Developing an Interactive 3D Learning Experience to Help Students Understand Key Regulatory Processes Associated with Glycolysis

Abstract

Recent recommendations for undergraduate biology instruction emphasize teaching foundational biological principles and helping students transfer these principles to more complex biological phenomena. These curricular endeavors can be facilitated by the incorporation of interactive visualization materials. The following research project was developed to explore whether a visual interactive didactic tool could be developed to improve learning outcomes for undergraduate biology students on the topic of allosteric regulation within the context of glycolysis. The results of this research could be beneficial for improving the development of interactive applications for science education.A pretest-posttest design method was used during an introductory biology course at the University of Illinois at Chicago in Spring 2017. 16 students completed the pretest and 12 completed the posttest. Both tests were worth 5 points. A decrease of 1.38 points was observed for the average score on the posttest. Due to the lack of control with this research study and the small sample sizes, it is not possible to draw meaningful conclusions from these preliminary quantitative results. Qualitative results aggregated from the posttest reveal an overall positive experience with the interactive application (see figure 8 below).Glycolytic enzymes with resolved structures were first aggregated from the Protein Data Bank and modified in the Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) software. Enzyme models were then exported to Pixologic ZBrush where they were retopologized for efficiency of geometry and performance (see figure 3). Enzymes and substrates were animated in Autodesk 3ds Max. The user interface elements were created in Adobe Illustrator. All assets were imported into Unity and scripted for interactivity. Finally, lighting and materials were applied within the Unity environment. The completed application was built out on the WebGL platform in order to be accessed online. For the 2D animation, all elements were created within Adobe Illustrator. Adobe After Effects was used for compositing and the finished animation was encoded with Adobe Media Encoder for deployment and integration into the online module. Overall ProcessThere were two primary scenes in the application:Functional level scene (see figure 4): Students were able to control the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the environment and observe the effects on enzymatic activity. By manipulating this value, allosteric enzymes were either activated or deactivated. User interface elements were implemented strategically to help scaffold student understanding of this process. Students were then encouraged to click on the third enzyme, phosphofructokinase, to observe allosteric regulation at the structural level. Structural level scene (see figure 5):The final scene allowed students to interact with and observe the regulatory mechanisms of phosphofructokinase (PFK). Students could again manipulate the levels of ATP in the system and observe the effects on PFK. At this level, direct struc...