Biomolecular visualization skills are paramount to understanding key concepts in the biological sciences, such as structure-function relationships and molecular interactions. Various programs allow a learner to manipulate 3D structures, and biomolecular modeling promotes active learning, builds computational skills, and bridges the gap between two dimensional textbook images and the three dimensions of life. A critical skill in this area is to model a protein active site, displaying parts of the macromolecule that can interact with a small molecule, or ligand, in a way that shows binding interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany biology students struggle to learn about the process of meiosis and have particular difficulty understanding the molecular basis of crossing over and the importance of homologous pairing for proper segregation. To help students overcome these challenges, we designed an activity that uses a newly developed Chromosome Connections Kit® from 3-D Molecular Designs to allow learners to explore meiosis at the molecular level. We took a backwards design approach in constructing an effective classroom activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile molecular visualization has been recognized as a threshold concept in biology education, the explicit assessment of students' visual literacy skills is rare. To facilitate the evaluation of this fundamental ability, a series of NSF-IUSE-sponsored workshops brought together a community of faculty engaged in creating instruments to assess students' biomolecular visualization skills. These efforts expanded our earlier work in which we created a rubric describing overarching themes, learning goals, and learning objectives that address student progress toward biomolecular visual literacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe essence of molecular biology education lies in understanding of gene expression, with subtopics including the central dogma processes, such as transcription and translation. While these concepts are core to the discipline, they are also notoriously difficult for students to learn, probably because they cannot be directly observed. While nearly all active learning strategies have been shown to improve learning compared with passive lectures, little has been done to compare different types of active learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFModeling and visualization of the cellular mesoscale, bridging the nanometer scale of molecules to the micrometer scale of cells, is being studied by an integrative approach. Data from structural biology, proteomics, and microscopy are combined to simulate the molecular structure of living cells. These cellular landscapes are used as research tools for hypothesis generation and testing, and to present visual narratives of the cellular context of molecular biology for dissemination, education, and outreach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA thorough understanding of the molecular biosciences requires the ability to visualize and manipulate molecules in order to interpret results or to generate hypotheses. While many instructors in biochemistry and molecular biology use visual representations, few indicate that they explicitly teach visual literacy. One reason is the need for a list of core content and competencies to guide a more deliberate instruction in visual literacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding how basic structural units influence function is identified as a foundational/core concept for undergraduate biological and biochemical literacy. It is essential for students to understand this concept at all size scales, but it is often more difficult for students to understand structure-function relationships at the molecular level, which they cannot as effectively visualize. Students need to develop accurate, 3-dimensional mental models of biomolecules to understand how biomolecular structure affects cellular functions at the molecular level, yet most traditional curricular tools such as textbooks include only 2-dimensional representations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiochem Mol Biol Educ
February 2014
A team of students, educators, and researchers has developed new materials to teach cell signaling within its cellular context. Two nontraditional modalities are employed: physical models, to explore the atomic details of several of the proteins in the angiogenesis signaling cascade, and illustrations of the proteins in their cellular environment, to give an intuitive understanding of the cellular context of the pathway. The experiences of the team underscore the use of these types of materials as an effective mode for fostering students' understanding of the molecular world and the scientific method used to define it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvaluations of the success of different conservation strategies are still in their infancy. We used four different measures of project outcomes--ecological, economic, attitudinal, and behavioral--to test hypotheses derived from the assumptions that underlie contemporary conservation solutions. Our hypotheses concerned the effects of natural resource utilization, market integration, decentralization, and community homogeneity on project success.
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