Do students at UMR differ in their development of horizontal translational literacy skills for the oxygen binding concept across years and/or by sex?

Abstract

For many undergraduate students and experts, biology, chemistry, and biochemistry courses are difficult because they involve conceptual understanding of ideas that require assimilation of new knowledge with pre-existing knowledge from prior courses. Misconceptions increase cognitive load and interrupt the mental framework, making it difficult for individuals to learn and master course material. Adding to the complexity of these disciplines, individuals are presented with a variety of representations of abstraction which adds to the already high cognitive load of these courses (Schönborn et. al 2002; Offerdahl et. al, 2017). Intentional development of individuals' visual literacy skills has the potential to increase conceptual understanding while also decreasing cognitive load. Although research suggests that developing learners’ mental models can help overcome misconceptions, little to no evidence exists in the chemistry and biochemistry education literature on student and experts structural knowledge related to visual literacy skills, specifically with horizontal translational visual literacy skills for oxygen binding (Chi, 2008; Gilbert & Boulter, 1998; Cranford et. al, 2014, Schönborn and Anderson, 2010). A study was conducted in 2021 in which students and experts were administered four surveys of (bio)chemical models and were asked to scale their similarities from 0-9. This research leads the way for the development of novel targeted learning assessments that address misconceptions and integrate active learning into the undergraduate biochemistry curricula to increase undergraduate student understanding of different chemical and biochemical processes.