-
Children’s Participation in a Virtual Epidemic in the
ScienceClassroom: Making Connections to Natural Infectious
Diseases
Nina Neulight,1,4 Yasmin B. Kafai,1 Linda Kao,1 Brian Foley,2
and Cathleen Galas3
This study investigated students’ understanding of a virtual
infectious disease in relation to
their understanding of natural infectious diseases. Two
sixth-grade classrooms of studentsbetween the ages of 10 and 12 (46
students) took part in a participatory simulation of a
virtualinfectious disease, which was integrated into their science
curriculum. The results from our
analyses reveal that students perceived the simulation as
similar to a natural infectious diseaseand that the immersive
components of the simulation afforded students the opportunity
todiscuss their understandings of natural disease and to compare
them to their experiences with
the virtual disease. We found that while the virtual disease
capitalized on students’ knowledgeof natural infectious disease
through virtual symptoms, these symptoms may have led studentsto
think of its transfer more as an observable or mechanical event
rather than as a biological
process. These findings provide helpful indicators to science
educators and educationaldesigners interested in creating and
integrating online simulations within classroom environ-ments to
further students’ conceptual understanding.
KEY WORDS: multi-user virtual environment; infectious disease;
classroom; simulation.
INTRODUCTION
Despite advances in medicine and technology,the prevalence of
certain infectious diseases still per-sists, as does the fear of
contracting infectious dis-eases. In 2003 more than 8,000 people
were infectedand over 700 people died because of the Severe
AcuteRespiratory Syndrome (SARS) (Centers for DiseaseControl and
Prevention). Similarly, in 2004, therewas national panic when the
initial demand for the fluvaccine exceeded its supply and many
people who
wanted to be vaccinated could not (CBS News, 2004).Research has
shown that children and adults have adifficult time understanding
how an individual con-tracts an infectious disease, what causes
these diseasesto spread, and how diseases can be prevented (Auet
al., 1999; Kalish, 1999; Sigelman et al., 1996a). Forthese reasons,
the National Science Education Stan-dards (NRC, 1995) include the
study of infectiousdisease at every grade level from grades 5–12
toincrease understanding and help prevent diseasespread.
There have been a number of instructionalapproaches that include
textbooks, hands-on class-room experiments, and educational
technologies toteach students about infectious diseases (Centers
forDisease Control and Prevention; Science EducationPartnership
Award Program). More recently,researchers have started
investigating various formsof participatory simulations as a way to
teachstudents about infectious diseases (Colella, 2000; Hug
1UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information
Studies,
University of California, 2128 Moore Hall 951521, Los
Angeles,
CA, 90095-1521, USA2California State University, Northridge,
USA3Corinne Seeds University Elementary School, University of
Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles, USA4To whom correspondence should be
addressed; e-mail: ninaweb@
ucla.edu
Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 16, No. 1,
February 2007 (� 2006)DOI: 10.1007/s10956-006-9029-z
471059-0145/07/0002-0047/0 � 2006 Springer ScienceþBusiness
Media, LLC
-
et al., 2001; Wilensky and Stroup, 1999). Severalfeatures of
participatory simulations are of instruc-tional relevance for
learning about infectious disease.For example, in some
participatory simulationslearners can create online representations
of them-selves, also called avatars. Also, since some
partici-patory simulations have hundreds of thousands ofregistered
users and thousands of concurrent users,learners can simulate in
real time the spread of adisease for a similar duration of a
natural diseaseoutbreak.
This paper investigates the integration of amulti-user virtual
environment (MUVE), calledWhyville, within classroom curriculum
about infec-tious disease. In this study, two classes with a total
of46 sixth-grade students became members of Whyvilleand were able
to access the website at home andduring science class where they
learned about infec-tious diseases. The students created avatars
inWhyville, which experienced the outbreak and spreadof a virtual
epidemic called Whypox during a 4-weekperiod. When an avatar had
the disease, two impor-tant aspects of online participation were
affec-ted—the avatar’s appearance and the ability to chatwith other
Whyville participants. The feature ofhaving the avatar’s appearance
change allows usersto experience diseases without direct physical
harm tothe participant, which would be difficult to replicatein
real life due to ethical considerations.
Our study investigated the integration of a virtualinfectious
disease called Whypox within scienceclassroom curriculum and its
relationship to students’understanding of natural infectious
diseases. Wewanted to understand in which ways studentsperceived
Whypox as a natural disease and thus iso-late design features that
might create more effectiveintegrations and simulations of disease
in the future.Lastly, we wanted to know how students draw ontheir
participation within a virtual disease simulationin order to expand
on their knowledge of naturalinfectious diseases. The following
literature reviewsituates the participation in a virtual epidemic
withinthe larger body of participatory simulations beforeaddressing
how participation in a participatorysimulation might enhance
children’s understanding ofnatural infectious disease.
