Evidence Based Design: The Open Learning Initiative

ON THIS PAGE:

• Protein-ligand binding simulation (Try it!)
• Functional Groups Activiy (Try it!)

The OLI Modern Biology course is built around six key concepts that provide unifying explanations for how and why structures are formed and processes occur throughout the study of biology. In biology, as in many other complex disciplines, although the conceptual structure of knowledge in a domain is clear to experts, it is not to novices. The array of new ideas and unfamiliar terminology in introductory courses tends to overwhelm students into memorizing a set of isolated facts without understanding the underlying common principles (Chi, 2005; diSessa, 1993). One of the primary goals of the OLI biology course is for students to learn the many definitions of the concepts and also to recognize when they are operating in the process being studied. We introduce concepts in basic form and scaffold the extension of the concepts to other contexts giving students the opportunity to explicitly connect their knowledge and generalize their understanding.

The biological processes are complex and dynamic and not easily represented via text and static pictures. The biology team has developed a general-purpose simulation environment that links an underlying mathematical model to a computer animation so that the output of the mathematical model drives the details of the animation. Using this simulation environment, the observable properties of almost any biological process can be calculated in real time and then realized through the computer animation. With scientifically accurate models specified by the biologists on our team, the instructional activities we build within this simulation environment are scientifically authentic. The simulations allow us to present high-fidelity depictions of complex biological processes flexibly to students at different levels minimizing the likelihood of engendering student misconceptions.

Click the image to the left to run the simulation

This simulation is presented early in the course and is intended for introductory level students. Many objects can be displayed in the simulation window at a given point in time. If all objects (animation, equations and graphs) were presented at once students may not see how all these objects relate to each other, to the process of protein-ligand binding, or even what they represent. We start with the animation and direct the student to identify the various molecules depicted in the animation and we direct the student’s attention to the key aspects of the biological process (e.g., the bound versus free oxygen molecules). Research has shown that such techniques for focusing students’ attention are critical to helping students learn from animations and simulations because, although it is obvious to experts, students often do not know what to look for in a dynamic visualization. As we introduce each additional representation (the changing values in the equation and graphs), we pause the animation and direct the student’s attention to each of the representations and explicitly draw the connections between the representations and the biological process.

As the activity progresses, we gradually direct the student’s attention to more complex concepts and relationships. For more advanced students, these simple instructions are de-emphasized in favor of those that involve recognizing, applying, and synthesizing concepts in new situations.

While the behavior of the molecules in this animation is scientifically accurate, we intentionally chose a representation of a limited set of molecules even though in a normal biological system a large number of molecules would be involved. At this stage in a student’s learning, more detail and realism would not lead to more learning but rather distracts from the key features to which the student should be attending. Research has shown that instruction based on animations and pictures is more effective for novices when the graphics are simplified and provide explicit pointers to the important features (Biederman & Shiffrar, 1987; Clark & Mayer, 2003). We employ this principle in our animations and structure the materials so that students’ gradual learning is supported.

At the point in the simulation that we increase the number of ligand molecules, we encourage students to reflect on what is happening and predict how the system will react if we increase the number of ligand molecules. In the current version of the simulator, the student writes their prediction prior to running the simulation in the altered state. We log the students answer and the student receives feedback on their prediction through observing the simulation and reading the explanation.

Currently, we are incorporating mini-tutors (demonstrated in the engineering course page) into the simulation environment so that as students run the simulation, we can directly assess the knowledge they are supposed to be learning and provide more targeted, context-specific feedback to help students refine their understanding .

Click the image to the left to run the funcitonal groups activity

In the course, the students use the functional groups activity to explore the significant properties of the functional groups and to view text and 3-D representations of multiple example molecules within each group. Following this exploration, students engage in an interactive game that gives them the opportunity to apply what they have just investigated about functional groups.

An analysis of the data logs from an OLI biology study revealed that the more time students spent interacting with the functional groups activity, the better they performed on the corresponding quiz but not on other topics’ quizzes. The students’ time spent in OLI biology course was not significantly correlated with their other exam score, i.e., score they received on material they had learned without OLI-Biology materials. This suggests that the positive relationship we found in the former case was not simply a byproduct of better students showing both greater time on task and higher exam scores overall but rather that students’ time on task with the functional groups activity directly maps onto their learning of functional groups (Lovett 2006)