The core concept of genetic information flow was identified in recent calls to improve undergraduate biology education. Previous work shows that students have difficulty differentiating between the three processes of the Central Dogma (CD; replication, transcription, and translation). We built upon this work by developing and applying an analytic coding rubric to 1050 student written responses to a three-question item about the CD. Each response was previously coded only for correctness using a holistic rubric. Our rubric captures subtleties of student conceptual understanding of each process that previous work has not yet captured at a large scale. Regardless of holistic correctness scores, student responses included five or six distinct ideas. By analyzing common co-occurring rubric categories in student responses, we found a common pair representing two normative ideas about the molecules produced by each CD process. By applying analytic coding to student responses preinstruction and postinstruction, we found student thinking about the processes involved was most prone to change. The combined strengths of analytic and holistic rubrics allow us to reveal mixed ideas about the CD processes and provide a detailed picture of which conceptual ideas students draw upon when explaining each CD process.

中文翻译：

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生物学入门本科生对遗传信息流的看法不一

遗传信息流的核心概念在最近提出的改善本科生物学教育的呼吁中得到了确定。以前的工作表明，学生很难区分中心法则的三个过程（CD；复制、转录和翻译）。我们在这项工作的基础上开发了一个分析编码标准，并将其应用于 1050 名学生对关于 CD 的三个问题的书面回答。每个响应以前仅使用整体评分标准进行编码以确保正确性。我们的标题捕捉了学生对每个过程的概念理解的微妙之处，以前的工作尚未大规模捕捉。无论整体正确性分数如何，学生的回答都包含五六个不同的想法。通过分析学生回答中常见的共同出现的标题类别，我们发现了一个共同的对，代表了关于每个 CD 过程产生的分子的两个规范性想法。通过将分析编码应用于学生在教学前和教学后的反应，我们发现学生对所涉及过程的思考最容易发生变化。分析性和整体性的综合优势使我们能够揭示关于 CD 过程的混合想法，并详细说明学生在解释每个 CD 过程时所借鉴的概念。