An intermediate level Astronomy class centered around Hubble's Law

a) We describe a novel intermediate level Astrophysics centered around one relation: Hubble's  Law. The course studies this relation in detail and in so doing takes diversions to other branches of astrophysics including stellar evolution, radial and non-radial oscillations and galaxy evolution. In addition, the course relies on much reduced lecturing and students working on group activities in class.

b) We describe the use of extensive group activities in class in A100 - the beginning Astronomy class for non-science majors. Lecturing is kept to about 20-25 minutes. The remaining time in class is spent in doing exercises with the students workin in groups. These exercises ead to more active learning, a deeper understanding of concepts and their application and a more sound footing in the more mathematical aspects of the course. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of students increases their scores as a result of this method; and, in fact, a significant portion of the class improved their scores by over 10%. In particular, students did very well in the more mathematical questions in the exam.