Infiniscope: Solar System Formation Digital Exploration

In January, 2023, the Infiniscope project, a NASA Science Activation team based out of Arizona State University, has released a digital exploration for students, entitled "Solar System Formation". This resource was co-created with ASU School of Exploration Assistant Professor, Dr. Molly Simon, and graduate student, Haylee Archer. Dr. Simon is interested in the learning differences between students that engage in digital explorations vs. those using traditional pencil and paper methods. This digital exploration goes beyond the diagram and has learners derive condensation temperatures and locations of planets in our solar system and extrasolar planets using an interactive data-collecting probe and graphing technique.

This lesson is designed for higher education students, but can be appropriate for students down to the 8th grade level. It is easy-to-use for educators with options to launch the lesson directly from the website, integrate into a Learning Management System (Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle), or for schools without an Learning Management System (LMS), Infiniscope provides an LMS-lite version for enrollment. Dr. Simon had this to say, "I've gained such an appreciation for the attention to detail and amount of iteration it takes to make a user friendly digital learning experience. I have immensely enjoyed my time working with Infiniscope and they made the process from start to finish incredibly straightforward and accessible. I look forward to building more online learning tools with them in the future."

Learn more on the Infiniscope blog and check out the Solar System Formation digital exploration.

The Infiniscope project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AD79A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learners