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Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology

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 tha...

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Autores principales: Briggs, Amy G., Morgan, Stephanie K., Sanderson, Seth K., Schulting, Molly C., Wieseman, Laramie J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society of Microbiology 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5134937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28101260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.1165
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author Briggs, Amy G.
Morgan, Stephanie K.
Sanderson, Seth K.
Schulting, Molly C.
Wieseman, Laramie J.
author_facet Briggs, Amy G.
Morgan, Stephanie K.
Sanderson, Seth K.
Schulting, Molly C.
Wieseman, Laramie J.
author_sort Briggs, Amy G.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-51349372017-01-18 Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology Briggs, Amy G. Morgan, Stephanie K. Sanderson, Seth K. Schulting, Molly C. Wieseman, Laramie J. J Microbiol Biol Educ Research 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. American Society of Microbiology 2016-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5134937/ /pubmed/28101260 http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.1165 Text en ©2016 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode), which grants the public the nonexclusive right to copy, distribute, or display the published work.
spellingShingle Research
Briggs, Amy G.
Morgan, Stephanie K.
Sanderson, Seth K.
Schulting, Molly C.
Wieseman, Laramie J.
Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title_full Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title_fullStr Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title_full_unstemmed Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title_short Tracking the Resolution of Student Misconceptions about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
title_sort tracking the resolution of student misconceptions about the central dogma of molecular biology
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5134937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28101260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.1165
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