BACKGROUND
In educational settings, students have beentaught about
infectious diseases through a variety ofinstructional approaches
such as textbooks, hands-on
classroom experiments, and educational technologies(Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention; ScienceEducation Partnership Award
Program). Some ofthese interventions used infectious disease as a
med-ium to teach about science inquiry (Hug et al., 2001),while
other studies focused on teaching about aspectsof infectious
disease such as the biology of germs(Au et al., 1999), latency and
immunity (Colella,2000), or the probability of getting a disease
(Wilen-sky and Stroup, 1999). Individually these studiestapped
specific aspects of how children understandinfectious disease and
how to better teach about theseaspects of infectious disease.
A more recent development to teach aboutinfectious disease is
the use of participatory simula-tions (Colella, 2000; Hug et al.,
2001; Wilensky andStroup, 1999). An educational simulation has
beendefined as a model of some phenomenon or activitythat users
learn about through interaction with thesimulation (Alessi and
Trollip, 2001). However, sim-ply modeling or imitating the central
features of asituation does not render an activity a simulation-
ina simulation the user must have the experience ofplaying a
genuine role and experience consequencesof one’s actions (Gredler,
1996).
In a computer-supported participatory simula-tion, students can
experience a phenomenon such asdisease spread repeatedly because
the teacher or de-signer can experimentally vary the disease.
Partici-patory simulations have differed from one another inthree
dimensions: the virtual reality component,which refers to how
faithfully a real-life environmentis replicated visually,
functionally, aurally, andsometimes kinesthetically (Alessi and
Trollip, 2001);the scale, which refers to the number of
participantsthat can participate concurrently in a single
simula-tion and ranges from a single classroom to hundredsof
thousands of participants; and the type of plat-form, which at the
time of this study referred to twodistinct types—wearable or hand
held computers(Colella, 2000; Hug et al., 2001; Krajcik et al.,
1998)and computer-based online multi-user environments(Aschbacher,
2003; Foley and La Torre, 2004).
Two features of participatory simulations havebeen salient to
the study of infectious diseases—theability to increase the user’s
immersiveness or feelingof presence in the simulation and the
integration ofthe simulation into the classroom curriculum.
Forexample, in one group of studies in which high schoolstudents
used wearable computers called ThinkingTags to learn about latency
of a virus, probability forinfection, and immunity, the students
felt that they
48 Neulight et al.
-
had experienced a disease (Colella, 2000). EachThinking Tag had
an infrared transmitter andreceiver that exchanged information with
the othertags in the simulation and then displayed to the
userinformation such as how many people the ThinkingTag had met
that were sick. The Thinking Tags wereused within a single
classroom and each simulationlasted minutes. Findings from this
study showed thatwith the Thinking Tags, students made references
tothemselves as being infected and were able to com-municate
naturally with each other, which seemed toencourage communication
about disease. A limita-tion in this research was that specific
assessments ofstudents’ learning were not conducted in the
study.
Also, participatory simulations have been suc-cessfully
integrated into classroom curriculums aboutinfectious disease. For
example, an eight-week cur-riculum called ‘‘Can Good Friends Make
You Sick?’’included the use of Thinking Tags by a class of
eighthgraders learning about the biology of communicablediseases
(Hug et al., 2001). While the curriculum inthat study included
infectious disease, only students’levels of inquiry and engagement
were assessed. Arelevant finding to the present study was that
asstudents became more familiar with how the computerdevices
operated, they began to engage in moresophisticated levels of
science inquiry.
While the Thinking Tags were designed for a singleclassroom to
use, other participatory simulationstermed multi-user virtual
environments (MUVEs)have been used to access a virtual world on the
Inter-net. At the time of this study, there were two
suchenvironments that included the study of infectiousdisease—River
City andWhyville. Themain differencebetween these twoMUVEswas the
role of the student’savatar or online representation. In River City
(Dede etal., 2002) students learned about how infectiousdisease
spread and the process of scientific inquiry byexamining the
sanitary conditions and disease spreadin the 19th century. Students
used their avatars tointerview the city’s virtual inhabitants and
collect dataabout sanitary conditions within the city but
theavatars did not experience the diseases themselves.However, in
Whyville, students through their avatarsexperienced firsthand the
outbreak of a virtualepidemic called Whypox.
For our study, we combined aspects of the ap-proaches discussed
above. We used an existing,thriving participatory simulation that
was a MUVE,called Whyville, and integrated the technology usewithin
a classroom curriculum on infectious disease.The main difference
between our study and the
studies on participatory simulations with wearable orhandheld
computers (Colella, 2000; Hug et al., 2001)was scale. While these
previous studies were con-ducted in single classrooms where an
outbreak lastedonly a minute, in Whyville a single outbreak
ofWhypox could last up to two months depending onthe population of
Whyville and the chosen diseasevector at the time of the outbreak.
