Redesign of a life cycle figure improves student conceptions of ecology and evolution

Life cycle diagrams communicate the developmental life stages of an organism. Design choices may inadvertently communicate additional information about survivorship rates, genetic variation, and microevolutionary change. In this controlled experiment, we randomly assigned one of three life cycle diagrams to 684 college students. Each figure included identical life stages of a fictitious organism’s development but differed in 1) number of offspring (single or multiple) and 2) layout (cyclical or linear). Each participant could reference the figure when answering questions about organism survival, variation among offspring, and variation between generations. Students scored 21–37% higher on questions about survivorship when the available diagram included multiple offspring. Students scored 19–30% higher on questions about microevolution when the diagram layout was linear. Overall, students who received the figure with a linear layout and multiple offspring earned the highest average score (54.5%, or 3.3 of 6 questions) on the assessment, while students with the traditional figure (cyclical layout with single offspring) scored the lowest average (26.1%, or 1.6 of 6 questions). These results suggest that figure design affects student interpretations and may assist student learning about ecology and evolution concepts and common misconceptions.