Abstract
Neutral evolution is a fundamental concept in evolutionary biology but teaching this and other non-adaptive concepts is specially challenging. Here we present Genie, a browser-based educational tool that facilitates demonstration of concepts such as genetic drift, population isolation, gene flow, and genetic mutation. Because it does not need to be downloaded and installed, Genie can scale to large groups of students and is useful for both in-person and online instruction. Genie was used to teach genetic drift to Evolution students at Arizona State University during Spring 2016 and Spring 2017. The effectiveness of Genie to teach key genetic drift concepts and misconceptions was assessed with the Genetic Drift Inventory developed by Price et al. (2014). Overall, Genie performed comparably to that of traditional static methods across all evaluated classes. We have empirically demonstrated that Genie can be successfully integrated with traditional instruction to reduce misconceptions about genetic drift.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
We now include: 1. A new year of data collection and analysis. In the original year of data analysis, we tested the effects of using Genie, a web-based tool, for competency to teach concepts about Genetic Drift and found that student learning improved in the classroom. However, as the reviewers rightly pointed out, we did not compare how Genie performed compared to other modes of instruction. Thus, we collected, analyzed and present here a second year of data comparing the learning effects of Genie to the traditional course-based instruction for genetic drift usually taught in BIO 345: Evolution at our institution. To generate this comparison, we split students in half (four recitations versus four recitations, each of approximately 48 students), and tested the effectiveness of using Genie to teach genetic drift versus standard approaches. All other instruction and materials were kept the same. The only difference was whether the recitations used the web-based Genie for viewing allele changes, or a static teacher-led assessment of genetic drift. Overall, we find that both approaches perform equally well at improving student understanding of genetic drift, suggesting that Genie can effectively be incorporated into the classroom as a teaching tool for improving understanding of genetic drift. 2. Completely revised statistical approaches. We agree with the general reviewer concern about our statistical approaches, and all have now been substantially revised, including: a) Comparison of learning gains across demographic groups assayed in the study. b) Evaluation and fitting of student data distribution to establish normality and identify adequate statistical tests. c) Implementation of beta regression and two-way ANOVA to identify statistically significant predictor variables for both pre- and post-recitation scores per year/instruction method. d) Testing size effect on student responses both between pre- and post-recitation scores per year/instruction method and between Genie vs. Non-Genie instruction. e) Assessment of individual student performance pre- vs. post-recitation. f) Evaluation of performance improvement across pre-instruction determined quantiles. g) Analysis of the number of correct to incorrect and incorrect to correct answers switches across years/instruction method. h) Additional analysis of specific gains in the web-based Genie compared to the teacher-led instruction. i) Assessment of differences in individual questions performance in web-based Genie compared to the teacher-led instruction. 3. Additional discussion of other genetic drift teaching tools We add discussion of other software for teaching genetic drift, and have reframed this not as a comparison.
https://github.com/AndreinaCastillo/Genie_manuscript_data_analysis
