Doing coursework without doing biology: undergraduate students’ non-conceptual strategies to problem solving

ABSTRACT

Exams constitute the predominant form of summative assessment in undergraduate biology education, with the assumption that exam performance should reflect student conceptual understanding. Previous work highlights multiple examples in which students can answer exam problems correctly without the corresponding conceptual understanding. This disconnect can significantly undermine instructors’ ability to interpret exam performance in relation to student learning. Here, we investigate problem-solving strategies used by undergraduate students in biological sciences. Participants were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol: They were asked to solve genetics problems, in multiple-choice and short-answer formats, and were prompted to explain their strategies. Data analysis took a grounded-theory approach and involved iterative close reading of the interview transcripts to examine students problem-solving strategies. Three case studies of participants with similar overall exam performance are presented to explore the variety of strategies. We identified two non-conceptual strategies based on algorithms or patterns within the exam problems. In contrast, the third case-study participant used mostly conceptual strategies grounded in an understanding of biology. We also observed participants switching between conceptual and non-conceptual strategies. These results identify different strategies that undergraduate students use to solve problems in biological sciences, and potential implications on the design of exams and assessments are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognition
• genetics
• higher education
• problem solving
• student thinking

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the study participants in providing their insights into the research question on how students solve problems in biology, and we thank the course instructors for their support in providing the exam problems and data. We also thank A. Gore, and S. Kim, and G. Light for thoughtful discussions, especially in the early days of the study. This project was initiated with support by an institutional award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for undergraduate biology education (award number 52006934) and the Hewlett Fund for Curricular Innovation from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. SML was supported in part by the Faculty Career Development Program at University of California San Diego.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [52006934] and “Northwestern University, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Hewlett Fund for Curricular Innovation” and “University of California San Diego, Faculty Career Development Program.