Student Learning Across Course Instruction in Genetics and Evolution

Abstract

Genetics and evolution are interconnected topics — evolutionary change requires inheritance and correspondingly, genetic variation is required for selection to have any impact on a population. However, misconceptions and naive ideas of both genetic and evolutionary concepts can fundamentally impact a student’s understanding of biology. It is therefore important to understand what information students obtain in various courses at the undergraduate level, and how knowledge of concepts in one course might impact learning in another course. This is particularly important with respect to genetics concepts, as Genetics courses are often a prerequisite to Evolution courses and serve frequently as students’ introduction to the basic concepts that underlie evolution. This study compared student performance related to key genetics concepts after taking both Fundamental Genetics and Evolution courses to taking Fundamental Genetics alone and tracked student performance as they progressed through the Genetics-Evolution course sequence. We created a 16-question assessment, developed from published literature on these topics, and administered the survey at three timepoints: the end of Fundamental Genetics, the beginning of Evolution and again at the end of the Evolution course. Our data suggest students do complete Fundamental Genetics with a few misconceptions related to genetic information pertinent to evolution, and that these concepts are varyingly corrected by taking Evolution. This research highlights the advantages of both tracking and comparing students as they progress through a Genetics-to-Evolution course sequence, particularly with respect to how faculty can leverage course sequencing to improve student performance.