Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Protection against Pandemic (H1N1) 2009-Associated Illness among US Military Personnel

INTRODUCTION: A novel A/H1N1 virus is the cause of the present influenza pandemic; vaccination is a key countermeasure, however, few data assessing prior seasonal vaccine effectiveness (VE) against the pandemic strain of H1N1 (pH1N1) virus are available. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Surveillance of influenza-related medical encounter data of active duty military service members stationed in the United States during the period of April-October 2009 with comparison of pH1N1-confirmed cases and location and date-matched controls. Crude odds ratios (OR) and VE estimates for immunized versus non-immunized were calculated as well as adjusted OR (AOR) controlling for sex, age group, and history of prior influenza vaccination. Separate stratified VE analyses by vaccine type (trivalent inactivated [TIV] or live attenuated [LAIV]), age groups and hospitalization status were also performed. For the period of April 20 to October 15, 2009, a total of 1,205 cases of pH1N1-confirmed cases were reported, 966 (80%) among males and over one-half (58%) under 25 years of age. Overall VE for service members was found to be 45% (95% CI, 33 to 55%). Immunization with prior season's TIV (VE = 44%, 95% CI, 32 to 54%) as well as LAIV (VE = 24%, 95% CI, 6 to 38%) were both found to be associated with protection. Of significance, VE against a severe disease outcome was higher (VE = 62%, 95% CI, 14 to 84%) than against milder outcomes (VE = 42%, 95% CI, 29 to 53%). CONCLUSION: A moderate association with protection against clinically apparent, laboratory-confirmed Pandemic (H1N1) 2009-associated illness was found for immunization with either TIV or LAIV 2008-09 seasonal influenza vaccines. This association with protection was found to be especially apparent for severe disease as compared to milder outcome, as well as in the youngest and older populations. Prior vaccination with seasonal influenza vaccines in 2004-08 was also independently associated with protection

Why analog games now?

Over the past fifteen years, video games have shifted from being seen as merely entertainment to being \u27sometimes-useful\u27 tools in educators\u27 lesson planning repertoires (Schrier, 2019). Practicing educators and policy makers have been convinced that games can be good for learning, but many questions about games\u27 reliable and effective implementation remain unanswered (Takeuchi & Vaala, 2014). Fortunately, researchers and developers have begun to advance important questions of practice, including how educational games can be used and designed effectively (Clark et al., 2015), how to improve games\u27 design (e.g., Burke & Kafai, 2014), on understanding the classroom ecologies in which they\u27re being used (Shah & Foster, 2014), and on teachers\u27 professional development around games\u27 use (Jan et al., 2017). Collectively, this research can be seen as the beginning of an exciting field that combines theories of play, learning, and design across a diversity of contexts, whereby games are designed to mediate and support individual and community learning. As our understanding of play-based learning expands beyond childhood learning to include how to design e.g., games for museums or college-aged students, non-digital games can help researchers better understand how play can be designed for and how to best develop formal and informal learning supports, especially in everyday contexts and in ways that are practical. In this paper, we begin with describing some of the challenges of making educational games go viral, or getting effective play-based learning into effective widespread, and sustained practice especially in formal education. To achieve this aim, and to support accompanying research, we frame the issue as the last mile problem of game-based learning and propose that expanding the currently disparate research on non-digital games can help overcome this issue. Using two cases of analog game development that were undertaken for research purposes (Author), we describe the dilemmas and key tradeoffs that we have learned through the games\u27 development and use. It is our hope that such a description will allow us to bridge the research being produced in digital games with the potential of non-digital formats and support the more coordinated advance of play-based learning research and development

Patterns of Engagement in an Educational Massively Multiplayer Online Game: A Multidimensional View

© 2008-2011 IEEE. Learning games have great potential to become an integral part of new classrooms of the future. One of the key reported benefits is the capacity to keep students deeply engaged during their learning process. Therefore, it is necessary to develop models that can measure quantitatively how learners are engaging with learning games to inform game designers and educators, and to find ways to maximize learner engagement. In this article, we present our proposal to multidimensionally measure engagement in a learning game over four dimensions: general activity, social, exploration, and quests. We apply metrics from these dimensions to data from The Radix Endeavor, an inquiry-based online game for STEM learning that has been tested in K-12 classrooms as part of a pilot study across numerous schools. Based on these dimensions, we apply clustering and report four different engagement profiles that we define as 'integrally engaged,' 'lone achiever,' 'social explorer,' and 'nonengaged.' We also use three variables (account type, class grade, and gender) to perform a cross-sectional analysis finding interesting, statistically significant differences in engagement. For example, in-school students and accounts registered to males engaged socially much more than out-of-school learners or accounts registered to females, and that older students have better performance metrics than younger ones