There was a large gain over the course of a semester in students' confidence in their ability to read and comprehend research data (in the form of figures and tables), textbook figures and explanatory text, and papers in the research literature.

Improvement in student confidence in
intellectual skills related to cell biology

Problem	Pre-test	Post-test	Mean Difference
1 Graph	2.36 ± 0.94	2.93 ± 0.95	0.57*
2 Figure	1.86 ± 1.01	2.93 ± 0.95	1.07*
3 Text Figure	1.79 ± 1.10	2.64 ± 1.05	0.85*
4 Table	1.96 ± 0.99	2.43 ± 0.99	0.48*
5 Text	2.65 ± 1.01	2.92 ± 0.95	0.26†
6 Paper	2.07 ± 1.11	2.82 ± 1.05	0.75*
7 Paper	2.42 ± 1.09	2.76 ± 0.98	0.34*
Average	2.16 ± 0.76	2.74 ± 0.79	0.58*
Mean ± standard deviation of 135 student ratings. * p < .0001; † p < .006.

Sources of problems: 1) Brown and Goldstein, PNAS, 71, 788,1974. Fig.2); 2) Kouzarides and Ziff, Nature, 336, 646,1988. Fig. 4, an electropherogram; 3) Karp, Cell and Molecular Biology, 2^nd Ed., 1999, Fig. 8.16); 4) Strasser, et al., Nature, 368, 457,1994. Table 1); 5) Karp, (see ref. 3, p. 690); 6) Wickman, et al.Nature, 368, 255,1994. title page); 7) Smeyne, et al., Nature, 368, 246,1994. title page).