Learning how the electron transport chain works: independent and interactive effects of instructional strategies and learners’ characteristics

Abstract

In order to develop an expert-like mental model of complex systems, causal reasoning is essential. This study examines the differences between forward and backward instructional strategies' in terms of efficiency, students' learning and progression of their mental models of the electronic transport chain in an undergraduate metabolism course (n = 151). Additionally, the participants' cognitive flexibility, prior knowledge, and mental effort in the learning process are also investigated. The data were analyzed using a series of general linear models to compare the strategies. Although the two strategies did not differ significantly in terms of mental model progression and learning outcomes, both groups' mental models progressed significantly. Mental effort and prior knowledge were identified as significant predictors of mental model progression. An interaction between instructional strategy and cognitive flexibility revealed that the backward instruction was more efficient than the conventional (forward) strategy for students with lower cognitive flexibility, whereas the conventional instruction was more efficient for students with higher cognitive flexibility. The results are discussed and suggestions for future research on the possible moderating role of cognitive flexibility in the area of health education are presented.

Traditional, Mixed-Mode, and Online Instruction for Microbial Metabolism Before and During COVID-19

“…Beyond this, additional media and representation methods can help cement student understanding of metabolic cycle content (Long et al, 2021;Wikandari et al, 2021). While it is unclear why students performed the worst on the exam covering these metabolic cycles, there may be individual student factors which can explored to improve understand of processes like the electron transport chain (Darabi et al, 2015). Perhaps game-based learning, different active learning methods, or other ideas may be explored for this purpose.…”