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

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.

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

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.

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

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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