Cognitive Accessibility of Indoor Navigation Apps.

Advances in smartphone technology have made it possible to develop mobile apps that assist people with cognitive or learning disabilities in navigating indoor spaces more easily and independently. This paper reviews the state of the art in smartphone-based indoor navigation for this population and describes a usability trial that was conducted with four individuals in a German city hall. The trial was based on simulated tasks that required the use of the indoor navigation app XXX, during which data about different use cases were gathered. A guided interview was conducted to gather further feedback about the accessibility and the perceived usefulness of the app. The paper highlights the potential of smartphone-based indoor navigation apps for enhancing the independence and quality of life of individuals with cognitive or learning disabilities. The usability trial provided insights into the effectiveness and usability of these apps in real-world settings.

Further Effects of Phylogenetic Tree Style on Student Comprehension in an Introductory Biology Course.

Phylogenetic trees have become increasingly important across the life sciences, and as a result, learning to interpret and reason from these diagrams is now an essential component of biology education. Unfortunately, students often struggle to understand phylogenetic trees. Style (i.e., diagonal or bracket) is one factor that has been observed to impact how students interpret phylogenetic trees, and one goal of this research was to investigate these style effects across an introductory biology course. In addition, we investigated the impact of instruction that integrated diagonal and bracket phylogenetic trees equally. Before instruction, students were significantly more accurate with the bracket style for a variety of interpretation and construction tasks. After instruction, however, students were significantly more accurate only for construction tasks and interpretations involving taxa relatedness when using the bracket style. Thus, instruction that used both styles equally mitigated some, but not all, style effects. These results inform the development of research-based instruction that best supports student understanding of phylogenetic trees.

Student interpretations of phylogenetic trees in an introductory biology course.

Phylogenetic trees are widely used visual representations in the biological sciences and the most important visual representations in evolutionary biology. Therefore, phylogenetic trees have also become an important component of biology education. We sought to characterize reasoning used by introductory biology students in interpreting taxa relatedness on phylogenetic trees, to measure the prevalence of correct taxa-relatedness interpretations, and to determine how student reasoning and correctness change in response to instruction and over time. Counting synapomorphies and nodes between taxa were the most common forms of incorrect reasoning, which presents a pedagogical dilemma concerning labeled synapomorphies on phylogenetic trees. Students also independently generated an alternative form of correct reasoning using monophyletic groups, the use of which decreased in popularity over time. Approximately half of all students were able to correctly interpret taxa relatedness on phylogenetic trees, and many memorized correct reasoning without understanding its application. Broad initial instruction that allowed students to generate inferences on their own contributed very little to phylogenetic tree understanding, while targeted instruction on evolutionary relationships improved understanding to some extent. Phylogenetic trees, which can directly affect student understanding of evolution, appear to offer introductory biology instructors a formidable pedagogical challenge.