"Astronomy in the Marketplace"

"Astronomy in the Marketplace" is first-day-of-class brainstorming activity facilitated by the instructor, developed by Dennis Schatz:

Objectives:
1. To help students see that astronomy has influence outside the scientific arena;
2. to increase their familiarity with astronomical terms; and
3. to develop the students' creative thinking skills

D. Schatz, "Why Should We Care About Exploding Stars?" Universe in the Classroom, no. 8, Spring 1987. (http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/08/stars2.html)

Students are instructed on the rules for brainstorming astronomy-related name brands, and how these will be compiled as a class in a competition between sections of Astronomy 210 at two different campuses (San Luis Obispo, and Paso Robles, CA) at Cuesta College. This activity is done on the first day after a pre-instruction assessment is administered, and a short introduction from the instructor as a warm-up to get students interacting with each other.


Students are motivated to think about astronomy-related name brands as an exercise in seeing how pervasive astronomy is in popular culture. They will be forming small groups of three to four students each to brainstorm as many of these name brands as possible.


The allowed categories for these activities are cars (current and old model names and marques), food items, and non-food items that can be purchased "in the marketplace." Each car is one point, each food item is two points, and non-food items are three points each.


Prohibited categories are titles of TV shows, movies, and books, as typically science-fiction and fantasy franchises are much too prolific (and too easy).


To visually recap the allowed categories, tell students they are given a lot of money to purchase as many different astronomy-related name brand items as possible, starting with a new car from a dealership...


...or maybe a used car from a dealership.


Also imagine yourself cruising up and down the aisles of your supermarket. How many different astronomy-related name-brand items have you seen there? (N.b.: why is the baby in the liquor aisle?!?)


Also perhaps astronomy-related name brand items in the shopping mall as well.


After 10-15 minutes of working in small groups, the instructor will start calling upon students for their astronomy-related name brands. This class list will be compiled and compared to the list from the other section(s) of Astronomy 210 at Cuesta College.


Results from Fall 2008 at Cuesta College:

San Luis Obispo campus (section 70158)
N = 85 students
Cars: 21 items
Food items: 34 items
Non-food items: 32 items
Total score = 21 + 2*34 + 3*32 = 185 points
Score per student = 185/85 = 2.2 points/student

North County (Paso Robles) campus (section 70160)
N = 31 students
Cars: 15 items
Food items: 26 items
Non-food items: 27 items
Total score = 15 + 2*26 + 3*27 = 148 points
Score per student = 148/31 = 4.7 points/student

When these results were reported back to the students at the start of the following class, while SLO campus had the most points overall, NC campus had more points per student.