Development of an Open Education Homework System for Transforming Large Introductory Astronomy Courses

In many large introductory university courses, including astronomy, online homework systems have mostly replaced traditional hand-written assignments; however, the most common online systems are provided by textbook publishers, which can be expensive and inflexible. One reason that faculty are reluctant to adopt open education resource (OER) textbooks is the dearth of complementary OER online resources, including homework and assignment systems. To improve effectiveness and eliminate cost of online homework systems for three large astronomy courses at Ontario Tech University, a homework system with a new pool of assignments, entitled Astronomy Mastery Modules, was created in the open-source LON-CAPA system. The purpose of the modules is to allow students to take information presented during lectures and incorporate it into their developing knowledge and skillset in astronomy. The traditional textbook was also replaced with curated open education reading resources that were deployed as asynchronous annotation group exercises. The creation of an OER homework system and adoption of OER readings resulted in courses that have no additional costs, thereby reducing the systematic inequities and barriers currently present in higher education. They have also resulted in more flexible yet targeted learning materials and improved learning outcomes.
In this talk I will describe the process of transforming large astronomy courses to exclusively use OER with a particular focus on the new astronomy homework system and how easy it is to adopt and adapt to other university and college astronomy courses.