Would I lie to you? Party affiliation is more important than Brexit in processing political misinformation.

In recent years, the UK has become divided along two key dimensions: party affiliation and Brexit position. We explored how division along these two dimensions interacts with the correction of political misinformation. Participants saw accurate and inaccurate statements (either balanced or mostly inaccurate) from two politicians from opposing parties but the same Brexit position (Experiment 1), or the same party but opposing Brexit positions (Experiment 2). Replicating previous work, fact-checking statements led participants to update their beliefs, increasing belief after fact affirmations and decreasing belief for corrected misinformation, even for politically aligned material. After receiving fact-checks participants had reduced voting intentions and more negative feelings towards party-aligned politicians (likely due to low baseline support for opposing party politicians). For Brexit alignment, the opposite was found: participants reduced their voting intentions and feelings for opposing (but not aligned) politicians following the fact-checks. These changes occurred regardless of the proportion of inaccurate statements, potentially indicating participants expect politicians to be accurate more than half the time. Finally, although we found division based on both party and Brexit alignment, effects were much stronger for party alignment, highlighting that even though new divisions have emerged in UK politics, the old divides remain dominant.

Students' Use of Optional Online Reviews and Its Relationship to Summative Assessment Outcomes in Introductory Biology.

Retrieval practice has been shown to produce significant enhancements in student learning of course information, but the extent to which students make use of retrieval to learn information on their own is unclear. In the current study, students in a large introductory biology course were provided with optional online review questions that could be accessed as Test questions (requiring students to answer the questions before receiving feedback) or as Read questions (providing students with the question and correct answer up-front). Students more often chose to access the questions as Test compared with Read, and students who used the Test questions scored significantly higher on subsequent exams compared with students who used Read questions or did not access the questions at all. Following an in-class presentation of superior exam performance following use of the Test questions, student use of Test questions increased significantly for the remainder of the term. These results suggest that practice questions can be an effective tool for enhancing student achievement in biology and that informing students about performance-based outcomes coincides with increased use of retrieval practice.

Improved Student Learning through a Faculty Learning Community: How Faculty Collaboration Transformed a Large-Enrollment Course from Lecture to Student Centered.

Undergraduate introductory biology courses are changing based on our growing understanding of how students learn and rapid scientific advancement in the biological sciences. At Iowa State University, faculty instructors are transforming a second-semester large-enrollment introductory biology course to include active learning within the lecture setting. To support this change, we set up a faculty learning community (FLC) in which instructors develop new pedagogies, adapt active-learning strategies to large courses, discuss challenges and progress, critique and revise classroom interventions, and share materials. We present data on how the collaborative work of the FLC led to increased implementation of active-learning strategies and a concurrent improvement in student learning. Interestingly, student learning gains correlate with the percentage of classroom time spent in active-learning modes. Furthermore, student attitudes toward learning biology are weakly positively correlated with these learning gains. At our institution, the FLC framework serves as an agent of iterative emergent change, resulting in the creation of a more student-centered course that better supports learning.