How Do Species Change Over Time? Designing a Hybrid Teaching Unit on Five Factors of Evolution

Evolution is the central concept of biology and key to a comprehensive understanding of any complex biological interaction. It has proven to be a particularly difficult subject for both teachers and students. Hybrid teaching environments have the potential to support students in learning about complex topics and simultaneously enable researchers to collect data on students’ learning, giving them the opportunity to diagnose concrete obstacles for learning. Thus, we developed a teaching unit on five factors of evolution that utilizes digital tools in a traditional biology classroom for a hybrid teaching environment. The teaching unit is theoretically founded on biology education research (e.g., about students’ misconceptions) and utilizes validated teaching materials. Using various kinds of data from the unit, we expect to be able to gain a deeper understanding of students’ learning by analyzing students’ individual learning trajectories. This will lay the foundation for enhanced individualized feedback in the future.