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Register a new userThe Revolution in Astronomy Education: Data Science for the Masses
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Kirk D. Borne
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As our capacity to study ever-expanding domains of our science has increased (including the time domain, non-electromagnetic phenomena, magnetized plasmas, and numerous sky surveys in multiple wavebands with broad spatial coverage and unprecedented depths), so have the horizons of our understanding of the Universe been similarly expanding. This expansion is coupled to the exponential data deluge from multiple sky surveys, which have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into Petabytes (even hundreds of Petabytes) in the next decade. With this increased vastness of information, there is a growing gap between our awareness of that information and our understanding of it. Training the next generation in the fine art of deriving intelligent understanding from data is needed for the success of sciences, communities, projects, agencies, businesses, and economies. This is true for both specialists (scientists) and non-specialists (everyone else: the public, educators and students, workforce). Specialists must learn and apply new data science research techniques in order to advance our understanding of the Universe. Non-specialists require information literacy skills as productive members of the 21st century workforce, integrating foundational skills for lifelong learning in a world increasingly dominated by data. We address the impact of the emerging discipline of data science on astronomy education within two contexts: formal education and lifelong learners.
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Data volumes from multiple sky surveys have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into tens (or hundreds) of petabytes in the next decade. This exponential growth of new data both enables and challenges effective astronomical research, requiring new approaches. Thus far, astronomy has tended to address these challenges in an informal and ad hoc manner, with the necessary special expertise being assigned to e-Science or survey science. However, we see an even wider scope and therefore promote a broader vision of this data-driven revolution in astronomical research. For astronomy to effectively cope with and reap the maximum scientific return from existing and future large sky surveys, facilities, and data-producing projects, we need our own information science specialists. We therefore recommend the formal creation, recognition, and support of a major new discipline, which we call Astroinformatics. Astroinformatics includes a set of naturally-related specialties including data organization, data description, astronomical classification taxonomies, astronomical concept ontologies, data mining, machine learning, visualization, and astrostatistics. By virtue of its new stature, we propose that astronomy now needs to integrate Astroinformatics as a formal sub-discipline within agency funding plans, university departments, research programs, graduate training, and undergraduate education. Now is the time for the recognition of Astroinformatics as an essential methodology of astronomical research. The future of astronomy depends on it.
The NSFs Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AAPF) is exceptional among the available postdoctoral awards in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The fellowship is one of the few that allows postdoctoral researchers to pursue an original research program, of their own design, at the U.S. institution of their choice. However, what makes this fellowship truly unique is the ability of Fellows to lead an equally challenging, original educational program simultaneously. The legacy of this singular fellowship has been to encourage and advance leaders in the field who are equally as passionate about their own research as they are about sharing that research and their passion for astronomy with students and the public. In this positional paper we address the importance of fellowships like the AAPF to the astronomical profession by identifying the science and educational contributions that Fellows have made to the community. Further, we recommend that fellowships that encourage leading postdoctoral researchers to also become leaders in Astronomy education be continued and expanded.
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Astronomers have played many roles in their engagement with the larger astronomy education ecosystem. Their activities have served both the formal and informal education communities worldwide, with levels of involvement from the occasional participant to the full-time professional. We discuss these many diverse roles, giving background, context, and perspective on their value in encouraging and improving astronomy education. This review covers the large amounts of new research on best practices for diverse learning environments. For the formal education learning environment, we cover pre-university roles and engagement activities. This evidence-based perspective can support astronomers in contributing to the broad astronomy education ecosystem in more productive and efficient ways and in identifying new niches and approaches for developing the science capital necessary for a science literate society and for greater involvement of underrepresented groups in the science enterprise.
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