We believe that thelarge scale would allow for students to become
morefluent with the technical aspects of the medium inaddition to
providing students with more time toboth participate in a virtual
disease epidemic andobserve its impact. Our study differed from
previousresearch on Whyville in that we wanted to examinehow the
participation in a virtual disease related tostudents’
understanding of natural disease. Priorresearch on Whyville focused
on how the introduc-tion of the virtual disease and related disease
activi-ties on the Whyville site had increased user
onlinediscussion about the spread and cure of Whypox(Foley and La
Torre, 2004).
To understand the extent to which studentsrelated Whypox to
natural infectious disease, weexamined classroom discussion between
the teacherand the students. Prior research has shown howclassroom
discourse can provide opportunities forscience inquiry (Gallas,
1995; Kafai and Ching, 2001;Lemke, 1990). In line with this
research, we looked athow class discussions might afford
connections of avirtual infectious epidemic to natural
infectiousdiseases.
We also examined students’ understanding ofhow disease spreads
and how to prevent disease fromoccurring. Researchers have shown
that childrenhave difficulty understanding these concepts (Au
etal., 1999; Kalish, 1999; Obeidallah et al., 1993; Siegal,1988;
Siegal and Peterson, 1999; Sigelman et al.,1996b; Solomon and
Cassimatis, 1999). Of particularinterest to the present study was
Au and Romo’s(1996) model of children’s conceptualization of
dis-ease because their assessment tools evaluated stu-dents’
reasoning about what caused disease. Au’sresearch team developed a
four-point rubric that wasused to assess children’s understanding
of fourbiological phenomena: food contamination, illness,genetics,
and infectious disease. Children’s under-standing of each
phenomenon was evaluatedaccording to how students reasoned about a
scenario.If students included a biological causal
explanation,(e.g., a person got sick because germs grew,
repro-duced, and attacked cells), their response was given ahigher
score than a response that included only a
49Participation in a Virtual Epidemic
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non-biological cause (e.g., a person got sick becausehe was not
wearing a coat). Like other research(Parmelee, 1992), Au’s focus on
the explicit teachingto children about the causes of infectious
disease wasbased on the assumption that without scienceinstruction,
children and adults did not automaticallyreason coherently about
biological phenomena suchas the spread of infectious disease. In
line with Au’sresearch, children who did not have this
scienceinstruction tended to reason about biological phe-nomena by
applying their knowledge of people andeveryday observable behaviors
to explain the cause.
CONTEXT OF STUDY
Participants
Participants were 46 sixth-grade students, anequal number of
boys and girls, in two classes taughtby the same science teacher.
The students attended alaboratory school that is affiliated with a
large, urbanuniversity and comprised of a diverse ethnic sample:27%
Latino, 13% African-American, 13% Asian,and 47% Caucasian.
Two-thirds of the familiesreceive tuition assistance based on a
sliding scale.Over 85% of these students have computer andInternet
access from their homes (Kafai and Sutton,1999). All students
received parental consent andprovided assent for participation in
the study. Theclassroom teacher had over 20 years of
experienceworking in elementary schools and teaching science.
Instruments
Classroom activities and discussions were video-taped. The
videotaped whole-class discussions wereused to determine how
students and teachers usedWhypox in their discussions about natural
infectiousdisease. Two surveys were developed to assess stu-dents’
understanding of natural infectious diseases andtheir perceptions
of Whypox as a natural disease.
Videotapes
One video camera was used to record whole-classdiscussions that
took place throughout the study.During the whole-class recordings,
a microphone wasplaced near the teacher. This resulted in
approxi-mately 6 hours of videotaped whole-class discussionsfocused
on Whyville activities.
Whyville and the Classroom Curriculum
The use of Whyville was integrated into a 10-week teacher-led
curriculum about infectious dis-eases. Some of the activities that
students participatedin as part of their science curriculum
included:watching videos about specific diseases and the nat-ure of
germs; examining cell structures under themicroscope; doing
hands-on experiments that simu-lated the spread of an infectious
disease; completingworksheets about cells, bacteria, and viruses;
andusing online tools to research specific diseases.
Theseactivities took place throughout the study, even afterWhyville
was introduced to the students in the thirdweek of the study when
students started to log on toWhyville for at least 10 minutes every
science class.
Students had access to the Whyville websiteduring school hours
and after-school hours. Eachmember of Whyville was represented by a
screenname and avatar, which was a member’s onlineheadshot that
appeared on the screen after a memberlogged on to the website. A
member could augmenthis or her avatar by buying or creating face
parts.
