Peer-review Platform for Astronomy Education Activities

TL;DR

astroEDU is a web platform that applies peer-review processes to astronomy education activities, enhancing their quality, visibility, and credibility through a scientific publication-like workflow.

Contribution

This paper introduces astroEDU, a peer-reviewed platform for astronomy education resources, combining scientific standards with open access distribution.

Findings

Improved quality and credibility of astronomy education activities.

Enhanced visibility and accessibility of reviewed educational resources.

Successful implementation of peer-review in education resource publishing.

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of astronomy education activities exist, but their discoverability and quality is highly variable. The web platform for astronomy education activities, astroEDU, presented in this paper tries to solve these issues. Using the familiar peer-review workflow of scientific publications, astroEDU is improving standards of quality, visibility and accessibility, while providing credibility to these astronomy education activities. astroEDU targets activity guides, tutorials and other educational activities in the area of astronomy education, prepared by teachers, educators and other education specialists. Each of the astroEDU activities is peer-reviewed by an educator as well as an astronomer to ensure a high standard in terms of scientific content and educational value. All reviewed materials are then stored in a free open online database, enabling broad distribution in a range of different formats. In this way astroEDU is not another web repository for educational resources but a mechanism for peer-reviewing and publishing high-quality astronomy education activities in an open access way. This paper will provide an account on the implementation and first findings of the use of astroEDU.