Bryophytes for Beginners: The usability of aprinted dichotomous key versus a multi-accesscomputer-based key for bryophyte identification

Bryophytes are a rewarding study group in field biology and the UK bryophyte flora has internationalimportance to biodiversity conservation. We designed an identification key to common woodland mossspecies and compared the usability of two formats, web-based multi-access and printed dichotomouskey, with undergraduate students. The rate of correct species identification and identification speed bothshowed an advantage for the printed dichotomous key. Our findings suggest that, even in the digitalage, printed keys remain valuable in biological education and that quality of key design is moreimportant than presentation medium. We discuss the relative advantages of multi-access and dichotomouskeys and how to approach bryophyte identification with beginners