To travel through Whyville, a member selected adestination from
a drop down menu that was alwaysaccessible to the members or by
clicking on the screenwith the computer mouse. Each destination
offered adifferent type of activity such as:
science-relatedactivities about infectious diseases;
recreationalgames like checkers; the Center for Disease
Control,where members could read about past outbreaks ofWhypox
authored by children and science educators;and The Whyville Times,
the website’s online news-paper that included participant-authored
articlesabout the site. Members could communicate withother
participants synchronously by having a cartoonchat box appear above
their avatar face or memberscould communicate asynchronously
through ymail,an internal mail system, and a bulletin board
system(see Figure 1).
During weeks three to five, students explored avariety of
recreational and science-related activitieson Whyville, as
instructed by the teacher. WhenWhypox hit Whyville during week
five, the teacherfacilitated whole-class discussions to discuss
whatwas happening on Whyville (see Figure 2). Thesediscussions
occurred approximately twice a week forabout 30 minutes each until
the end of the study. Inthese discussions, the teacher and students
discusseda graph that they had created in class that displayedon
one axis the number of Whypox infections in both
50 Neulight et al.
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classes and displayed on the other axis the date ofinfection.
The teacher and students used this graph-ing activity as a
springboard to discuss how Whypoxwas affecting participation in
Whyville. A similargraph that displayed the entire Whyville
populationwas available online (see Figure 3). The studentsanalyzed
these online graphs with teacher guidance.The teacher and students
also discussed technical is-sues about using Whyville such as how
to chat and
how to participate in activities. In addition to thediscussions
about Whypox, the teacher guided stu-dents in exploring the
disease-related activities onWhyville’s CDC (see Figure 4). At the
CDC studentsread about past cases of Whypox and posted pre-dictions
about causes and cures in addition to usingtools that simulated
outbreaks of diseases bymanipulating variables such as the duration
of adisease (see Figure 5).
Fig. 1. Gallery of different Whyville screen shots (clockwise):
Welcome screen, Chatting at the Beach, and Playground.
Fig. 2. Whypox hits. Infected users have red dots on faces.
51Participation in a Virtual Epidemic
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Infectious Disease Survey
To determine students’ conceptual understand-ing about the
causes of natural infectious disease, wedeveloped a survey that
asked students about thecause, spread, and prevention of natural
infectiousdiseases. In addition, we included
scenario-basedquestions and used their corresponding coding
rub-rics from Au’s studies (Au and Romo, 1999). Anexample of the
infectious disease scenario with itscorresponding questions is as
follows:
‘‘Cathy went over to see her friend who was sick.
Some bad germs got inside her body. She felt okay
for a day. But then the next day she started to feel
sick all over her whole body. Her head ached and
her stomach hurt and her throat hurt—all at the
same time. (a) Why did it take a whole day for her
to feel sick after the germs got inside her body? (b)
How did the germs make her feel sick in so many
parts of her body at the same time?’’
The disease survey was administered at week 1,the beginning of
the study, and week 10, the end ofthe study.
Whypox Survey
To determine whether students connected thevirtual disease to
natural disease, we developed asurvey to examine students’
understanding of thevirtual disease Whypox and asked students to
com-pare their understanding of Whypox to naturalinfectious
diseases and to report about their onlineexperiences with Whypox.
The Whypox survey wasadministered at week ten, the end of the
study.
Fig. 5. Simulation tools available at Whyville’s CDC.
Fig. 4. Whyville’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) features
simulation tools and information about infectious diseases.
Fig. 3. Graph that displays the intensity of Whypox
outbreaks
in the entire Whyville population and is available online.
52 Neulight et al.
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Procedures
Before and after the curriculum unit on infec-tious diseases,
the infectious disease survey was givento all students by the
researchers. The Whypoxsurvey was administered only at the end of
the unit.All classroom sessions were videotaped. One to
tworesearchers of the team of five researchers observedeach science
class throughout this study. The researchteam consisted of
university faculty, a postdoctoralfellow, and graduate students.
The researchersadministered the evaluation instruments and
video-taped class discussions.
Data Analyses
The first part of analysis examined the whole-class discussions
about Whypox using transcripts ofthe videotaped classroom
discussions while the sec-ond part of analysis coded students’
survey responsesabout natural and virtual infectious disease.
Relating Virtual Disease to Natural InfectiousDisease in
Discussions
Video segments of whole-class discussion wereexamined in order
to determine the efforts used by theteacher and the students to
connect their Whypoxexperience with what they had learned about
naturalinfectious diseases. The video segments were selectedfrom
one of the classes only because there were noperformance
differences between the two classes onstudents’ survey responses.
