Assessing visualisation skills of molecular biology first year students in a language diverse lecture room, South Africa

Abstract

Students require visualisation skills to effectively interpret external representations of abstract scientific information. Despite the fact that the mother tongue of most science students is not English, the language has remained the standard medium of instruction at South African universities. Thus, the current study will explore the nature of visualisation skills that are required by university students in their first year of molecular biology. In addition, the current study will investigate the extent to which the mother tongue language affected how students interpreted external representations that represented mRNA translation. The study used an online-questionnaire and content analysis to collect data. Symbolic representation and the ability to retrieve information from memory were found to be the most frequently assessed nature of visualisation skills. Moreover, many students rejected the notion that learning molecular biology in one’s mother tongue would enable them to effectively interpret external representations.