Class
Article
College
Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services
Department
English Department
Faculty Mentor
Hillary Swanson
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need to help students learn about public health issues, including the transmission of disease and methods for the prevention of epidemics. This study presents data from a project aimed at developing a computational modeling microworld to help middle school students learn about the spread of disease. The microworld is meant to help students model and test their ideas about how a disease spreads through a population and how an epidemic can be prevented. I employed a lab-based case study approach to conduct one-on-one 1.5-hour interviews through Zoom with four middle school students (ages 12-14). During the interview, the student was asked questions about the spread and prevention of disease and then invited to model and test their ideas in the microworld. I conducted a micro genetic analysis to produce a temporal decomposition of students’ trajectory of thinking with respect to disease prevention and protection strategies. We model student refinement of thinking through steps of building initial models and predicting results, testing initial models and making sense of the results, debugging and retesting models, observing final models, and explaining results. Our findings suggest adolescents can learn about strategies for disease prevention through computational modeling. https://youtu.be/7BavA-rB4gY
Location
Logan, UT
Start Date
4-8-2022 12:00 AM
Included in
Investigating Student Learning About Disease Spread and Prevention in the Context of Agent-Based Computational Modeling
Logan, UT
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need to help students learn about public health issues, including the transmission of disease and methods for the prevention of epidemics. This study presents data from a project aimed at developing a computational modeling microworld to help middle school students learn about the spread of disease. The microworld is meant to help students model and test their ideas about how a disease spreads through a population and how an epidemic can be prevented. I employed a lab-based case study approach to conduct one-on-one 1.5-hour interviews through Zoom with four middle school students (ages 12-14). During the interview, the student was asked questions about the spread and prevention of disease and then invited to model and test their ideas in the microworld. I conducted a micro genetic analysis to produce a temporal decomposition of students’ trajectory of thinking with respect to disease prevention and protection strategies. We model student refinement of thinking through steps of building initial models and predicting results, testing initial models and making sense of the results, debugging and retesting models, observing final models, and explaining results. Our findings suggest adolescents can learn about strategies for disease prevention through computational modeling. https://youtu.be/7BavA-rB4gY