Energy boom in Ghana!

Below is a post by Anabele Pardi.

When we say “interactive activities” we mean not just easy tasks the students have to do during lectures, not only talking in groups about certain topics but also games. Competitive (with or without reward) games centered on the topic took the role of assessments for our learning objectives.  

We were very pleasantly surprised by the excitement of the students, even though their background knowledge, for some of them, was minimal. This leaves only one conclusion: their energetic and competitive attitude was fueled mainly by curiosity and competitiveness. What contributed heavily to the success of the interactive activities’ success was, in my opinion, the friendly and relaxed environment we managed to create ever since the first day of the school.

We incorporated interactive teaching techniques during lectures in order to keep the interest of the students high and energize them. It worked! This method’s purpose was also to address students who learn better through practical activities. We wanted to get them familiar with working in groups, communicate and move forward as a team. This way, they not only joined their forces for solving certain problems but they also got to know each other.

Because of the different background of students, the groups were mixed most of the times. This helped the students unfamiliar with the topic to express themselves in the comfort of a small group and catch up to the level of the group while the students with a better understanding of topics could feel very well about explaining and helping others. Overall, I think everyone benefited from this method. We also led discussions and debates  in the open to students can express their individual points of view and get more comfortable with public speaking.

Inquiry: thinking like scientists

What is inquiry, you ask?

Inquiry is a researched based teaching method that starts by asking fascinating questions: Can potatoes be grown on Mars? Why do galaxies form spirals? How long does it take to get to Alpha Centauri?

Our students ask questions that excite them, and then given an environment where they can pursue their own answers to these questions. Students are motivated by their own curiosity - this is the ingredient that has been behind all major scientific pursuits and technological breakthroughs. By participating in inquiry based learning, students are thinking like scientists and savoring Eureka! moments - the rewards of having thoroughly dug into a problem and arrived at a solution on their own.

Although it takes a long time to find solutions to problems without using Google, the reward for working problems on their own more than makes up for the students' hard work. After pursuing a variety of problems for 4 hours, groups composing around 6 students each were speaking with confidence on subjects like sunspots, sending probes to Mars, and calculating the distance to Venus and the Sun. Just like ancient astronomers wondered about their place in the Universe, our students can ask interesting questions and take credit for their own discoveries.

Instructor facilitation is done by a hands-off method of providing only enough data to have students move forward with their problems. Just like researchers work a long time to discover what measurements are needed for the next step, students realize quickly that in order to find the answers to complex questions, they need to ask simpler questions first. Data and other bread crumbs are only laid out when the students are ready for them. On the way to solving their problems, most students will stray towards solving problems that are oftentimes very different from their original. This is okay - some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by pursuing a problem but finding more interesting problems to solve on the way.

Inquiry clearly engages and excites students. This has been proven both by research and experience. It encourages them to feel their own abilities to solve problems in their studies and their lives. Students leave our school feeling empowered that given enough time and energy, any problem can be eventually solved. This personal discovery is worth its weight in gold - the next time a student encounters a hard problem, rather than despairing, they will hopefully remember the time they calculated the distance to the Sun on their own.

WAISSYA 2017 - Accra, Ghana - Hello!

Below is a guest post from our very own Jielai Zhang. Make sure to check out the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics blog where this was originally posted!

Hello, Jielai Zhang writing in from Accra, Ghana. Right now, I am sitting in an air conditioned room hearing undergraduate physics, mathematics, engineering, computer science majors, teachers and aspiring astronomers/ astronomy educators talking about the importance of teamwork when solving problems, and doing science (paraphrased): “when we started to solve the problem, we felt like we had no ideas and it seemed impossible to be able to make any progress. However, all of us on the team seemed to have some very, very, very small ideas and when we started talking, the small ideas collected together and we started to move forward!”

 

Listening to this inspires me, makes me love science even more. You might wonder how I got myself into this place at this time. I am an instructor at the third edition of the week-long West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers (WAISSYA) at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission compound, collaborating with the Ghana Space Science Technology Institute. Here with me are astronomers from Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, South Africa, Canada and Germany. We are brought together with a common goal: build a critical mass of science leaders and science educators in West Africa, and this includes astronomers.

