syllabus.
• Even the physical action of raising hands is better than just listening. Try
other techniques to involve the students physically. Ask them to stand for
yes votes instead of raising hands. Have them do simple demonstrations
whenever possible (e.g., demonstrate parallax by asking them to hold their
hands out with an extended index finger at arm’s length). If you are
conducting a demonstration at the front of a large lecture hall, give them
the opportunity to leave their seats and file by so they can see the
demonstration up close.
Instructor Guide for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Eighth Edition 17
Clickers or “Classroom Response Systems”
New technologies are enabling a return to the old-fashioned question-and-answer
format of the classroom. Each student comes to class with a “clicker” with which
to answer multiple-choice questions. Each clicker is registered, connecting the
student’s identity with the specific clicker. The students’ answers can be recorded
as a component of each student’s grade, but more importantly can be displayed as
a histogram that shows whether the class “got it.” Most instructors allow students
to discuss a question with their neighbors, which can truly motivate classroom
discussion and collaborative learning. Clickers are an immensely powerful tool
that engages students much more than the standard lecture mode. Your Pearson
sales representative can get you a copy of Clickers in the Astronomy Classroom by
Collaborative Learning
The unifying theme behind the suggestions that follow is challenging students to
work through thought-provoking questions, to discuss them with their neighbors,
and to gain confidence and practice in working with new ideas.
• You can make classroom questioning even more interactive by encouraging
students to work together to determine the right answer. Allow students to
18 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
lights. You can either call for another vote on the right answer or poll
individual groups to get an explanation for the answer they chose. One
version of this approach has been carefully designed and tested under the
names “ConcepTests” and “Peer Instruction”; the book is listed later under
Avoiding Intimidation
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to classroom participation—particularly in large
lecture classes—is intimidation. Even students who know the right answer or who
have a genuinely intelligent question may not feel comfortable speaking in front
of a few hundred fellow students. Many of the approaches described earlier are
designed to eliminate this problem. The small group breakouts are particularly
effective. First, almost all students will speak in small groups and have their point
of view validated or corrected before being called on. Second, asking “What did
your group conclude?” takes the burden off the individual—the credit or blame is
shared with everyone in the group. Third, frequent use of any of the techniques
described here will show that participation and active learning are more important
than looking smart. Here are a few other notes:
• Be aware that body language can also set the tone for discussions. Avoid
looking impatient or disapproving. When calling on students to speak, use
an open-handed inviting gesture instead of pointing with the index finger.
Instructor Guide for The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Eighth Edition 19
• On occasion you may ask a question that a student gets utterly wrong.
While the student may be in good company, the embarrassment he or she
may feel in class can have a long-lasting effect. Some students may even
stop attending class if they fear further embarrassment. It’s therefore
Personalizing the Impersonal Classroom
Lecture mode tends to distance the instructor from the students, but there are a
number of ways to bridge that gap.
• Do what you can to bring your audience close to you:
• In any lecture period there is probably at least one common experience that is
relevant to the lecture topic. You can draw students into discussion by asking
“Have you been watching the Moon recently? Did anybody notice what
phase it’s in?” Or “Have any of you ever traveled to the Southern
Hemisphere?” Or “How many of you caught the latest picture from Hubble
on the front page?” After you see a few nodding heads, ask someone to
expand on what they have seen, read, or experienced. Even small interactions
like these familiarize students with talking in class and demonstrate the
relevance of their experience and interests to the class material.
20 Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit
advantage of your office hours, try renaming them “review sessions” on
your syllabus. Consider holding one of your office hour periods on “neutral
ground” in a cafeteria or common area.
• Students often feel isolated in large classes, which make them less likely to
participate in discussions. Encourage them to learn their neighbors’ names
early in the semester. (The collaborative learning method described above
• Our final suggestion involves the daunting task of learning student names.
While there are legendary instructors who have memorized classes of
hundreds, most of us cannot. But chances are that you can learn a lot more
names than you think if the information is presented to you in a usable
form: names and faces together. One convenient method requires a digital
Selected Resources on Interactive Teaching
On Teaching Science, by Jeffrey Bennett, Big Kid Science, 2014,