The Role of Visual Representations in Undergraduate Students’ Learning about Genetic Inheritance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The overall writing can be improved.
1. There are various type of visual aid. Why did you chose 2 here? it needs to be explained. 
2. Learning theories need to be relate to this study
3. Future research need to be explained further.
4. The result need to be explained clearly

Author Response

1. The overall writing can be improved.

We thank the reviewer for their helpful comments. We have read through the manuscript and tried to improve its clarity.

1. There are various type of visual aid. Why did you chose 2 here? it needs to be explained. 

We agree with the reviewer and have added this information to page 2. There we now say “In this paper, we focus on these three types of visual representations, as they have received substantial attention in psychological and educational research, and they have been found to influence learning and generalization.”

2. Learning theories need to be relate to this study

We include information on how the study relates to theories of learning and transfer on page 3. There we state: “This may be due to abstract representations being conceptually distanced from any one specific example. Theories of learning and transfer have proposed that presenting abstract information to students enhances the likelihood that they will transfer the information, as this information is less tied to a specific context [38,41].This conceptual distancing might make it easier for students to apply what they learned in a lesson to new examples.”

3. Future research need to be explained further.

In page 19 we have attempted to explain in more detail our future directions. There we now say: “Future work should examine whether students revert back to relying on these biases after a delay. Studies that include delayed posttests would be more similar to the experiences of students in real classrooms, who are tested on material they learned weeks or even months before. These studies would inform us of how long-lasting the effects of different visual representations are, and whether people continue to rely on biases after lessons. Addi-tionally, in the current study, we used brief lessons to attempt to correct these biases. Future work should examine whether more comprehensive biological instruction that directly challenges these biases would lead to greater conceptual change. Finally, future work should examine whether correcting these beliefs at younger ages is more effective, because there would be less time for the beliefs to become entrenched in students’ thinking [70].”

4. The result need to be explained clearly

In the first paragraph of the discussion section, we provide an overview of the results.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

It is very interesting research and a job well done. These recommendations can be considered for further improvement.

We thank the reviewer for their positive comments, and suggestions to improve our paper.

1. Briefly, in the introduction, one can add: the methodology used, the results obtained from the study and the difficulties encountered during the research.

We now include more information on the methodology and the difficulties in the introduction. Please see page 3 where we say: “Both studies were conducted in the Spring of 2021, and due to concerns about COVID-19, both studies were conducted online. Therefore, we used an online experimental methodology and used quantitative data analysis techniques to explore how undergraduate students think about genetic inheritance before and after a brief lesson, and to examine how the diagram presented during the lesson influences undergraduate students’ learning and generalization.” However, we believe that presenting the results of the study in the introduction would be confusing for readers, and therefore decided not to do so.

2. There are other educational factors that could offer guidelines to educators on how best to use visual representations to enhance student learning.

We agree with the reviewer and now state this clearly in page 18. There we say: “Other factors, such as students’ familiarity with a given visual representation, the content domain, and the age of the student, among others, should also be considered by educators when deciding how to use visual representations to enhance learning.”

3. There may be differences in the perception and interpretation of genealogical diagrams between different cultures.

We agree with the reviewer that there likely are differences in how these diagrams are interpreted across cultures. However, we do not know of any research that specifically addresses this question, and so we are hesitant to explore this issue in the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The topic of the study is relevant and enriches the didactics of biology teaching with findings on the role of visual representations in undergraduate students' learning about genetic inheritance.

The paper focuses very much on the process of the study of genetic inheritance. Two studies are described in detail:  lesson about genetic inheritance that included either perceptually rich or abstract visual representations (Study 1) or that included either perceptually rich or perceptually bland visual representations (Study 2). Different stages were identified during the study: learning, near-transfer, mid-level transfer, far-transfer. We noticed that this distinction of stages is not in line with the topic of the study, as the topic of the study uses only the concept of learning. The impression is that the topic does not cover the other phases of the study: near-transfer, mid-level transfer, long transfer.

It remains unclear what the object of the study is. What was the study about, was it about the learning process or just about the richness of perception.

There is a lack of information about the data collection about the instruments of data collection. The article says that after the lesson we asked the participants two simple comprehension questions. I would like an explanation of what these questions were, what the scale of the questions was, and how the scale of the question was considered in the choice of statistical criteria. Why were the chi-squared criterion chosen? What was measured with it? It is incorrect to use this criterion to compare test scores.

It says that "We found an effect of offspring type <....> and an interaction between offspring type and test time" (p.7). It remains unclear to us how both the effect and the interaction are measured with the same statistical criterion (chi square test). This is not correct since the effect can be  measured by regression (or SEM) and the interaction by - correlation coefficients. The topic of the study is about role, so it was appropriate to use regression. Adding a description of the object of the study and a description of the choice of statistical criteria would add clarity and credibility to the findings.

Author Response

The topic of the study is relevant and enriches the didactics of biology teaching with findings on the role of visual representations in undergraduate students' learning about genetic inheritance.

