Supporting the Learning of Evolution Theory Using an Educational Simulator

This paper analyzes Sim-Evolution, an educational simulator designed to help teachers presenting three basic principles of the theory of evolution by natural selection (TENS): the trait variation within a population, the heritability of trait variation, and the selective survival based on heritable traits. Sim-Evolution focuses on high school students, so its interface was designed to be joyful, helping to engage them. Although it was designed based on the concept of population genetics, knowing it is not a requirement for exploring TENS. Sim-Evolution models the population of a hypothetic bird species in two possible vegetations: forest or veld. Individuals of this bird species vary over two characteristics (color and beak type), with three possible phenotypes for each one. The user can choose individuals to form an initial population and monitor variation through successive generations. Birds breed independently of their phenotype, and natural selection (based on the fitness of each trait) was the only driven factor of population variation. Sim-Evolution was evaluated with high school students during a biology class. Students were able to describe and analyze the simulation process from a scientific perspective, observing the phenomenon associated with TENS. They correctly associated the bird's evolution with different survivor rates associated with the different traits and identified evolution by natural selection as a population and not an individual/organism process. Our proposal opens the possibility that TENS simulator does not obligatorily require users to be familiar with population genetics concepts, which is especially interestingly for high school pedagogical uses.