Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
Infectious diseases ranging from the common cold to cholera affect our society physically, emotionally, ecologically, and economically. Yet despite their importance and impact, there remains a lack of effective teaching materials for epidemiology and disease ecology in K-12, undergraduate, and graduate curricula [2]. To address this deficit, we’ve developed a classroom lesson with three instructional goals: (1) Familiarize students on basic concepts of infectious disease ecology; (2) Introduce students to a classic compartmental model and its applications in epidemiology; (3) Demonstrate the application and importance of mathematical modeling as a tool in biology. The instructional strategy uses a game-based mathematical manipulative designed to engage students in the concepts of infectious disease spread. It has the potential to be modified for target audiences ranging from Kindergarten to professional schools in science, public health, policy, medical, and veterinarian programs. In addition, we’ve provided variations of the activity to enhance the transfer of fundamental concepts covered in the initial lesson to more complex concepts associated with vaccination and waning immunity. While 10 variations are presented here, the true number of directions in which the game might extend will only be limited by the imagination of its students [6].
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.