The video segments wewanted to analyze occurred after the outbreak
ofWhypox and contained discussions about Whypox.After viewing these
seven segments, four video seg-ments, a total of 4 h, met the above
criteria and weretranscribed completely. Conversations, but
notbehaviors, were transcribed.
After reading the video transcriptions, wedeveloped thematic
categories that were derived fromtheory, that classroom discourse
can provide oppor-tunities for science inquiry (Lemke, 1990). The
videosegments were coded using three thematic categories:(1) the
use of infectious disease terminology in rela-tion to Whypox (e.g.,
‘‘Whypox was like an epi-demic’’; ‘‘we should have quarantine in
Whyville’’);(2) the mapping of Whypox to a natural disease inwhich
a natural disease was referenced by mentioningsymptoms of natural
diseases, the virology of naturaldiseases, or the consequences of
natural diseases; and,
(3) the immersive component of Whypox in whichstudents and
teacher included experiential, social, andcausal aspects of someone
having Whypox.
Understanding of Natural Infectious Disease
We also analyzed students’ answers to open-ended and
scenario-based questions about diseasecausality from the disease
survey using Au’s codingscheme (Au and Romo, 1996). The original
codingscheme that we adopted from Au’s research team (Auand Romo,
1996) was on a scale of 1 to 4. In thiscoding scheme, code 4
represented the most sophis-ticated understanding of disease
spread, a biologicalcausal mechanism, while codes 1 through 3
repre-sented a pre-biological understanding with category
1representing the least sophisticated understanding ofdisease
spread. Our modification to Au’s codingscheme was that during data
analyses we collapsedthe four-point coding rubric into a binary
rubric. Weused a binary rubric because in this study we
wereinterested in whether students reasoned with the
mostsophisticated mechanism of transfer, a biologicalcausal
mechanism, or a pre-biological understanding.We were not interested
in the degrees of pre-biolog-ical understanding that were
represented in codes 1through 3 of Au’s original coding scheme. We
appliedthe terms ‘biological’ and ‘pre-biological’ to these
twocodes (see Table I).
To test inter-rater reliability on all of the ques-tions we
first selected a random sample of 25% of thesurveys and found
representative student answers foreach code. Then we selected
another random sampleof 25% of the surveys and one coder coded
theseusing the coding key we had developed as a researchteam. A
second coder also coded the same sampleusing that coding key. We
considered items reliable ifthey shared 80% accuracy between the
two coders.Discrepancies for each item were discussed and cod-ing
descriptions for each question were revised asneeded.
Perceptions of Whypox as a Natural Disease
We investigated the ways in which studentsperceived features of
Whypox. Our goal was todetermine how faithful the simulation was to
naturalinfectious diseases. In developing our coding schemefor the
students’ reasoning of the causality of Why-pox, we followed Au’s
research team (Au and Romo,1999; Au et al., 1999) but included the
unique
53Participation in a Virtual Epidemic
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features of the virtual disease (see Table I). Thecoding scheme
for the other questions about Why-pox’s relationship to natural
infectious disease andWhypox as a learning tool as viewed by
students willbe listed in the results section. For the
inter-raterreliability we followed the same procedures as out-lined
in the disease survey and accepted only itemsthat had at least 80%
agreement.
RESULTS
Classroom Discussions Relating Virtual Diseaseto Natural
Infectious Disease
During and after the Whypox outbreak, severalclassroom
discussions examined both Whypox and itsconnection to natural
infectious disease. We identi-fied three ways in which the students
and the teacherdiscussed their understandings of natural disease
andcompared them to their experiences with the virtualepidemic: (1)
application of terms used to explainWhypox to terms used to explain
natural diseases; (2)mapping of Whypox to a natural disease in
which anatural disease was referenced by mentioning symp-toms of
natural diseases; the virology of natural dis-eases; or the
consequences of natural diseases; and (3)immersive component of
having Whypox in whichthe students and teacher referred to someone
expe-riencing Whypox and included experiential, social,and causal
aspects of being immersed in Whypox.There were many instances in
the selected video seg-ments in which more than one code applied to
asingle student or teacher reference.
In the first way of referencing Whypox with anatural disease,
students and the teacher mentioned,if not discussed, major terms
and concepts of infec-tious disease. These terms and concepts
included:contagious, exposure, symptoms, infection, incuba-tion
period, epidemiologists, epidemic, quarantining,
and immunity. Often the students or the teachermentioned one of
these concepts to describe an aspectof their Whypox experience.
However, beyond themere mention of the concept, once mentioned
theseconcepts often became woven into conversations. Forexample, as
the class discussed how they thought theyor others got Whypox, a
student used the term con-tagious to paraphrase the teacher’s
comments ofgetting Whypox through virtual contact. Then, in
asubsequent comment another student used the termcontagious to
describe how Whypox was affectingher. This conversation allowed for
the students to usethe term contagious in an authentic situation
tohopefully understand what it really meant.
