One type of active learning technique that instructors can incorporate is the use of various drawing activities. This study investigates the impact of drawing during biology lecture classes on student learning. Undergraduate students in two lecture sections of an introductory cellular and molecular biology course completed worksheets that either…

This article contrasts the normal method for drawing Lewis structures with a two-step systematic approach. The latter approach uses a known molecular connectivity and a knowledge of the number of valence electrons that each atom possesses to visualize bonds that are formed by pairing electrons, one from each atom. This process is repeated until at…

Concepts of molecular biology and genetics are difficult for many biology undergraduate students to master yet are crucial for deep understanding of how life works. By asking students to draw their ideas, we attempted to uncover the mental models about genes and gene expression held by biology students (n = 23) and experts (n = 18) using…

Communicating even fundamental scientific concepts can be challenging. Furthermore, student mental models are often difficult to uncover even by the most talented teacher or researcher. Drawing is a universal process skill widely used by scientists to refine their conceptions about a wide range of topics, communicate ideas, and advance scientific…

The aim of this study was to investigate the visual images of pre-service teachers who take biology courses in undergraduate education about biology by analyzing their drawings. The research was conducted with 97 pre-service teachers, studying at the education faculty of a university in Turkey and taking biology course during undergraduate…

Noncovalent interactions determine the three-dimensional structure of macromolecules and the binding interactions between molecules. Students struggle to understand noncovalent interactions and how they relate to structure-function relationships. Additionally, students' difficulties translating from two-dimensional representations to…

In this research, we gave to technical university students (N=50) and high school students (N=75) a verbally described situation of a partially defined physics problem. The task for the both groups of the students was to generate drawings of how they imagined the situation that the problem referred to. A fully abstract drawing was generated by 48%…

We report our research of seven pairs of students enrolled in the second semester of sophomore-level organic chemistry as they attempted to describe (in their own words) and draw, respectively, three electron-pushing diagrams of three-step reaction mechanisms. The tasks' objective was to accurately reproduce the diagrams based solely on the…

London dispersion forces (LDFs) are the most fundamental of the noncovalent interactions in that they are interactions that act between all molecular species and require only that students can use the "electron cloud" model of atomic structure. In this longitudinal study we investigate how students respond to prompts, designed to elicit…

Large gender gaps in performance on questions involving projectile motion have been observed at high school and university level, even amongst high-achieving students. This gap is particularly problematic because projectile motion is typically one of the first topics formally taught in physics, and this may give girls an inappropriately negative…

This paper explores students and researchers drawings of white blood cell recruitment. The data combines interviews with exhibit of review-type academic images and analyses of student model-drawings. The analysis focuses on the material aspects of bioscientific data-making and we use the literature of concrete bioscience modelling to differentiate…

In this qualitative study, we examined how a group of seventeen first semester General Chemistry students responded when they were shown contrasting molecular animations of a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction between solid copper and aqueous silver nitrate for which they first viewed a video of the actual experiment. The animations contrasted…

Doceri software for iPad is useful for both synchronous online and asynchronous online delivery of chemistry course content. Using the Doceri wireless connection between the iPad and a personal computer that is running Adobe Connect, online synchronous instruction can be accomplished in which drawings can be completed by hand on the iPad. For…

We examined the effects of documenting observations with digital imaging versus hand drawing in inquiry-based college biodiversity labs. Plant biodiversity labs were divided into two treatments, digital imaging (N = 221) and hand drawing (N = 238). Graduate-student teaching assistants (N = 24) taught one class in each treatment. Assessments…

To test the claim that digital learning tools enhance the acquisition of visual literacy in this generation of biology students, a learning intervention was carried out with 33 students enrolled in an introductory college biology course. This study compared learning outcomes following two types of learning tools: a traditional drawing activity, or…