Undergraduate biology courses rely heavily on visual representation of information. Students view images of plants, animals, and microbes, interpret data presented in graphs, and use drawings to understand how cells and molecules interact in three dimensions. Traditional teaching approaches exclude students with visual impairments and disadvantage students with disabilities that affect their interpretation and processing of visual and spatial information, and also students who simply do not identify as “visual learners.” By using new technologies to develop tactile teaching tools (TTTs) that can be employed in classrooms, we aim to create inclusive learning environments and more effectively instruct diverse learners. The advent of affordable and accessible 3D printing technology makes it possible to create tactile models that represent molecules, cells, and entire organisms more accurately than traditional visual representations. We describe the assessment of a 3D gene expression puzzle as a guided inquiry learning activity in which students must correctly assemble a series of components in order to achieve an output. Upon completion of the puzzle, the TTT provides tactile feedback through vibration to signal transcriptional activation. Analysis of pre- and postassessment performance demonstrated statistically significant increases in individual students’ paired assessment scores in two different classroom implementations, with a greater effect size at a rural minority-serving institution than an urban R1 university. These encouraging preliminary data suggest that TTTs with guided-inquiry learning disproportionately benefit disadvantaged student populations and could serve as a tool in leveling the playing field when teaching abstract biological concepts in diverse educational settings.

中文翻译：

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构建 lac 操纵子：使用 3D 打印模型的引导探究活动 †

本科生物学课程在很大程度上依赖于信息的视觉表示。学生查看植物、动物和微生物的图像，解释图表中呈现的数据，并使用绘图来了解细胞和分子如何在三维空间中相互作用。传统的教学方法将有视觉障碍的学生排除在外，并将影响他们对视觉和空间信息的解释和处理的残疾学生以及那些根本不认为是“视觉学习者”的学生排除在外。通过使用新技术开发可在课堂上使用的触觉教学工具（TTT），我们的目标是创造包容性的学习环境并更有效地指导多样化的学习者。经济实惠且易于使用的 3D 打印技术的出现使得创建比传统视觉表示更准确地代表分子、细胞和整个有机体的触觉模型成为可能。我们将 3D 基因表达难题的评估描述为一种引导式探究学习活动，学生必须正确组装一系列组件才能获得输出。完成拼图后，TTT 通过振动提供触觉反馈，以发出转录激活信号。对评估前和评估后表现的分析表明，在两种不同的课堂实施中，个别学生的配对评估分数在统计上显着增加，农村少数民族服务机构的效应规模比城市 R1 大学更大。这些令人鼓舞的初步数据表明，具有引导式探究学习的 TTT 对弱势学生群体尤其有利，并且可以作为在不同教育环境中教授抽象生物学概念时创造公平竞争环境的工具。