What happens if you catch Whypox? Children’s learning experiences of infectious disease in a multi-user virtual environment

For the thematic area of "Learning to Play: Playing to Learn" Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) have long been a popular genre for entertainment games. Only recently educational researchers have been investigating educational applications (e.g., Aschbacher, 2003; Barab et al., 2002; Bruckman, 1998; Dede, Ketelhut, & Ruess, 2002). Three structural features of MUVEs afford particular instructional opportunities for learning about infectious disease: (1) the ability of learners to create online representation of themselves, called avatars, who can be immersed in disease experiences without direct physical harm to the participant — an aspect difficult to replicate in real life due to ethical considerations; (2) the ability to simulate the experience of infectious disease spread within a large community since some MUVEs have hundreds of thousands of registered users and thousands of concurrent users; and (3) the ability to simulate the real time duration of disease spread over several weeks unlike some previous participatory simulations (Colella, 2000; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, Fredricks, & Soloway, 1998). This study investigated the learning about infectious disease within a MUVE, called Whyville.net, which had over 500,000 registered users and about 4,000 concurrent users. In this study 46 sixth grade students became members of Whyville and were able to access the website at home and during science class where they learned about natural infectious diseases. The students created avatars in Whyville, which experienced the outbreak and spread of a virtual disease called Whypox during a four-week period. When an avatar had the disease, two important aspects of online participation were affected – the avatar’s appearance by getting red dots on the virtual face and the ability to chat with other Whyville participants by having online chats interrupted by virtual sneezes. This investigation was guided by the following research questions: What do children understand about Whypox as a virtual disease? How does this understanding relate to children’s understanding of natural infectious diseases? Our results revealed that children understood Whypox in ways similar to how they understood natural infectious diseases. For example, when students were asked how they thought Whypox spread through the community, most students said the disease spread through contact, chat, and sneezing. Similarly, when students were asked how Whypox was like a natural infectious disease, most of the student responses included features such as being contagious, having symptoms, and being like a specific other disease. One drawback of having virtual symptoms of sneezing and red spots was that students tended to think that Whypox was caused by contact rather than by germs multiplying in the body and deteriorating the immune system. These findings provide helpful indicators to game designers interested in educational applications of concepts. First, entertainment through features such as chat and on-site recreational games is an essential factor to sustain children’s engagement in a MUVE. Second, too much similarity to a real-life phenomenon might make children think of the real-life version rather than the virtual one. Third, MUVEs provide a dynamic medium to help children learn about concepts that are hard to learn about through traditional teaching methods. References Aschbacher, P. (2003). Gender differences in the perception and use of an informal science learning website. Grant funded by National Science Foundation, PGE 0086338. Arlington, VA. Barab, S., Thomas, M. K., Dodge, T., Goodrich, T., Carteaux, B., & Tuzun, H. (2002). Empowerment design work: Building participant structures that transform. Paper presented at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Seattle, Washington. Bruckman, A. (1998). Community support for constructionist learning. Computer Supported Collaborative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 7, 47-86. Colella, V. (2000). Participatory simulations: Building collaborative understanding through immersive dynamic modeling. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 471-500. Dede, C., Ketelhut, D., & Ruess, K. (2002). Motivation, usability, and learning outcomes in a prototype museum-based multi-user virtual environment. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Mahwah, NJ. Krajcik, J., Blumenfeld, P., Marx, R., Fredricks, J., & Soloway, E. (1998). Inquiry in project-based science classrooms: Initial attempts by middle school students. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7(3-4), 313-350. Soloway, E., Norris, C., Marx, R., Blumenfeld, P., Krajcik, J., & Fishman, B. (2001). Handheld devices are ready at-hand. Communciations of the ACM, 44(6), 15-20

