Learning How to Identify Species in a Situated Learning Scenario: Using Dynamic-Static Visualizations to Prepare Students for Their Visit to the Aquarium

This study investigated whether studying dynamic-static visualizations prepared first-year Biology students better for an out-of-classroom experience in an aquarium than learning how to identify species with more traditional instructional materials. During an initial classroom phase, learners either watched underwater videos of 15 freshwater fish species (video-group, n = 46) or they were asked to identify preserved specimens of the same fish with the help of a dichotomous identification key (key-group, n = 43). Subsequently, all students were asked to identify the taught species during their visit to the aquarium. Our results indicate that the video-group was able to identify more species correctly than the key-group directly after the classroom instruction, whereas both groups performed equally well after the aquarium visit. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)