A regression analysis was performed on drawing scores to explore predictors of more complete drawings. We found that geoscientists scored better on the six-point multiple-choice assessment (mean = 4.2, SD = 1.1) than on the six-point drawing score (mean = 3.0, SD = 1.8).
Drawings were coded for the presence of six components of natural selection.
We analyzed multiple-choice assessments and drawings from 109 geoscientists from a range of career levels. This study utilizes a multiple-choice assessment of evolutionary processes and a drawing prompt to investigate participants’ abilities to draw the process of natural selection. Though images are used often in science to facilitate learning, it is less common to assess learners’ understanding through their own drawings. Natural selection is a fundamental scientific process, yet students and educators alike demonstrate misconceptions of the process. In such courses, however, the extra time involved in implementing the dissection exercise may pay off later during the term by serving as a foundation for discussions about other examples of evolution in the past and present. The relatively small number of self-reported student learning outcomes precludes knowing how well the exercise can be adapted to large-enrollment courses. Upon completion of the dissection, most felt the exercise had helped improve their understanding of dinosaur–bird evolution, form and function, exaptations as tangible evidence of descent with modification, and analogous vs. A follow-up, anonymous questionnaire revealed that most students at the start of the dissection were not familiar with vertebrate anatomy or the skeletal structure of a bird wing. During the dissection of a popular college late-night snack (barbeque-style chicken wings), students separated soft from hard skeletal tissue, undertook comparative anatomy of bird and human forelimbs, and discovered what is hidden in plain sight: the alula, a remnant claw that links birds to their evolutionary predecessors-the dinosaurs.
In an introductory geology course on vertebrate fossils, a new object-based classroom exercise was designed to enhance students’ appreciation for evidence of evolution as a “tinkering” process, specifically in modern organisms with which everyone is familiar.
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