The Expert TA – Expert TA Astronomy

A Complete Solution for Teaching Astronomy

(New) Five Variations of the OpenStax Book: Not all Introductory Astronomy textbooks or courses present material in exactly the same way. Expert TA’s editorial team began by doing a survey of different approaches and then modified the OpenStax Astronomy text to create versions that work for those approaches. Learn More.
Edit the Open Stax Textbooks: Start with any of the six base versions and utilized our intuitive editor to create your customized version. Click here to learn more.
eReader: Within your Expert TA class, your students will access either your custom version, or one of the six main versions, via our intuitive eReader.
Test Bank: The official multiple-choice test bank questions that go beyond fact memorization by encouraging students to apply their understanding of the material.
Advanced Graphical Question Types: drag-and-drop labeling, ranking, sorting, matching, etc.
Interactive Chapter Summaries: We all want students to read the book. You can now incentivize students with these assignable interactive fill-in-the-blank problems.
Figuring for Yourself: Mathematics is included in a flexible manner to meet the needs of individual instructors. The collection includes additional problems not in the book, enhanced with randomized numbers.
Cost: Free for instructors. Just $15 per student for the digital textbook, and $35 per semester per student for online homework.
Problem Library: Table of Contents with question counts

(New) Astronomy eBook by Expert TA

Based on the Astronomy textbook produced by OpenStax, Astronomy by Expert TA is a comprehensive introductory astronomy textbook written at a level optimal for students and readers with non-science backgrounds. Subjects covered within the book span the full range of topics covered in typical introductory astronomy courses, reorganized and consolidated to create a more streamlined approach than the original OpenStax title.

Interactive simulations produced by the Astronomy Education group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have been integrated throughout, along with updated imagery from the James Webb Space Telescope and other missions at the forefront of space exploration. Each chapter is further supplemented with even more links to engaging external resources and additional helpful quantitative example problems to provide support for the novice student. This textbook is suitable for a one-semester course or a two-semester introductory sequence for non-science majors.

Five additional versions of the Expert TA Astronomy text are available to fit your Introductory Astronomy course. These versions are titled Planets Near and Far, Planets and Their Stars, Stars and Galaxies, Galaxies and Cosmology, and Astronomy Essentials. These alternate versions of our Astronomy text have been compiled to fit not only the sequence, but the scope of these specific courses.

(New) Editable eBooks with OpenStax

As a proud partner of OpenStax we aim to enhance their materials and offerings by providing technology solutions that they may not have themselves. Currently there is no way directly via OpenStax for instructors to customize or edit the texts in an eReader format.

We are happy to help the adopters of these texts by now providing such an editor and corresponding eReader. Instructors will be able to rearrange, rewrite, change/add images, add new sections/chapters, or easily do more advanced things like embed videos or PheT simulations. Your edited version of the textbook will be distributed through an eReader and available to students from the main class management page in Expert TA.

Engaging Question Types

Studies show that students retain more information when concepts are brought to life with educational exercises that are more interactive. For example, when students actively build a diagram of the Celestial Sphere (shown left), they remember the experience more readily than if they simply selected a multiple choice answer.

Immediate Feedback helps students who are making mistakes get back on track. In the animation to the left, notice the provided feedback when an incorrect answer is submitted.

Traditional question types, such as Multiple Choice and True/False, still have an important role in assessment but are more effective when combined with more interactive materials.

Expert TA has designed our online homework platform to contain an appropriate combination of traditional and interactive questions.

Drag-and-Drop labeling, shown above, is one example of interactive questions that get students more involved in the learning process.
Matching/Pairing: Items are moved to be paired with their corresponding relational “mate”.
Ranking: Students actively order elements related to their size, sequence, etc.

Sorting/Categorizing: Students group items based on specified criteria.
Identify Feature: Students point-and-click on an area or areas of a given image to identify a specific element or feature.
Numeric Questions: Including randomized numbers, students are asked to make basic calculations that are key to some concepts of astronomy.

Interactive and Assignable Reading Exercises

We, like you, want students to read the textbook carefully enough to retain key concepts. It can be a challenge to both convince students to do the assigned reading and to also monitor comprehension.

Expert TA’s assignable chapter summaries incentivize students to pay attention to some of the most important parts of the book. Rather than students passively reading through the textbook, they become active participants.

From the same grade sheet containing other assignments, instructors can quickly assess what percentage of the class is completing the readings and the class’s overall level of understanding.

About the Book

Astronomy is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of a wide range of one- or two-semester introductory astronomy courses. The book begins with relevant scientific fundamentals and progresses through an exploration of the solar system, stars, galaxies, and cosmology.

The Astronomy textbook builds student understanding through the use of relevant analogies, clear and non-technical explanations, and rich illustrations. Mathematics is included in a flexible manner to meet the needs of individual instructors.

Each chapter includes a section-by-section summary, resources for further exploration, review questions, thought questions, numerical problems, and group discussion activities.

About the Author

Andrew Fraknoi is the lead senior author for OpenStax Astronomy and the former Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College. He has been the author or co-author of 14 books in the fields of astronomy education and outreach and is the recipient of the AAS Education Award, among other honors.

Fraknoi was the Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for 14 years, where he organized and moderated five national symposia on teaching Astro 101. With Sidney Wolff, he was the founding editor of the journal Astronomy Education Review.

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute and as Vice-chair of the Board of the Friends of Lick Observatory.

In retirement, he is writing science fiction, with three stories published so far. This Expert TA guide remains strictly non-fiction, however!

A Stress-Free Semester

You and your students should be thinking about astronomy, not about course setup and technological configurations. Expert TA knows this and has gone to great lengths to make the entire experience as smooth as possible.

Simple Registration: You share a registration link, students go through an easy three-step process, and they are enrolled and taking assignments.
LMS Integration: Instructors can synchronize grades with their LMS grade book. For students, single sign-on provides access to all the course materials from one location.
A Commitment to Customer Service: The company was created on the idea of building great educational solutions, but to the Account Managers at Expert TA we think of ourselves first as a customer service company.

Expert TA is easy to use, provides great value, and gets the job done at a better price; it really does a good job. The problems are a cut above what I have seen in other web-based homework. They are more complex and detailed. They have more different parts and each one of the problems addresses another aspect of physics.
Hector Mireles, Associate Professor of Physics, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA

I went with Expert TA because I had been using a publisher’s system and all of the answers to all of the questions were available on Google.
Simon C. Capstick, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL