Oral Presentation Only

Developing High Altitude Balloon Curriculum for Undergraduate Courses—NSF Grant Impact and Example in General Education Chemistry

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Abstract

The High Altitude Research Platform (HARP) at Taylor University is a high altitude balloon system with unique telemetry capability to measure altitude, temperature, pressure, humidity, visible light intensity, ultraviolet, infrared, acceleration (accelerometer), radiation (Geiger Counter) while continuously streaming data back to earth in real time. Over 30 universities are implementing HARP into science and engineering courses with statistically significant increases in student intrinsic motivation, valuing science, application knowledge, metacognitive processes, cognitive skills, and content knowledge. Additional results from student learning assessments show that the desired gains typically do not come until multiple implementations into the same course takes place. This, in addition to a survey showing 92% of faculty interested in developing HARP curricula, shows that there is a high need for the development of curricula for the implementation of HARP. A current National Science Foundation (NSF) grant is focusing on meeting this need. In addition, the development of HARP curriculum for the general education chemistry course at Taylor University over 5 semesters resulted in statistically significant increases in five of the six learning areas and practically significant increases in four of those learning areas.

How to Cite:

Takehara, D., Snyder, S., Booth, T., Romines, E., Smith, B. & Tomasik, R., (2011) “Developing High Altitude Balloon Curriculum for Undergraduate Courses—NSF Grant Impact and Example in General Education Chemistry”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2011(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/ahac.8148