Teacher: Did you have Whypox? You already had it. You
already had it before you talked to this person that you
just
saw before you had Whypox?
Sam: I started on Saturday, I think.
Teacher: Yeah.
Sam: It might have been contagious.
Teacher: So, you may have given it to them. Alice, what else
is
happening?
Alice: Two things. They are contagious. Because I was around
some people at the beach. Person just had it. I saw Whypox
and that’s it. And, also, if you can chat, it just comes
out.
Achoo, achoo. Like you’re sneezing.
The second way of referencing Whypox wasthrough the creation of
analogies between Whypoxand natural disease, and vice versa. Some
of theanalogous natural diseases the students and the tea-cher
referenced were SARS, the plague, and thecommon cold. In these
references, of which therewere 23 in the selected video segments,
the studentand the teacher often compared symptoms, preven-tions,
or aspects of Whypox to those experienced intheir everyday lives or
from their previous studies onnatural infectious diseases. These
links were used tohelp students make sense of what was happening
withWhypox. In the following example, the teacherresponded to a
student who thought that she had
Table I. Coding Scheme for Analysis of Infectious Disease and
Whypox Survey
Type of explanation
Description of explanation
in Infectious Disease Survey Description of explanation in
Whypox Survey
Don’t know/no response Don’t know/no response Don’t know/no
response
Pre-biological No mention of the biology, only people’s
behaviors or characteristics; Explicit
movement of unspecified entities;
Explicit mechanical
transfer of germs
No mention of the embedded code
responsible for the virus, only people’s
behaviors or characteristics; Explicit
movement of unspecified entities through
some medium
Biological Biology of germs or white blood cells,
including biological processes or
processes of growing, dying, reproducing
Embedded piece of code within a medium
54 Neulight et al.
-
contracted Whypox because she was around a lot ofpeople. To make
the point that having contact withsomeone with an infectious
disease did not guaranteethe spread of that disease, the teacher
referenced thecommon cold, something with which the studentswere
very familiar.
Teacher: OK if I’m around a lot of people who have colds, do
I automatically get the colds?
Students: No.
Teacher: Would I be sick all year? As a teacher would I be
sick all year if I automatically got colds from kids?
Students: Yes.
Teacher: Oh, yeah, I’d be sick all year.
Student: You’d be sick right now.
Teacher: I’d be sick right now. So, just being around people
does not mean that you are absolutely going to get it. All
right add to that Patrick.
These links of Whypox to natural infectiousdiseases, aside from
emphasizing a point, may havehelped students to think about the
virtual infectiousdisease in ways similar to natural infectious
disease.For example, during a class discussion about howstudents
thought they got Whypox, the teacher linkedWhypox to natural
infectious diseases by making thecomparison that the avatars in
Whyville weregrouped like bacteria.
Celine: There were these heads around me and I couldn’t move
away from them. They were all bunched up in these colonies.
Teacher: Colonies of bacteria around you. Huh?
Celine: Like a wall.
This link may have helped students to thinkabout the causes of
Whypox with a more sophisti-cated causal mechanism than mere
contact sincestudents had learned through other
instructionalmethods that bacteria or viruses were the
biologicalcausal agent of natural infectious diseases, not
thecontact itself.
Lastly, students and the teacher used Whypox tounderstand
natural infectious disease throughimmersiveness. Recall that
immersiveness refers tostudents creating their own personal
representationsthat students created on Whyville. These
references,of which there were 32 episodes in 4 hours of
selectedvideo segments, occurred frequently throughout
thediscussions, which could be an indication thatstudents genuinely
bought into the idea that they andothers had the virtual disease.
In this study, immer-siveness appeared in three forms:
experiential, social,and causal. In one form, the students and the
teacherreferenced themselves or others as experiencing anaspect of
Whypox, such as ‘‘I saw them with Why-pox’’ and ‘‘I had it two days
ago and it got worse.’’
Another way was the social dimension, which in-volved students
noticing others who had Whypox, asillustrated by this student’s
remarks: ‘‘I was checkingthere were five people who had Whypox and
theywere in a room alone.’’ The social dimension wasrarely seen in
isolation of the final form of immer-siveness, in which the
students and the teacher spec-ulated the causes and spread of
Whypox. In thefollowing example, a student described the social
as-pect of being immersed as the ability to infect otherswith
Whypox, while also speculating that his gettingclose to the people
was the cause for their Whypox.
Lee: I wanted to infect other people. So, I went close to
them
and then I went away and then they got it.
Linking causality to proximity, a social aspect, isrepeated in
this next example: ‘‘Jon said that Jon andMike got it first and
since we’re usually on the com-puters at the same time, maybe that
we were togetherand we were at the same room or something.’’
