Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-1-2021
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Carol Britson
Second Advisor
Carla Carr
Third Advisor
Brian Doctor
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
The objective of this project was to explore intersections between student preferences and student performance on anatomical visual representations in Human Anatomy and Physiology I and II. Visual representations are a critical resource for the formation of relationships between function and structure furthermore; students interpret these representations uniquely based on specific factors (learning objective, prior knowledge, the diagram studied, etc.). Phase I of this project gathered undergraduate responses to ten Likert-style questions on their opinions on diagrams and their use in the A&P classroom. Phase II of this project presented participants with twelve manipulated diagrams sourced from three diagram with four manipulations (a control in which no manipulations were applied, a change in the portion of the leader lines located on the diagram, both the part of the leader line on the diagram and the label location of the leader line, and a 25% decrease in the number of leader lines) applied to each of the three diagrams. Participants were asked to correctly identify anatomical structures on the twelve diagrams and rate the confidence in the correctness of their answers. Students’ responses in Phase I indicated that when viewing two-dimensional diagrams, students preferred simplified diagrams with leader lines labeling every anatomical structure represented. In Phase II, this preference translates into a higher proportion of correctly identified structures associated with the diagrams contain supporting visual details and the use of visual cutes to separate structures. Generally, however, students performed better and felt more confident on the sarcomere diagram, which had the least amount of total leader lines. The order of diagram presentation sequence had a significant effect on student performance (F (2,335) = 15.61, p= 0.00) with students preforming significantly better on the sequence featuring diagrams randomly grouped together. The conclusions made from this project support current research, which suggest that while students prefer three-dimensional diagrams (Tan et al 2012), students preform best on detailed, two-dimensional diagrams (Fenesi et al 2017). The practical applications of this project have the potential to better inform educators as they choose diagrams to integrate into the classroom.
Recommended Citation
Mestayer, Mary Agnes, "Effectiveness of Visual Representations in Undergraduate Human Anatomy and Physiology I & II" (2021). Honors Theses. 1793.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1793
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