This collaboration is special, we are brought together by a common goal, and to achieve this common goal, we spent many months leading up to the school exchanging ideas of teaching and learning. Before the week of WAISSYA, the instructors got together for a week-long instructor training workshop to learn and exchange ideas on how to teach based on education. When we teach, we not only teach scientific content, but students learn by inquiry, allowing them to practice the process of science at the same time.

I feel very honoured and enthused to be here, and wish I had been able to post this earlier, but let’s just say that the internet and my laptop both didn’t work as required! Keep an eye out here for the next post from Margaret Ikape, another Dunlap graduate student who is an instructor at WAISSYA. Also, you can check out our Facebook public page: @WAISSYA.

Thank you Dunlap for supporting myself and Margaret to be here this year. Thank you for your continued support of me being here since the first WAISSYA in 2013!

A distant goal - reached!

After having arrived in Accra, Ghana last Monday, the team here has been engaged in a whirlwind of instructor workshop activities and cultural acclimatization. There’s been long meetings, there’s been attempts at impersonating our students’ perspectives, there’s been many tea breaks as well as friendships formed. Professional astronomers from Canada, Europe, Nigeria, and Ghana have been preparing to conduct a one week intensive summer school for over 60 West African students. As an international family has been founded around a common vision to promote astronomy, we are very excited to be involved with running this unique program and hope that many of our students leave feeling empowered and with newfound visions of a future in science and technology.

For our students, the West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers (WAISSYA) was opened this past Monday with a very well conducted opening ceremony run by our local organizing team. We were fortunate to have the blessings of high dignitaries from the Ghanaian government as well as local universities and organizations. We even had the opportunity to meet a Mr. Allotey, a Ghanaian famous for his contribution to science. 

This summer school is the biggest WAISSYA yet, with the biggest team, and we hope also the biggest impact on the region. There is a palpable feeling here that we are engaged in training young minds to be leaders in industry, science, and education. Our students are impressive and diverse individuals: a few are teachers, others are students, and others are business men and women. We even have one student representing the Ghanaian government – he is here to make a report that will directly impact the formation of an astronomy curriculum component for science teaching in Ghana. We have also been contacted by local universities hoping to collaborate to establish a more complete astronomy curriculum. This collaboration with the University of Accra will be conducted by our Nigerian colleagues at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.  

WAISSYA is unique for a number of reasons. Compared with many similar programs run in other African locales, WAISSYA’s team is at least half local, being composed of professionals from within West Africa as well as the international community. By having such an international team our hope is that WAISSYA is authentically West African rather than something foreign brought to our students. The West African team members are leading scientists in their fields, running active research projects at their home institutions in Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa, as well as being strong advocates of STEM disciplines in their countries.

The second big way WAISSYA is unique in the world is the teaching program. WAISSYA utilizes a pedagogical style called inquiry. A couple days ago the instructors got a taste of what inquiry is – we need to understand the students’ struggles as well as their triumphs. Inquiry starts with asking questions. Questions are prompted by images of different astronomical subjects: the sun, rockets, stars, galaxies, the moon, exoplanets, and others. Students can decide on a question that most interests them, and then along with other students who are interested in the same thing they will engage with their question for a rather long period of time. Students will learn how to think like a scientist and hopefully come away feeling that any question or difficulty they have in life can be solved by focused hard work.

Before leaving for today, we’d like to take a moment to thank our wonderful sponsors for making this school happen. It is amazing to be seeing this program come together, and it is all thanks to our sponsor organizations as well as many private individuals. You've believed in our vision for creating a sustainable and highly influential program for West African students to explore their interests in astronomy. Thank you!

Our Donors

Many individuals have donated through our crowd funding page

Here are the organizations that have generously contributed partial funding for WAISSYA 2017:

IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, Square Kilometer Array, Abdus-Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, American Association of Physics Teachers, University of British Columbia Dept. of Physics & Astronomy.

Stay tuned for more posts about inquiry, the culture of Ghana, astronomy, and how our program is going throughout the week!