Theselast examples illustrate students’ attempts to makesense of
what was happening with Whypox.
Perceptions of Virtual Disease
We asked students the question ‘‘In which wayswas Whypox like a
real infectious disease?’’ Theanswers show that students perceived
several featuresof the virtual infectious disease as features
inherent innatural infectious diseases. These features
includedbeing contagious (80% of the responses, n = 32),having
symptoms (32.5%, n = 13), and being like aspecific other disease
(20%, n = 8). We asked stu-dents ‘‘How do you think Whypox spread
throughthe community?’’ All of the students’ explanations
forvirtual disease transfer included a pre-biologicalcausal
mechanism that included activities such ascontact, chat, and
sneezing. No student attributed abiological causal explanation that
included transferof Whypox through a piece of embedded code.
Webelieved that computer code embedded within theMUVE of Whyville
was the biological equivalent of anatural infectious disease.
Students’ Understanding of Natural Disease
We found that while the majority of students stillreasoned with
pre-biological causal explanations (seeTable II), there was a
significant change in students’responses between pre and post from
pre-biological tobiological explanations (t=)3.500, df= 44,
p=0.001;
55Participation in a Virtual Epidemic
-
t= )3.496, df = 44, p= .001), showing that twice asmany students
reasoned about natural infectious dis-ease with a biological
reasoning at the end of the study.
These findings were consistent with the twoopen-ended questions
about the causes of diseasespread: (1) What are some of the causes
of infectiousdiseases? (2) What are some things that will
increasethe spread of the disease? Pairwise t-test analysesshowed
that there was significant change in students’responses to the
first question (t = )2.121, df = 44,p = .040) and second question
(t = )2.413, df = 44,p = .020). As Tables III and IV reveal,
students werestatistically more likely to provide a response to
thesequestions at the end of the study than at the begin-ning of
the study. However, the majority of thesecausal explanations were
still pre-biological.
DISCUSSION
This study identified benefits and challenges inusing MUVEs such
as Whyville in a classroom cur-riculum about natural infectious
diseases. One of themain differences between the Whypox disease
simu-lation and previous participatory simulations (Colella,
2000; Hug et al., 2001; Krajcik et al., 1998) was scale.We
speculated that the large scale of Whyvilleaffected students in
ways that prior smaller scalesimulations of infectious disease
could not. Forexample, because Whypox lasted several days
ratherthan minutes, students were faced with the realitythat Whypox
was not going away any time soon. Asevidenced by classroom
discussions, students inter-preted this as a problem since their
faces and abilityto chat were negatively affected. Because face
build-ing and chatting were important activities on Why-ville
having these activities hampered may havemotivated students to look
for a cure and ponderpossible causes as they did in this study. In
addition,students were able to track and compare the spreadof the
epidemic not only in their two classrooms butalso in the whole
online community. These observeddifferences led students to discuss
frequency andlength of visits in Whyville and forms of
interactionswith other community members as possible reasonsfor
contracting the disease.
By using avatars in Whyville students alsoexperienced a disease
without physical harm to theiractual self, a form of immersiveness
absent fromtraditional science curricula of instruction
fromtextbooks, videos, and laboratory experiments. Withthis
immersive component, students started referringto themselves as
having the virtual disease, a phe-nomenon experienced in previous
participatory sim-ulations of infectious diseases (Colella, 2000;
Krajciket al., 1998; Soloway et al., 2001). This
participatorycomponent, in addition to the fact that Whypoxshared
features similar to diseases with which thestudents had familiarity
such as chicken pox and thecommon cold, allowed students to connect
Whypoxto natural infectious diseases. This was apparent intheir
whole-class discussions, where the students andthe teacher used
Whypox as a vehicle to talk aboutsome of the causes and preventions
of natural infec-tious diseases as well as terminology and concepts
ofinfectious diseases.
While the analysis of pre and post survey ques-tions showed
significant changes in students’ rea-soning about the causes of
natural diseases, a largemajority still provided pre-biological
explanations.This finding reinforces past research indicating
thatthe concepts of natural infectious disease are difficultfor
students to learn, even with instruction. Theparticipation in the
classroom curriculum on infec-tious disease might have been
responsible for thisthough our research design does not allow us
toidentify particular causes for this change.
