The online course called "General Astronomy applied to the skies of the Coquimbo Region" is available at http://univrso.userena.digital/ and in its first edition it had a participation of more than 500 people.

The Univrso Project of the University of La Serena is an initiative that seeks to strengthen astrotourism in the Coquimbo Region through citizen training. In this sense, it has begun to teach e-learning courses that are open to the entire community.

The first, called "General Astronomy Applied to the skies of the Coquimbo Region" has been widely accepted by the public, who positively value the development of the course. "I am very grateful to be able to enjoy this course and that it helps me to better contemplate the universe in my region, I do not have much knowledge of astronomy but I do want to learn," says Professor Macarena Olivares, a course participant.

For his part, Humberto Farías, Director of the project, highlights the broad participation of citizens in the first edition of this course. "We had more than 500 people registered from the region and the country, which was very gratifying for us because we were able to see the feedback from the participants, who positively valued this ULS initiative," says the professional.

In its first edition, 110 certificates have been delivered to the participants who approved with the activities. "This makes us very happy because it reflects the interest of the community in learning about our skies and most importantly, which is the reason for this project, is to provide knowledge and tools so that the first tourist guides, who are the inhabitants from this area, we can share this knowledge with tourists”, explains Farías.

New edition

The second edition of the course began on July 8, registration for which is still available through http://univrso.userena.digital/.

Among the topics covered in the course are the Solar System, Positional Astronomy, Galactic, Extragalactic and Stellar Astronomy. In this regard, Yanett Leiva, instructional designer at Campus Digital, the unit that executes this project, explains that "the course has academic support from prominent astronomers from our University, and its design considers a curricular structure that contains sequences with different learning resources. , such as learning videos, complementary support material and evaluation activities, which are considered to deliver a Certificate of Participation”.

Finally, Dr. in Astronomy, Marcelo Jaque, ULS academics and one of the course speakers, invites the community to register and participate in these courses. “You will surely like them, we have thought a lot about how to bring astronomy closer to the entire community, using words and terminologies that we can all understand and this course has all these characteristics, which is why we invite you to enroll”, he concludes.