The Cosmos in the Classroom: Involving Community College Instructors in a Hands-on Symposium on Teaching Astronomy and Space Science to Non-Science Majors

天文学（11）每年大约有250,000名学生（大多数是非理科专业的）在全国各地的学院、大学和成人教育项目中学习天文学入门课程。这些课程代表了天文学/空间科学界与公众之间最重要的接口之一。调查显示，这些课程中约有一半是在没有重要天文学研究计划的机构教授的，教授这些课程的人通常在天文学和空间科学以外的其他领域受过训练。无论他们的背景如何，许多教授这些课程的人几乎没有接受过初步培训，也没有接触过有效的天文学教学策略和资源。在太平洋天文学会年会上举行的为期2.5天的全国研讨会旨在帮助各级教师更好地教学非科学专业的学生。导师，实验室和在线教学的创新者，教育技术的研究者，以及最好的书面和在线资源的创造者都是演讲者。研讨会的大部分形式是互动小组讨论和实践研讨会。组织者正在积极寻找通常不参加此类会议的三个群体的参与：全职社区大学教师，兼职社区和小型大学教师，以及其他领域的教授天文学的同事。

Astronomy (11) Approximately 250,000 students (mostly non-science majors) take introductory astronomy courses in colleges, universities, and adult education programs around the country each year. These courses represent one of the most important interfaces between the astronomy/space science community and the public. Surveys reveal that about half of these courses are taught at institutions that do not have a significant astronomy research program, often by people whose training is in other fields besides astronomy and space science. Whatever their background, many people teaching these courses have too little initial training or exposure to effective teaching strategies and resources in astronomy. This 2.5-day national symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is designed to assist instructors at all levels in doing a better job in their teaching of non-science majors. Mentor instructors, innovators in laboratory and on-line teaching, researchers in educational techniques, and creators of the best written and on-line resources are among the presenters. Much of the symposium is in the form of interactive panels and hands-on workshops. The organizers are actively seeking out the participation of three groups who are not normally represented at such meetings: full-time community college instructors, part-time community and small college instructors, and colleagues in other fields who wind up teaching astronomy.