Table III. Distribution of Student Responses to Question
About
Causes of Infectious Diseases
Type of explanation Pre Post
Don’t know/no response 12 3
Pre-biological 21 27
Biological 13 15
Table IV. Distribution of Student Responses to Question
About
Things that Increase the Spread of Infectious Diseases
Type of explanation Pre Post
Don’t know/no response 9 1
Pre-biological 29 34
Biological 8 10
Table II. Distribution of Student Responses to
Scenario-Based
Questions about the Transfer of Natural Infectious Disease
Type of explanation
Question a Question b
Pre Post Pre Post
Don’t know/no response 6 0 5 0
Pre-biological 34 32 35 29
Biological 6 13 6 16
56 Neulight et al.
-
Students perceived similarities in the virtual epi-demic and the
spread of natural infectious diseases,with one major exception—the
level of reasoningabout the causes of virtual disease was less
sophisti-cated than the reasoning about the causes of
naturalinfectious disease. However, students did perceivefeatures
of Whypox as similar as those of naturalinfectious disease such as
being contagious and havingsymptoms. We thought that it was
important to knowhow students viewed the causes of the virtual
diseasein case their reasoning could be used as a springboardto
discuss the equivalent of natural infectious disease.Our findings
showed that students’ reasoning aboutthe causes of the virtual
disease did not go beyondobservable explanations such as touching
someone orsneezing. Students did not think that the cause ofWhypox
was an internal process, such as through acomputational
mechanism.
It is possible that the immersiveness feature ofWhypox presents
benefits and challenges to learningabout natural disease. While
Whypox allowed stu-dents to show symptoms and have contact with
otheravatars, the types of contact possible in this virtualepidemic
were limited. For example, avatars couldnot engage in sexual
intercourse, an activity that hasbeen linked to the spread of many
natural infectiousdiseases. Also, avatars did not have exposure
tounsanitary conditions, which represents anothercause for many
natural infectious diseases. This re-duced set of experiences that
an avatar could havehad may have constrained how students
thoughtabout the spread of Whypox.
Also, while Whypox capitalized on students’prior knowledge of
natural infectious disease throughthe symptoms of sneezing and dots
on the face, thesevirtual reality symptoms may have manipulated
stu-dents into thinking of disease more as an observableevent. For
instance, touching someone rather thanthe reproduction of germs in
the body was seen as thecause. Our results confirmed this
supposition. Nostudent attributed what we termed the
computationalcausal explanation to Whypox. This result
contrastedwith students’ overall increase in biological
causalexplanations for natural infectious diseases.
Although the similarity of Whypox to familiarnatural diseases in
which children and adults havenaı̈ve understandings might have
accounted for someof this discrepancy, a contributing reason for
thisdiscrepancy might be a missing curricular piece. Thismissing
connection might be an introduction tocomputer viruses, what they
are and how they func-tion. Biological virus and computer virus
alike
contain a piece of DNA or code, which has theirinstructions.
Students could have examined thesimilarities and differences
between biological andcomputational viruses. Such background
informationmight have helped students to understand
possiblemechanisms of Whypox.
We believe that the science teacher played animportant role in
integrating the MUVE of Whyvillewithin the classroom environment.
This teacherengaged students in discussions about the
technicalaspects of the MUVE, how Whypox was affecting thevirtual
community, the appearance of Whypox, andconnections about Whypox
with natural diseases. Theteacher allowed students to explore
Whyville on theirown during class time. She too was
knowledgeableabout the site and the various activities
available.
NEXT STEPS
This study contributes to the existing andgrowing literature on
participatory simulations oninfectious diseases. Based on our
findings, welearned that having an integrated curriculum aroundthe
participatory simulation stimulated teacher–studentdiscussions
about the causes and spread of virtualand natural diseases. From
these discussions, wealso learned that students did not reason
about thecauses of virtual diseases in ways similar as
naturaldiseases.
One possible explanation that students did notreason about the
causality of virtual diseases in asophisticated way was because we
did not link thetwo types of diseases sufficiently. Specifically,
becauseWhypox took place on a computer, we thought thatincluding
computational viruses in future curriculamight effectively bridge
natural and virtual diseases.In such a curricular addition,
students could investi-gate different forms of computer viruses and
the waysthey are transmitted. The additional study of
com-putational viruses might help students more effec-tively link
the causes of Whypox to the causes ofnatural disease. Finally, the
role of the teacher cannotbe overlooked. In the present study, the
teacherengaged students in discussions about Whypox andother
disease-related activities on Whyville. Shefacilitated students’
use of certain features of Why-ville such as tools to model disease
and the newspa-per, Whyville Times, to read about past episodes
ofWhypox. During whole-class discussions, she facili-tated students
to make connections to concepts andterminology used in reference to
natural infectiousdiseases. In future implementations of Whypox
into
57Participation in a Virtual Epidemic
-
the science classroom, the role of the teacher mightalso affect
the potential impact of this intervention.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this paper was supported in partby a grant of the
National Science Foundation (NSF-0411814) to the second author. The
views expressedare those of the author and do not necessarily
repre-sent the views of the supporting funding agency orthe
University of California, Los Angeles.
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