‘Awesome to see the immense time before us on Earth’ – Students’ affective responses when interacting with a tree of life visualising evolutionary concepts

Despite the importance of emotions in science education, research on affect remains sparse. A promising direction is to explore role immersive visualisation evoking affective responses. We investigate whether touch-based zooming interaction with a tabletop tree life evokes various responses, particularly, epistemic responses awe, curiosity, surprise, and confusion. Ten students participated semi-structured interviews while interacting visualisation. Verbal utterances interactions visual interface were videorecorded. Students’ verbal non-verbal relation five evolutionary themes analysed. Results revealed that expressed all four engaging feature, awe surprise most frequently uttered. Most associated biological relationships time. Awe was highly time, relationships, confusion both these conceptual themes. For eight participants, initial response generated after exposure dynamic life. The study demonstrates an through can induce multiple evolution. findings provide insight into multidirectional interconnections between affect, visualisation, biology concepts.