Maternal Participation and Scaffolding While Coviewing Educational Television

This dissertation study examined how mothers participated and scaffolded while watching an educational television program at home with their 3- to 5-year-old children; whether maternal participation and scaffolding predicted children's learning of vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills presented in the program; and reasons (i.e., maternal beliefs and program characteristics) for maternal participation and scaffolding. The study used a scaffolding lens to enrich our understanding of how parents can help their children learn from educational programs. Scaffolding has been used to conceptualize the guidance of an expert other to help children do a task or learn a concept that they could only do with assistance (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Thirty-one mother-child dyads were observed in their homes watching an educational program. For analyses the program was divided into 70 segments, all worthy of participation. Each segment was analyzed for the types of content and formal features present. Children were assessed before and after the observation on a subset of the vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills presented in the program to determine whether children learned after watching the program with their mothers. All mothers completed a survey prior to the observation and answered follow-up questions after the observation. The survey was used to identify the scaffolding opportunities (i.e., the places in the program mothers could scaffold since they thought that their children did not know the target vocabulary, sight word, or reading skill) and to measure the beliefs mothers had about school readiness and educational television as a tool to learn. The follow-up questions were used to situate some of the findings. Field notes, video, and audio recordings were used to record the behaviors of the dyads. Mothers participated and scaffolded less than expected while coviewing. Children learned some of the target vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills. The amount of maternal participation when there were items and skills that mothers thought their children did not know and the amount of maternal scaffolding predicted children's learning of the target vocabulary and sight words but not children's learning of the target reading skills. There were probable relationships between some types of maternal participation and when the program segment had vocabulary and sight words; characters; tightening of the camera; or music. There were probable relationships between maternal scaffolding and when the program segment had vocabulary and sight words; text; and voiceovers. Neither belief that was measured (i.e., about school readiness and about educational television as a tool to learn) predicted the amount mothers participated or scaffolded. The findings of this work have implications for researchers, parents, and program designers since this study describes how mothers participated and scaffolded while coviewing; shows that parental participation while coviewing an educational program made a difference in what children learned; and suggests that a program with a strong academic content, having text on-screen, and the use of voiceovers, might relate with maternal scaffolding, which predicted children's learning

Maternal Participation and Scaffolding While Coviewing Educational Television

This dissertation study examined how mothers participated and scaffolded while watching an educational television program at home with their 3- to 5-year-old children; whether maternal participation and scaffolding predicted children's learning of vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills presented in the program; and reasons (i.e., maternal beliefs and program characteristics) for maternal participation and scaffolding. The study used a scaffolding lens to enrich our understanding of how parents can help their children learn from educational programs. Scaffolding has been used to conceptualize the guidance of an expert other to help children do a task or learn a concept that they could only do with assistance (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Thirty-one mother-child dyads were observed in their homes watching an educational program. For analyses the program was divided into 70 segments, all worthy of participation. Each segment was analyzed for the types of content and formal features present. Children were assessed before and after the observation on a subset of the vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills presented in the program to determine whether children learned after watching the program with their mothers. All mothers completed a survey prior to the observation and answered follow-up questions after the observation. The survey was used to identify the scaffolding opportunities (i.e., the places in the program mothers could scaffold since they thought that their children did not know the target vocabulary, sight word, or reading skill) and to measure the beliefs mothers had about school readiness and educational television as a tool to learn. The follow-up questions were used to situate some of the findings. Field notes, video, and audio recordings were used to record the behaviors of the dyads. Mothers participated and scaffolded less than expected while coviewing. Children learned some of the target vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills. The amount of maternal participation when there were items and skills that mothers thought their children did not know and the amount of maternal scaffolding predicted children's learning of the target vocabulary and sight words but not children's learning of the target reading skills. There were probable relationships between some types of maternal participation and when the program segment had vocabulary and sight words; characters; tightening of the camera; or music. There were probable relationships between maternal scaffolding and when the program segment had vocabulary and sight words; text; and voiceovers. Neither belief that was measured (i.e., about school readiness and about educational television as a tool to learn) predicted the amount mothers participated or scaffolded. The findings of this work have implications for researchers, parents, and program designers since this study describes how mothers participated and scaffolded while coviewing; shows that parental participation while coviewing an educational program made a difference in what children learned; and suggests that a program with a strong academic content, having text on-screen, and the use of voiceovers, might relate with maternal scaffolding, which predicted children's learning

An infectious way to teach students about outbreaks

The study of infectious disease outbreaks is required to train today’s epidemiologists. A typical way to introduce and explain key epidemiological concepts is through the analysis of a historical outbreak. There are, however, few training options that explicitly utilise real-time simulated stochastic outbreaks where the participants themselves comprise the dataset they subsequently analyse. In this paper, we present a teaching exercise in which an infectious disease outbreak is simulated over a five-day period and subsequently analysed. We iteratively developed the teaching exercise to offer additional insight into analysing an outbreak. An R package for visualisation, analysis and simulation of the outbreak data was developed to accompany the practical to reinforce learning outcomes. Computer simulations of the outbreak revealed deviations from observed dynamics, highlighting how simplifying assumptions conventionally made in mathematical models often differ from reality. Here we provide a pedagogical tool for others to use and adapt in their own settings. Keywords: Teaching, Outbreak analysis, Pedagogical tool, Simulation analysis, Network reconstructio