The majority of educators did not believe that alternatives were as good as dissection for teaching anatomy and physiology (54%) and did not believe that technology will make dissection obsolete (59%) ( Osenkowski et al., 2015). A recent survey conducted by the National Anti-Vivisection Society revealed that more than half of educators polled (56%) viewed dissection as an important tradition in biology education. In addition, with dissection alternatives, students can work at their own pace and repeat the virtual dissection, which may help them retain information better ( Lalley et al., 2010).ĭespite the advantages that dissection alternatives offer, biology instructors continue to hold strong feelings about their preference for using dissection specimens in the classroom. Some studies have attributed the effectiveness of alternatives to the way in which they are designed, because many virtual alternatives include detailed information on the animal being studied, as well as built-in assessments, to further enhance students’ learning experiences ( van der Valk et al., 1999 Oakley, 2013). The most recent published meta-analysis, which examined 50 studies comparing the learning outcomes of students using traditional animal specimens versus the use of alternatives for activities including dissection, found that in 90% of studies, alternatives were as effective as or more effective than traditional animal specimens in achieving desired learning outcomes ( Zemanova & Knight, 2021).
Thorough meta-overviews of such studies are available online ( Animalearn, n.d. These survey results provide insight into biology educators’ use of dissection alternatives during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as their post-pandemic plans and may increase awareness and usage of dissection alternatives within the educational community.ĭozens of studies examining the efficacy of student learning with dissection alternatives have demonstrated that students using non-animal alternatives perform as well as or better than students using animal dissection specimens, concluding that they are effective teaching tools. Our survey investigated which alternatives were most used, whether teachers were already familiar with the alternatives, how teachers identified those alternatives, and whether the educators planned to use dissection alternatives again for in-person or online learning. Of those educators, 29% shifted to the use of dissection alternatives, such as web-based programs, as a result of remote learning. Our survey revealed that 72% of biology educators had planned on having their students participate in classroom animal dissection exercises in the spring of 2020. To better understand how the pandemic affected science educators’ plans to conduct classroom animal dissection exercises, we conducted a nationwide survey of biology teachers ( n = 2131) and asked about their experience as classes transitioned to online. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, many schools made the decision to cancel face-to-face classes and move instruction online.
0 kommentar(er)
