Briggs Amy G, Morgan Stephanie K, Sanderson Seth K, Schulting Molly C, Wieseman Laramie J
Department of Biology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI 53511.
J Microbiol Biol Educ. 2016 Dec 2;17(3):339-350. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.1165. eCollection 2016 Dec.
The goal of our study was to track changes in student understanding of the central dogma of molecular biology before and after taking a genetics course. Concept maps require the ability to synthesize new information into existing knowledge frameworks, and so the hypothesis guiding this study was that student performance on concept maps reveals specific central dogma misconceptions gained, lost, and retained by students. Students in a genetics course completed pre- and posttest concept mapping tasks using terms related to the central dogma. Student maps increased in complexity and validity, indicating learning gains in both content and complexity of understanding. Changes in each of the 351 possible connections in the mapping task were tracked for each student. Our students did not retain much about the central dogma from their introductory biology courses, but they did move to more advanced levels of understanding by the end of the genetics course. The information they retained from their introductory courses focused on structural components (e.g., protein is made of amino acids) and not on overall mechanistic components (e.g., DNA comes before RNA, the ribosome makes protein). Students made the greatest gains in connections related to transcription, and they resolved the most prior misconceptions about translation. These concept-mapping tasks revealed that students are able to correct prior misconceptions about the central dogma during an intermediate-level genetics course. From these results, educators can design new classroom interventions to target those aspects of this foundational principle with which students have the most trouble.
我们研究的目的是追踪学生在修读遗传学课程前后对分子生物学中心法则理解的变化。概念图要求具备将新信息整合到现有知识框架中的能力，因此指导本研究的假设是，学生在概念图上的表现揭示了他们获得、失去和保留的关于中心法则的特定误解。遗传学课程的学生使用与中心法则相关的术语完成了课前和课后的概念图绘制任务。学生的概念图在复杂性和有效性方面有所提高，表明在理解内容和复杂性方面都有学习收获。对每个学生在绘图任务中351种可能联系中的每一种变化都进行了追踪。我们的学生从入门生物学课程中学到的关于中心法则的知识不多，但在遗传学课程结束时，他们确实达到了更高层次的理解。他们从入门课程中保留的信息集中在结构成分（例如，蛋白质由氨基酸组成）上，而不是整体机制成分（例如，DNA先于RNA，核糖体制造蛋白质）。学生在与转录相关的联系方面进步最大，并且他们解决了关于翻译的最多先前误解。这些概念图绘制任务表明，学生能够在中级遗传学课程中纠正先前对中心法则的误解。根据这些结果，教育工作者可以设计新的课堂干预措施，以针对学生在这一基本原则方面遇到最多困难的那些方面。
