Genetics plays an increasing role in modern life as evidenced by the development of revolutionary techniques such as CRISPR-based genome editing and the rise of personalized genome services. However, genetics is difficult to learn; known issues include its abstract nature, different scales, and technical language. Pedigree analysis is a convergence of these concepts, requiring use of multiple symbolic scales and understanding the relationships and nature of alleles, genes, and chromosomes. To measure student understanding of these concepts, as well as support biology educational reform toward student-centered instruction, we developed a formative assessment to provide reliable and valid evidence of student understanding, learning, and misconceptions for pedigree analysis. Nine multiple choice items targeted to four learning objectives were developed in an iterative process with faculty and student input. We designed distractor answers to capture common student misconceptions and deployed a novel statistical technique to assess the congruence of distractor language with targeted misconceptions. Psychometric analysis showed the instrument provides valid and reliable data and has utility to measure normalized learning gains. Finally, we employed cross-tabulation and distractor progression to identify several stable misconceptions that can be targeted for instructional intervention.
Genetics is a difficult topic for undergraduate biology students to comprehend because the topics are abstract, complex, use specific terminology, and require thinking across multiple scales, including the symbolic scale. Education regarding the most basic genetics concepts begins in mid‐elementary grades with distinct concepts repeated and built upon through high school. However, students also transfer information from popular culture and through making their own meaning of observed phenomena. Therefore, when students arrive to a genetics course, they have pre‐instructional knowledge about genetics topics some of which are misconceptions and/or naïve conceptions. The aim of this project was to investigate common misconceptions and naïve conceptions in undergraduate courses for pedigree analysis. Pedigree analysis is a common tool that involves thinking across the symbolic scale, distinct terminology, and the application of Mendelian and non‐Mendelian genetic principles. Open‐ended questions were used to gather student answers for three distinct learning objectives. Student answers were analyzed and grouped according to each student's conceptual errors. Terminology, the ability to gather the appropriate information from questions, and the symbolic nature of pedigree analysis were major problems for students and represent major, cross‐cutting problems with many genetics concepts. In addition, students' answers also revealed problems with understanding autosomal versus sex‐linked inheritance as well as confusion about the nature and relationship of genes and alleles. Furthermore, some students used reasoning associated with population level genetics, which shows a lack of understanding about mathematical probability and its relationship to inheritance for an individual. Future studies aim to utilize these data to investigate a schema theory approach to formation and organization of conceptual understanding for pedigree analysis.Support or Funding InformationNSF Award : 1710262This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.
Education policy is currently calling for wholistic reform towards the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). However, much of the calls lack practical advice or application to aid classroom and teaching professionals in this venture. Of particular interest should be how properties, such as barriers, of the individual disciplines may change in an integrated form. One such barrier that should be considered is that of anxiety. This review develops a novel framework for STEM anxiety in the educational context. This is accomplished through a review of anxiety literature within the individual disciplines, with reference to related psychological constructs. Literature was reviewed for definitions of anxiety within the disciplines, ways that disciplinary anxiety has been measured, and what antecedents were identified. Antecedents were taken from those that were explicitly identified, as well as those that were inferentially indicated in the definitions or the measurement instruments. The antecedents, or contributors, to the individual disciplinary anxieties were cross-referenced to generate a single list of potential antecedents that may impact learning within the integrated STEM space.
Biology education is currently undergoing reform efforts to increase student retention and appreciation within the biological sciences. Both Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education call for the increased use of evidence‐based pedagogical strategies to support learning in biology learning environments. However, integration of evidence‐based instructional strategies relies on biology instructors' knowledge of student pre‐conceptions and misconceptions. Genetics represents a critical area of biology education that presents many problems for student learning due to its abstract nature, the need to think through different spatial scales, and heavy reliance upon technical language. Pedigree analysis represents a convergence of topics in genetics and, therefore, has the potential to identify multiple student learning difficulties. Pedigree analysis requires an understanding of modes of inheritance, which requires a knowledge of the nature of both dominance and recessiveness of traits, as well as understanding of the connections between genotype and phenotype and use of the symbolic scale. This project sought to gain an understanding of students' misconceptions of pedigrees in order to promote the development of an assessment tool for students' misconceptions. The research team developed targeted questions and collected written responses to these open‐ended questions as well as conducting self‐selected student interviews. Student responses were coded to identify the most common misconceptions which were used as distractors a draft multiple choice concept inventory (CI). The draft CI was administered to freshman, sophomore, and upper division undergraduate students. These data were then used to further revise the finalized CI. Pre‐post data are currently being collected to ensure reliability and discriminatory power of this CI. Future studies will include analysis of the persistence of distinct misconceptions across the different student groups, as well as a more thorough analysis of student misconception types and their potential sources.Support or Funding InformationFunded by NSF Award #1710262This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.
Genetics is a widely discussed topic both within and outside of science. One particular topic in genetics that is readily encountered outside of the science classroom is mutations. Students encounter mutations through several different avenues (e.g., news, comic books, movies) that may not be scientifically correct. This pre‐exposure to genetics concepts has the potential to misinform their ideas before ever enrolling in a genetics course. Because of this misinformation, genetics can be difficult for students because of the inconsistences in complex terminology, abstract concepts, and having to think across multiple scales. In order for instructors to create curricula for students, they first need to understand the misconceptions of genetics students may bring into the classroom. Instructors also need to understand if their practice is allowing students to overcome their misconceptions or if they are persistent throughout the students' education. The aim of this project is to 1) understand students' misconceptions about mutations and 2) determine if these misconceptions persist as student progress through their undergraduate education. A draft mutations concept inventory was used to collect responses from 454 students in introductory and advanced genetics courses, as well as introductory biology and advanced microbiology courses. The multiple choice questions included a correct answer and distractors from known misconceptions. Utilizing non‐metric dimensional scaling, data was visualized to determine which misconceptions persisted across different courses and which were resolved or created. Further studies aim to more fully explore conceptual understanding and specific misconception types by student group and so that instructors can provide resources that will enable students to gain an accurate conceptual understanding of mutations within genetics, microbiology, and molecular biology.Support or Funding InformationNSF Award #1710262This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.
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