Repository containing R code for the analysis of student pre- and post-recitation responses to the Genetic Drift inventory developed by Price et al. (2014). Responses were recorded following instruction with Genie in 2016, as well as with and without Genie in 2017. All datafiles used are included in the repository and can be readily used following change of setwd() within the R code.
Neutral evolution is a fundamental concept in evolutionary biology but teaching this and other non-adaptive concepts is specially challenging. Here we present Genie, a browser-based educational tool that facilitates demonstration of concepts such as genetic drift, population isolation, gene flow, and genetic mutation. Because it does not need to be downloaded and installed, Genie can scale to large groups of students and is useful for both in-person and online instruction. Genie was used to teach genetic drift to Evolution students at Arizona State University during Spring 2016 and Spring 2017. The effectiveness of Genie to teach key genetic drift concepts and misconceptions was assessed with the Genetic Drift Inventory developed by Price et al. (2014). Overall, Genie performed comparably to that of traditional static methods across all evaluated classes. We have empirically demonstrated that Genie can be successfully integrated with traditional instruction to reduce misconceptions about genetic drift.