Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2022 Sep;21(3):ar47. doi: 10.1187/cbe.22-01-0007.
Learning molecular biology involves using visual representations to communicate ideas about largely unobservable biological processes and molecules. Genes and gene expression cannot be directly visualized, but students are expected to learn and understand these and related concepts. Theoretically, textbook illustrations should help learners master such concepts, but how are genes and other DNA-linked concepts illustrated for learners? We examined all DNA-related images found in 12 undergraduate biology textbooks to better understand what biology students encounter when learning concepts related to DNA. Our analysis revealed a wide array of DNA images that were used to design a new visual framework, the DNA Landscape, which we applied to more than 2000 images from common introductory and advanced biology textbooks. All DNA illustrations could be placed on the landscape framework, but certain positions were more common than others. We mapped figures about "gene expression" and "meiosis" onto the landscape framework to explore how these challenging topics are illustrated for learners, aligning these outcomes with the research literature to showcase how the overuse of certain representations may hinder, instead of help, learning. The DNA Landscape is a tool to promote research on visual literacy and to guide new learning activities for molecular biology.
学习分子生物学需要使用视觉表现形式来传达关于那些基本上无法观察到的生物过程和分子的想法。基因和基因表达无法直接可视化，但学生们需要学习和理解这些以及相关的概念。从理论上讲，课本插图应该有助于学习者掌握这些概念，但对于学习者来说，如何说明基因和其他与 DNA 相关的概念呢？我们检查了 12 本本科生物学教科书中所有与 DNA 相关的图像，以便更好地了解学习与 DNA 相关的概念时，生物学学生所遇到的情况。我们的分析揭示了广泛的 DNA 图像，这些图像被用来设计一个新的视觉框架，即 DNA 景观，我们将其应用于 2000 多张来自普通入门和高级生物学教科书的图像。所有的 DNA 插图都可以放在景观框架上，但某些位置比其他位置更常见。我们将关于“基因表达”和“减数分裂”的图形映射到景观框架上，以探讨这些具有挑战性的主题是如何为学习者说明的，将这些结果与研究文献进行对比，展示某些表示方法的过度使用可能会阻碍而不是帮助学习。DNA 景观是一种促进视觉素养研究和指导分子生物学新学习活动的工具。
