Central to evolution is the concept of a common ancestry from which all life has emerged over immense time scales, but learning and teaching temporal aspects of evolution remain challenging. This study investigated students’ interpretation of evolutionary time when engaging with a multi-touch tabletop application called DeepTree, a dynamic visualization of a phylogenetic tree. Specifically, we explored how interactive finger-based zooming (zooming “in” and “out”) influenced students’ interpretation of evolutionary time, and how temporal information and relationships were conceptualized during interaction. Transcript analysis of videotaped interview data from ten secondary school students while they interacted with DeepTree revealed that zooming was interpreted in two ways: as spatially orientated (movement within the tree itself), or as time-orientated (movement in time). Identified misinterpretations included perceiving an implicit coherent timeline along the y-axis of the tree, that the zooming time duration in the virtual tree was linearly correlated to real time, and that more branch nodes correspond to a longer time. Sources for erroneous interpretations may lie in transferring everyday sensory experiences (e.g., physical movements and observing tree growth) to understanding abstract evolution concepts. Apart from estimating the occurrence of dinosaurs, DeepTree was associated with an improvement in interpretation of relative order of evolutionary events. Although highly promising, zooming interaction in DeepTree does not facilitate an intuitive understanding of evolutionary time. However, the opportunity to combine visual and bodily action in emerging technologies such as Deep Tree suggests a high pedagogical potential of further development of zooming features for optimal scientific understanding.

进化的中心是一个共同祖先的概念，所有生命都源于这个共同的时代，但是进化的时空学与教仍然具有挑战性。这项研究调查了学生使用称为DeepTree的多点触摸桌面应用程序时对进化时间的解释，该应用程序是系统树的动态可视化。具体来说，我们探讨了基于手指的交互式缩放（“放大”和“缩小”）如何影响学生对进化时间的解释，以及在交互过程中如何概念化时间信息和关系。对十名中学生与DeepTree互动时录制的采访数据进行的转录记录分析显示，缩放的解释有两种方式：空间定位（在树内移动），或以时间为导向（时间移动）。识别出的误解包括沿树的y轴感知到隐含的相干时间轴，虚拟树中的缩放持续时间与实时线性相关，并且更多的分支节点对应于更长的时间。错误解释的根源可能在于将日常感官体验（例如身体运动和观察树木生长）转移到理解抽象进化概念上。除了估计恐龙的发生，DeepTree还与进化事件相对顺序的解释方面的改进相关。尽管很有前途，但DeepTree中的缩放交互并不能促进对进化时间的直观理解。然而，