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For over a decade, the BioMolViz group has been working to improve biomolecular visualization instruction and assessment. Through workshops that engaged educators in visual assessment writing and revision, this community has produced hundreds of assessment items, a subset of which are freely available to educators through online repository, the BioMolViz Library. Assessment items are at various stages of a validation process developed by BioMolViz. To establish evidence of validity, these items were iteratively revised by instructors, reviewed by an expert panel, and tested in classrooms. Here, we describe the results of the final phase our validation process, which involved classroom testing across 10 United Statesbased colleges and universities with over 700 students. Classical test theory was applied to evaluate 26 multiplechoice or multipleselect items divided across two assessment sets. The results indicate that the validation process was successful in producing assessments that performed within our defined ideal range for difficulty and discrimination indices, with only four items outside of this scale. However, some assessments showed performance differences among student demographic groups. Thus, we added an interview phase to our process, which involved 20 student participants across three institutions. In these semistructured group interviews, students described their problemsolving strategies, adding their unique insights as the discussion progressed. As these interview transcripts were qualitatively coded, areas to further improve assessment items were identified. We will illustrate the progression of several items through the entire validation process and discuss how student problem solving strategies can be leveraged to guide effective assessment design. 

For a decade, BioMolViz has been developing tools to improve visual literacy instruction. In collaboration with the biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) education community, our group authored a Biomolecular Visualization Framework to assess visual literacy skills and used the framework’s learning objectives in the backward design of assessments. Our validation process, which includes iterative revision by our working group of faculty, expert panel review, and large-scale classroom testing, has produced a subset of validated assessments which are available in our online repository, the BioMolViz Library. Nearly 200 assessments are now moving through the earlier phases of our validation process. With an eye always on inclusivity, we used our large-scale field testing data to examine performance trends. Upon observing some differences in performance that correlated with gender and race, we organized semi-structured interviews with small groups of undergraduate students to further evaluate our assessments. Disaggregating students into groups by gender, we asked students to share initial impressions and engage in collaborative reflection on their problem solving strategies. As we thematically code our interview transcripts, which include male and female groups from three U.S.-based institutions, we seek to further improve the clarity of our assessments, while exploring approaches to problem solving that may uncover demographic-related differences and make visual literacy more inclusive for all learners. 

An Open educational Resource guide for instructors in using molecular visualization in their teaching. 

ABSTRACT Molecular case studies (MCSs) are open educational resources that use a storytelling approach to engage students in biomolecular structure-function explorations, at the interface of biology and chemistry. Although MCSs are developed for a particular target audience with specific learning goals, they are suitable for implementation in multiple disciplinary course contexts. Detailed teaching notes included in the case study help instructors plan and prepare for their implementation in diverse contexts. A newly developed MCS was simultaneously implemented in a biochemistry and a molecular parasitology course at two different institutions. Instructors participating in this cross-institutional and multidisciplinary implementation collaboratively identified the need for quick and effective ways to bridge the gap between the MCS authors’ vision and the implementing instructor’s interpretation of the case-related molecular structure-function discussions. Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive and engaging experience that has been used effectively in teaching molecular sciences. Its accessibility and ease-of-use with smart devices (e.g., phones and tablets) make it an attractive option for expediting and improving both instructor preparation and classroom implementation of MCSs. In this work, we report the incorporation of ready-to-use AR objects as checkpoints in the MCS. Interacting with these AR objects facilitated instructor preparation, reduced students’ cognitive load, and provided clear expectations for their learning. Based on our classroom observations, we propose that the incorporation of AR in MCSs can facilitate its successful implementation, improve the classroom experience for educators and students, and make MCSs more broadly accessible in diverse curricular settings. 

Visual literacy is recognized as a threshold concept in biochemistry and molecular biology. However, a consensus on the optimal methods for teaching and evaluating remains elusive. For a decade, BioMolViz has strived to enhance biomolecular visualization assessment. Through workshops and online working groups, we guide instructors on how to probe biomolecular visual literacy using accessible images and questions, which are ultimately shared broadly through our online repository (the BioMolViz Library). Here, we present the final step of our assessment validation process which occurred during the 2022-2023 academic year. We engaged life science students from seven U.S.-based institutions in a pilot field test. Students responded to the multiple choice, multiple select and free response items, rated them on their perceived difficulty, and provided optional open-ended feedback. As we examined the data, we became curious about whether instructors viewed the difficulty level of the items similarly to students. We followed up with an instructor survey where respondents rated and commented on the difficulty of 14 assessment items that were administered to students in the pilot field test. Subsequently, we conducted a mixed methods study to analyze our quantitative and qualitative data. Our analysis revealed a statistically significant disparity between instructors' and students' perceptions of assessment difficulty. Notably, regression models suggest that students' performance predicts their perceived difficulty, with high-performing students finding the assessment generally easier than their lower-performing peers. This points to the crucial role of performance in shaping students' perceptions, while also indicating that instructors, on the whole, tended to view the assessment as less challenging than students. To gain deeper insights into these findings, we performed thematic coding of both student and instructor responses. Our analysis unveiled three pivotal themes in visual literacy assessment: (a) expectations about images guide student performance, (b) disparities exist in visual literacy problem solving, and (c) content knowledge can be both a help and hindrance in visualization. Importantly, these results have changed the way members of our team now approach teaching and evaluating biomolecular visualization skills in our own classrooms. We will share our revised approaches alongside results from our study and provide practical recommendations to aid educators in effectively teaching and evaluating visual literacy in their classrooms. This material is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants RCN-UBE #1920270 and NSF-IUSE #1712268 

While visual literacy has been identified as a foundational skill in life science education, there are many challenges in teaching and assessing biomolecular visualization skills. Among these are the lack of consensus about what constitutes competence and limited understanding of student and instructor perceptions of visual literacy tasks. In this study, we administered a set of biomolecular visualization assessments, developed as part of the BioMolViz project, to both students and instructors at multiple institutions and compared their perceptions of task difficulty. We then analyzed our findings using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analysis was used to answer the following research questions: (1) Which assessment items exhibit statistically significant disparities or agreements in perceptions of difficulty between instructors and students? (2) Do these perceptions persist when controlling for race/ethnicity and gender? and (3) How does student perception of difficulty relate to performance? Qualitative analysis of open-ended comments was used to identify predominant themes related to visual problem solving. The results show that perceptions of difficulty significantly differ between students and instructors and that students’ performance is a significant predictor of their perception of difficulty. Overall, this study underscores the need to incorporate deliberate instruction in visualization into undergraduate life science curricula to improve student ability in this area. Accordingly, we offer recommendations to promote visual literacy skills in the classroom. 

Abstract Understanding the relationship between protein structure and function is a core‐learning goal in biochemistry. Students often struggle to visualize proteins as three‐dimensional objects that interact with other molecules to affect its biochemical consequences. We describe here a partial course‐based undergraduate research experiences that has students exploring protein structure and function hands‐on while authoring a molecular case study intended for others to use.