The paper focuses very much on the process of the study of genetic inheritance. Two studies are described in detail:  lesson about genetic inheritance that included either perceptually rich or abstract visual representations (Study 1) or that included either perceptually rich or perceptually bland visual representations (Study 2). Different stages were identified during the study: learning, near-transfer, mid-level transfer, far-transfer. We noticed that this distinction of stages is not in line with the topic of the study, as the topic of the study uses only the concept of learning. The impression is that the topic does not cover the other phases of the study: near-transfer, mid-level transfer, long transfer.

We have tried to make it clearer why we distinguish between these different levels of transfer. For example, on page 3 we now say, “Given that prior studies have found differences between rich, abstract, and bland visual representations in both learning and transfer, the current studies examine how these visual representations might influence the learning and transfer of genetic inheritance concepts. Prior research on transfer has taken one of two approaches: (1) examining whether students transfer to any new exemplar [49] or (2) examining how transfer de-pends on the similarity (both in terms of the animal and the trait) between the exemplar in the lesson and the one in the test [54]. In the current studies, we take the second approach, considering transfer to increasingly dissimilar exemplars from the one in the lesson, in order to examine how the features of the visual representations influence how far students transfer.” Additionally in page 4 we now say, “Given that transfer was one focus of the current studies, after the lesson we assessed how students thought about genetics with species and traits that were different from those in the lesson.”

It remains unclear what the object of the study is. What was the study about, was it about the learning process or just about the richness of perception.

We thank the reviewer for this question. The purpose of the study is how the richness of the visual representation influences the learning and transfer of biological topics. Our focus is not on the richness of perception, but on how perceptual information might influence how people interpret representations in educational contexts, and how this could influence learning and transfer. We have tried to make this clearer on page 3. There we now say, “The purpose of these studies was not to assess perception of the representations, but to investigate how perceptual information might influence how people interpret repre-sentations in educational contexts, and how this could influence learning and transfer.”

There is a lack of information about the data collection about the instruments of data collection. The article says that after the lesson we asked the participants two simple comprehension questions. I would like an explanation of what these questions were, what the scale of the questions was, and how the scale of the question was considered in the choice of statistical criteria. Why were the chi-squared criterion chosen? What was measured with it? It is incorrect to use this criterion to compare test scores.

The comprehension questions were always presented in the manuscript. In page 7, we presented the exact questions participants answered and the response options. There we say “Comprehension questions. We asked participants two simple comprehension questions immediately after the lesson. The first question was “How many generations of animals were shown in the lesson?” with “1,” “2,” or “3” as response options. The second question was “Which of these eye colors was mentioned in the lesson?” with “blue,” “brown,” or “purple” as the response options. We accepted “3” and “brown” as correct answers.” The manuscript also includes the questions that were used to assess how people think about genetic inheritance, namely the phenotypic judgement task and the offspring prediction task. We would welcome suggestions from the reviewer on how to make this clearer, but the previous and current versions of the manuscript include the information the reviewer has requested.

As we have mentioned in our prior response to the reviewer’s concern (and as has been mentioned in the section on our data analytic approach), the data were analyzed using logistic regression. The reported chi-square tests are not simple chi-squares, but rather tests of the regression coefficients of the logistic regression to see if the variable has an effect. These chi-square tests are the standard form to test for statistical significance in logistic regression. In particular, logistic regression is needed to account for the binary outcomes (whether students selected a particular option or not). This statistical approach takes into consideration the actual scale of the responses, so it is statistically more appropriate than simply collapsing across the questions, adding the responses into a test score and treating that test score as a continuous variable (when in reality it is not). Therefore, we disagree with the reviewer that this is the incorrect criterion to use for our data.

It says that "We found an effect of offspring type <....> and an interaction between offspring type and test time" (p.7). It remains unclear to us how both the effect and the interaction are measured with the same statistical criterion (chi square test). This is not correct since the effect can be  measured by regression (or SEM) and the interaction by - correlation coefficients. The topic of the study is about role, so it was appropriate to use regression. Adding a description of the object of the study and a description of the choice of statistical criteria would add clarity and credibility to the findings.

As we mentioned in our previous responses, we have been using logistic regression, which is a flexible technique capable of examining both main effects and interactions. The paper includes a section that describes our data analytic approach, and in response to the other reviewer comments, we have added more information in the purpose of the study. We hope these changes address the reviewer’s concerns.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Regarding my ethics concern: When authors describe participant demographics they mention some very low numbers (i.e. 1 non-binary individual, 1 Arab, 1 Pacific Islander, 2 bi- or multi-racial students) that might make it easy to identify those students. To protect student ID, it might be pertinent to group those students (although I am sad about data loss).

The authors’ aim is to determine whether different kinds of visualization diagrams (rich, abstract and bland) have an impact on student learning about genetic inheritance. They also ask whether students can apply/generalize what they learned to other scenarios. The authors claim that rich visualizations are more effective than abstract visualizations, but that there is no difference between rich and bland visualizations.

The question is an interesting one that could inform how we address topic of genetic inheritance in higher education. However, I believe the setup for the experiment is fundamentally flawed, and thus, this article should be rejected.

I reviewed the supplementary files submitted and determined that the lesson on which this experiment is based on has several mistakes that make it impossible to draw conclusions from the data gathered.

