The AACR group recently partnered with SimBio to investigate how undergraduate written explanations changed after completing an online tutorial about cellular respiration.

Our friends at SimBio designed a version of their Cellular Respiration Explored tutorial that incorporated AACR developed items. Many SimBio users volunteered to use this pilot version of the tutorial in their courses, providing us a diverse group of participating students. In a study led by Dr. Juli Uhl, the group found that students tended to include more scientific ideas in their explanations about cell respiration after completing the tutorial, which underscores the promise of well-designed instructional materials.

Students also separately answered multiple choice questions as part of the tutorial. Interestingly, we found that students often used other non-scientific and scientific ideas in written explanations, even when they choose the correct multiple choice answer.  This highlights the need for varied assessment formats and the complex nature of student learning.  If you're interested in the research, you can read more here.

If you want to use the AACR questions and models in this study, click here and search for cellular respiration (or whatever topic you're interested in!)

Visit Simbio.com to check out their many other tutorials!