Have you done a correspondence/internet course in astronomy?

Have you done a correspondence/internet course in astronomy? If so please let me know –

What was the course?
Who provided it?
How long did it last?
How much did it cost?
What award/certificate did you get at the end?
What did you think of it, and would you recommend it to others?

I’m preparing a special education supplement for A&S. It deals primarily with degree courses and post-grad courses in Irish universities, but I want to put in an article about correspondence courses and teach-yourself books for us older folks as well.

Regards,

Emmet Mordaunt.

Hi Emmet,

What was the course?
Who provided it?
How long did it last?
How much did it cost?
What award/certificate did you get at the end?
What did you think of it, and would you recommend it to others?

I'm currently doing a Masters in Astronomy With Swinburne University of Technology in Australia astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/

The corse consists of 12 modules. There are about 16 modules for you to choose from. How long it takes depends on how many modules you do per semester. I find that I can do one unit reasonably comfortably, if I do two in the one semester I find I don't have much time for anything else and have to take at least one day off work every fortnight to study. 4 moudles per semester is the most you can do which is equivalent to a full time course. I would advise just taking one unit at a time at the start at least until you see how your new study will fit into your lifestyle; these courses are big time commitments.

At the moment the course costs about 600 euro per module. Another good reason to spread out the units! Textbooks are extra.

The qualification is a Master of Science in Astronomy.

The format is entirely online. For each unit there are 2 open book online tests (10% each), a 2000 word essay (20%), a project (30%) and newsgroup contributions (%30). I've always felt that the newsgroup contribution was a bit heavily weighted but it is designed to increase the communication between students to generate classroom debate. A typical fortnightly unit will have over 150 posts.

I would recommend this course. Even if you dont want to do the MSc option you can opt to do single units. There is also a diploma option for completing 8 units.

The courses are not very mathematical. Though you can choose mathematical projects (eg I'm currently working out how to calculate the properties of a pulsar from radio observations, requiring writing software to analyze the radio signal); and the supervisors and other students are quite happy to go into more mathematical aspects of topics. The presentations themselves seem quite colourful and the basics of the topics are clearly and well presented in the presentations. However you will be expected to read up in textbooks and accompany any newsgroup posts with book references or citing astronomical journals. Access to most journals is provided online through the university subscription.

I guess you will get out of a course what you put into it. I'm sure its possible to do a minimum amount of work and scrape through with a qualification. However if you are spending money on these courses its well worth taking it slowly and enjoying the units. You will find yourself staying up reading journal papers until 3am on a monday morning (for example!).

Let me know if you need me to elaborate on anything.

Cheers,
~Al

The Open University does a lot of Astromomy.
A few of their modules that I studied for my BSc were on Astronomical topics.
Google them up!

Peter.

I have done some Open University modules in astronomy as well. They were great fun. Especially their residential school for the level 2 SXR208 Observing the Universe. You get to spent a whole week at a real observatory. Everybody loved it !
They have intro level modules that take about 12 weeks in level 1 that prepare you if you want to do the later modules in level 2, where they have astronomy and astrobiology.
They have level 3 courses as well that require quite a bit of knowledge in maths and physics.

check them out at:

www.open.ac.uk

Also their books are amazing and created with great detail. The courses also have workbooks, planisphere, DVD, and much more included .

www.astronomy.ac.uk/

I did the Introduction to Astronomy course with the University of Central Lancashire.
Course was very interesting. Does require 1-2 evenings a week study time at home. Learned some interesting stuff. Well worth doing.

Would I recommend it? Yes. However, at times it felt to me that one person was setting the querstions and another person writing the course! It's a University Certificate you get out of it at the end.

The text book that's required for the course is absolutely superb! It's called "Universe", 7th edition with CD ROM containing Starry Night software. Written by by R.A.Freedman and W.J. Kaufmann III ISBN: 07167 69956.

Regards,

Emmet - Liverpool John Moore's Universiity do a wide variety of astronomy modules tailored for distance learning. I haven't done any of them butthey seem reasoably priced, well structured and lead to formal qualifications.

www.astro.livjm.ac.uk/courses/courses.shtml

Dave