Success or failure in chemistry class has a lot to do with how students "read" their textbook illustrations-from simple schematics to pictures packed with detail, according to Thomas Kim, associate professor of biochemistry at Rochester Institute of Technology.
This academic year, Kim will study how undergraduate biochemistry students at Michigan State University glean information from simple illustrations and highly detailed representations of biochemical concepts. He will conduct his educational research at Michigan State's CREATE4STEM institute-the Collaborative Research for Educational Assessment and Teaching Environments for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The institute awarded Kim a fellowship and a $40,000 stipend.
The problem illustrates a disconnection between the expert who renders the drawing and the novice, the student, who overlooks the salient features.
"That's not a skill we explicitly teach," Kim said, in a news release. "It's assumed that students will know how to look at a picture and makes sense of it. Or that they know how to draw the structure and they know what the structure means."
His study seeks to gain an understanding of how students approach these complex images. His target population consists of approximately 300 biochemistry students at Michigan State.
Success or failure in chemistry class has a lot to do with how students "read" their textbook illustrations-from simple schematics to pictures packed with detail, according to Thomas Kim, associate professor of biochemistry at Rochester Institute of Technology.
This academic year, Kim will study how undergraduate biochemistry students at Michigan State University glean information from simple illustrations and highly detailed representations of biochemical concepts. He will conduct his educational research at Michigan State's CREATE4STEM institute-the Collaborative Research for Educational Assessment and Teaching Environments for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The institute awarded Kim a fellowship and a $40,000 stipend.
The problem illustrates a disconnection between the expert who renders the drawing and the novice, the student, who overlooks the salient features.
"That's not a skill we explicitly teach," Kim said, in a news release. "It's assumed that students will know how to look at a picture and makes sense of it. Or that they know how to draw the structure and they know what the structure means."
His study seeks to gain an understanding of how students approach these complex images. His target population consists of approximately 300 biochemistry students at Michigan State.
