Leveraging NASA Astronomical Data with SciAct for Community Colleges

NASA open source offer expansive opportunities for discovery, experimentation, and research. Many of these resources have yet to be fully utilized, highlighting the potential for further exploration and educational engagement.

These tools hold significant promise for education purposes and project-based teachings in STEM courses. In this presentation, I share the lab activities and capstone projects that I designed under the grant funded by the NASA SCoPE with the partner NASA SCi-ACT team NASA Community College Network (NCCN). Partnership with NCCN, provided access to subject matter experts (SME) consultation who help me to best utilize NASA SciACT resources.

By integrating NASA's resources into our curriculum, we aim to transform traditional lecture-based teaching into a more engaging learning experience that fosters exploration and discovery among students and to promote widespread public outreach and exposure. We utilized open-source data for our spectroscopic projects, employing photometric image analysis to generate light curves. We used Solar System Treks which are online, browser-based portalsto visualize, explore, and analyze the surfaces of other worlds landscapes of other planets and assessed their landscapes. To unleash students' artistic expression we incorporate 3D tactile resources for both 3D printing and virtual reality visualizations. This approach allows students to engage accross different repressenations with more chances to embody asrtonomical concepts.

Acknowledgement: Leveraging NASA Astronomical Data with SciAct for Community Colleges is a collaboration between NASA SciAct Team, NASA Community College Network, and scientist Mojgan M Haghanikar, supported by Arizona State University in partnership with NASA's Science

Activation Program. For more information on this and other Seed Grants, visit scope. asu.edu/the-seed-grant