Their lesson I genetic inheritance is oversimplified and uninformative. It does not cover anything related to simple (Mendelian) inheritance, codominance, etc (see https://bio.libretexts.org/Courses/Community_College_of_Vermont/Human_Biology_%28Gabor_Gyurkovics%29/16%3A_Inheritance_and_Biotechnology/16.04%3A_Mendelian_Inheritance). They also pick some traits like eye color that do not follow the classical rules of inheritance (https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg2010126), but this is never mentioned in their lesson, multiple As such, it would be impossible for students to accurately understand what the prompt posed by the authors is truly asking. Their responses are 100% a guess and thus the analyses of those responses are not useful.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of Ed Sciences Manuscript education-2681610 Oct 2023

This paper presents 2 studies of media quality using undergraduates regarding a lesson on genetic inheritance. The length of the lesson (only described as “very brief”), the lesson transcript, or any other analytics about how long students were in the online lesson or what they were presented, were not specified. It is also unclear what students did during the lesson, whether it only involved reading, reading & listening, or any other interactions (such as clicking or advancing through the timing of the lesson or answering comprehension check questions). 

The paper addresses interesting issues of misconceptions about genetic inheritance and media. But it is of further interest to me because it addresses near and far transfer. The article referred to transfer as “generalization,” perhaps suggesting a behaviorist approach to teaching and learning. It finds that far transfer is enhanced by the use of more realistic images in lesson diagrams. The paper featured a pre-registration of hypotheses and reports a failure to support their hypothesis in Study 1. The authors then go on to compare rich realistic images with more bland images Study 2, again rejecting the hypothesis that the 2 were different. 

Transfer/generalization was defined as different from learning. If the presented lesson was about wolf eye color, then one “learning” test item was also about wolf eye test color, another (near transfer) item was about fox eye color, a 3^rd (mid-level transfer) item was about ear size in fennec foxes, and a 4^th (far transfer) item was about fin size in bass.

Discussion: The discussion highlights a replication of finding that undergraduate misconceptions are present about inheritance. Interestingly, the author’s discussion again does not address what actually students did during the lesson and how their active engagement might be a factor in learning from the presented media inheritance diagrams in bland or rich representations.  Other studies by Skulmowski, 2018-2022 might support various aspects of the use of more realistic rather than fully abstract representations to enhance student learning. In short, I did not find the conclusions novel or compelling. The design, focused on common misconceptions and near and far transfer items is well developed, but the theoretical explanation for the findings, which are reported as counter to the author’s expectations, is not compelling. The authors focus on the “concrete” nature of the rich representations. But both images are portrayed in 2-D images so are equally concrete. The Rich representations contain more information, and also align in more ways with the real images of foxes and wolves. The authors should consult the literature on James Gibson’s ecological psychology to consider what information can be “picked up” from these images, and what visual information is most salient when learning. Author(s) should further consider Richard Meyer’s work on the nature of media representations, and particularly the creation of images that effectively integrate abstract and realistic (or even dynamic) attributes of complex systems that reduce extraneous cognitive load.

The paper reports a number of Chi-square tests for each type of item and pre and post “test time.” It appears there were at least 6 Hypotheses tested on a single dataset without any adjustment to alpha for familywise error.

As a side issue, I would ask why were data on gender and race collected if they not used in any analysis or the focus of a variable in a pre-registered hypothesis? While it might be helpful to determine if the same of undergraduates was representative and might generalize, it does raise a question about collecting data that are not used.

There are numerous close text errors in grammar and usage that should be address as the manuscript moves forward (see attached pdf with highlights). One example is the use of the British spelling of judgment, with an “e” judgement, which might better be made consistent with some of the cited literature.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

There are grammar and usage errors.. I stop highlight (see attached pdf) after page 3

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study presented in this manuscript has a current and pertinent focus regarding the use of visual tools to enhance learning about genetic heritance. 

In general, the manuscript is well organized and written in a clear and comprehensive way.

The following comments and suggestions intend to help improve the quality of the paper and are organized concerning its’ different sections:

- I suggest the use of the term “visualization” instead of “visualizations” throughout the document. If we check the literature regarding this theme, it’s more consensual to use visualization. Along the text, if the authors see fit, it will also make sense to use: visualization tools/strategies; visual tools; visual representations.

- The authors should rectify the references, along the text and in the list, to meet the journal’s reference style.

- The text needs minor corrections in language.

- To be complete, the abstract should identify the methodological options. 

- I suggest adding the title “Introduction” to the first paragraph of the text.

- Theoretical framework:

            It’s important to clarify the meaning of visualization, since it’s a central topic in this study, as well as the nature/type of the representations used in this field. 

Further discussion is needed to ground the potential of the use of visualization.

Add references to the three types of visual representations presented in the second page.        

- Methodology:

I recommend that the section “Current studies” is embedded in the Method section.

More information is needed concerning the levels of generalization. Present some indicators concerning these categories.

- General discussion:

            1^st paragraph, add at least a reference that identifies the “prior work” mentioned.

            2^nd paragraph, add at least a reference that supports the affirmation that rich visualizations promoting generalization more than abstract one “not being novel”.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf