JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY & BIOLOGY EDUCATION, May 2013, p. 113-115 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v14i1.509
Tips & Tools
Using Interactive Animations to Enhance Teaching, Learning, and Retention of Respiration Pathway Concepts in Face-to-Face and Online High School, Undergraduate, and Continuing Education Learning Environments † Sederick C. Rice University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Pine Bluff, AR 71601 INTRODUCTION The study of cellular respiration in organisms is one of the most important but often difficult subjects to teach at the high school, undergraduate, or continuing education levels. Many states’ common assessments in biology include inquiry-based questions on respiration as a way to measure student competencies and knowledge of the purpose and role of metabolic pathways in organisms. Students often miss respiration questions because respiration content is not often taught in an interactive way. A lack of funding can also be a factor, which prevents the purchase of respiration laboratory kits. Another reason could be limited classroom focus on respiration, due to pacing guide time/content constraints. All of these factors can affect the retention of respiration content and impact overall state assessment test scores. There are many ways to approach, teach, and assess knowledge of metabolic pathways as a part of learning how the process of respiration works and how adenosine triphosphates (ATPs), the most important energy molecules in cells and organisms, are synthesized. It is very important to help teachers/instructors provide students with the necessary tools to improve respiration content knowledge and retention for demonstrative application on often broad state science assessment questions and standardized exams. Students need to know content such as 1) the purpose of respiration in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, 2) the enzymes involved in the respiration metabolic pathways (Glycolysis, Krebs Cycle, and Electron Transport Chain, 3) how many chemical intermediates are produced in each metabolic pathway, which can also serve as starting points in other pathways, and 4) how chemical energy molecules (ATP) are produced. High school, undergraduate, and continuing education students of today learn and retain knowledge differently than their predecessors. Educators have to keep up with changing trends in education as a result of technological Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biology, University of Arkansas, 1200 N. University Drive, Pine Bluff, AR 71601. Phone: 870-575-8849. Fax: 870-575-4602. E-mail:
[email protected]. †Supplemental materials available at http://jmbe.asm.org
advances, higher student/teacher ratios, and the influence of social media on best practices in education. It is critical for teachers/instructors to be able to present content that not only keeps students interested but also helps bridge learning gaps. The time when a teacher/instructor could lecture for 90 minutes, give a broad homework assignment, and then expect students to come back the next day having learned and retained the expected content knowledge has passed. Now teachers face new challenges and must engage and assess students within a small window during classroom instruction, but also have the skills to provide useful content in distance-learning environments. One major tool set teachers/instructors can use is online interactive animations, which present content in a way that helps pique students’ interest and differentiates instructional content. The Virtual Cell Animation Collections (http://vcell.ndsu. nodak.edu/animations/), developed from the Molecular and Cellular Biology Learning Center, has developed a series of online interactive animations that provide teachers/ instructors and students with immersive learning tools for studying and understanding respiration processes. These virtual tools work as powerful instructional devices to help explain and reinforce concepts of metabolic pathways that would normally be taught traditionally using static textbook pages or by mnemonic flashcards. This article aims to provide high school, undergraduate, and continuing education biology or life science teachers/ instructors with classroom strategies for introducing and implementing respiration content from Virtual Cell Animation Collections. The overall goal is to provide access to free online resources to support and develop more inquiry-based classroom and distance-learning environments and experiences that can be facilitated by teachers/instructors, which helps improve retention of important respiration subject content and problem-based learning skills for students.
PROCEDURE Using interactive animations to teach respiration pathway content One of the best ways to teach concepts in respiration is to present information to students in a sequential way, as
©2013 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use and distribution, provided the original work is properly cited.
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it relates to the metabolic pathways involved. The goal for many teachers/instructors is to help students understand the relationship between inputs (what goes into the pathways), intermediates (what processes and steps occur during the pathway), outputs (what products come of the pathways), and the role of electrochemical gradients and enzymes in ATP. Table 1 contains a list of animations focused on describing ATP production, the role of gradients and enzymes used in the processes of ATP synthesis, and a model of what the electron transport chain looks like at the molecular level. All of these virtual animation tools can be used in face-toface and online learning environments. In face-to-face and online learning environments, teachers/instructors and students can use interactive links in Table 1 at the beginning or onset of classroom instruction to 1) visualize and highlight important vocabulary words for content reinforcement, 2) understand the role of cellular membranes and electrochemical gradients that drive the production of chemical intermediates and ATP, and 3) provide an opportunity for students to participate in self-paced, group, and guided respiration learning activities so they are able to recognize and count the number of chemical intermediates and/or ATPs invested and produced within each respiration pathway. Integrating respiration animations into lesson plans/ pacing guides in face-to-face and online formats Interactive virtual animations are valuable teaching tools because they are engaging, content-rich, and can be completed within a very short period of time. This will
allow teachers/instructors and students to cover the most important facets of respiration quickly, which can often leave more learning time for questions, content reinforcement, inquiry-based learning, and assessment. There are four levels of inquiry-based learning; confirmation inquiry, structure inquiry, guided inquiry, and open inquiry (3). There are several strategies for using Virtual Cell Animation Collections on the confirmation, structure, and guided inquiry levels (see Appendix 2). As a teacher/instructor, these animations were very useful in my face-to-face and online biological sciences, bioinformatics, cell biology, and genetics courses. They provided interactive engagement and provided a way to immerse students within the learning process. Students who were able to master the steps of glycolysis and the Krebs cycle because they could memorize the enzymes and intermediates often struggled with providing the role and scope of the electron transport chain. These animations also helped bridge content gaps among diverse populations of learners at my home university, and gave me confidence that students online could also experience rigorous instruction using this format. Another positive component of using free open source online animations is that educators can assign these interactive website links for homework or independent study and then incorporate parents into their children’s education by providing instructions for using the links and ways to evaluate their children using short assessments and quizzes. Virtual Cell Animation Collections related to respiration are designed to be effective at the high school, undergraduate, and continuing education levels because interactive visualizations
TABLE 1. Interactive animation links for learning respiration metabolic pathways (virtual cell, ATP synthase gradients, and electron transport chain). Animation Titles
Virtual Cell Animation Collections Interactive Links
Teaching Audience Levels
Through the Virtual Cell: A Guided Flythrough
http://vcell.ndsu.nodak.edu/animations/flythrough/index.htm
High School Lower Division (9–10) High School Upper Division (11–12) Undergrad Lower Division (13–14) Undergrad Upper Division (15–16) General public & informal education Continuing Education
ATP Synthase Gradients
http://vcell.ndsu.nodak.edu/animations/atpgradient/index.htm
High School Lower Division (9–10) High School Upper Division (11–12) Undergrad Lower Division (13–14) Undergrad Upper Division (15–16) General public & informal education Continuing Education
Electron Transport Chain
http://vcell.ndsu.nodak.edu/animations/etc/index.htm
High School Lower Division (9–10) High School Upper Division (11–12) Undergrad Lower Division (13–14) Undergrad Upper Division (15–16) General public & informal education Continuing Education
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help create interest in difficult subject content and promote broader engagement (1).
CONCLUSION Visualizations in the form of online interactive animations are powerful teaching tools that help reinforce subject content and help teachers/instructors differentiate classroom instruction. Virtual Cell Animation Collections, related to respiration pathways, provide effective tools for teachers/instructors to use in face-to-face and online learning environments. The use of respiration-specific animations also supports the Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action Core Concepts related to 1) Structure and Function, 2) Pathways and Transformation of Energy and Matter, 3) Ability to Use Modeling and Simulation, and 4) Ability to Understand the Relationship between Science and Society (2) (see Appendix 1). Use of these interactive animations can also help improve interest in learning more about respiration pathways, which students often find difficult to relate to real world scenarios. This is also important when setting up inquiry-based face-to-face and online laboratories to teach respiration content (4–6). The more engaged students are, the better their experience will be.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS Appendix 1: V ision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action Core Concepts and Competencies Appendix 2: Inquiry-based learning strategies utilizing virtual cell animations (respiration)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank the BioSciEdNet (BEN) Scholars Program and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Biological Sciences Pathway for providing an opportunity and resources for participation and training in the Third Cohort of the BEN Training Institute in Washington, DC. Resources from the NSDL and BEN Digital Library Portal for Teaching and Learning in the Biological Sciences were
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presented at the 19th Annual Mary E. Benjamin Educational Access Conference: Problem Based Learning: Challenges, Components, Benefits, Pine Bluff, AR, 2012. The author would also like to thank Dr. Phillip McClean, Ms. Christina Johnson, Alan White, and Brian Slator at the World Wide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC) at North Dakota State University, for developing the Virtual Cell Animation Collections with support from The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Education for free and open access by educators and students. The author is also very grateful to Dr. Karen Klyczek, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, for mentoring support during and after the 2012 BEN Training Institute and guidance during the writing and editing phases of this project. No human subjects or animals were used in research for this article and the research associated with this article has complied with all relevant federal guidelines and institutional policies. The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.
REFERENCES 1. Ainsworth, S. 2008. How do animations influence learning? p. 37–67. In D. H. Robinson and G. Schraw (ed.), Current perspectives on cognition, learning, and instruction: recent innovations in educational technology that facilitate student learning. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC. 2. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2009. Vision and change in undergraduate biology education: a call to action. American Association for the Advancement of Science , Washing ton DC . ht t p: // visionandchange.org/files/2011/03/VC-Brochure-V6-3.pdf. 3. Banchi, H., and R. Bell. 2008. The many levels of inquiry. Sci. Child. 46:26–29. 4. Briggs, B., T. Mitton, R. Smith, and T. Magnuson. 2009. Teaching cellular respiration and alternate energy sources with a laboratory exercise developed by a scientist-teacher partnership. Am. Biol. Teach. 71:164–167. 5. O’Connell, D. 2008. An inquiry-based approach to teaching photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Am. Biol. Teach. 70:350–356. 6. Patro, E. T. 2008. Teaching aerobic cell respiration using the 5Es. Am. Biol. Teach. 70:85–87.
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