A process for adapting a case study as a high impact practice for undergraduate microbiology classes is described and its use in assessing global awareness as an institutional outcome at the course level. Documenting the student learning of content objectives and retention is addressed. Four student artifacts are assessed with an adaption of…

We developed a hands-on activity using the game Jenga to demonstrate the links between health behaviors, chronic and infectious diseases, and community well-being and resilience. For the activity, K-12 students worked together in small teams (4-8 students) and were given two Jenga towers ("tower A" and "tower B"), each…

Over the past year, educators have developed curricula teaching about the COVID-19 pandemic (Reed 2020; Royce 2020; Sadler et al. 2020). Many of these curricula feature computer simulations of epidemic dynamics (Kelter 2020; Sadler et al. 2020). Because an epidemic pattern is an emergent property of interacting human behaviors, it is crucial for…

The current COVID-19 pandemic shows how little many people know about viruses. Yet apart from COVID-19, the world has observed epidemic spread of another SARS virus, of the Ebola virus, and of the Zika virus during the last two decades. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is still one of the most dangerous viruses worldwide. Some types of the…

The pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted an urgent need for infectious disease education for K-12 students. To gather a better understanding of what educational interventions have been conducted and to what effect, we performed a scoping review. We identified and examined 23 empirical researcher- and teacher-designed studies conducted in…

In this personal narrative reflection, the author examines her experiences teaching everyday science during the COVID-19 pandemic. She provides examples of curiosity-driven explorations with her own twin sons related to growing plants and baking bread. Through social media she shares her home experiences with others, building a remote community of…

By highlighting the critical thinking that (1) analyzes and evaluates arguments for claims about vaccinations and autism, and (2) engages in a form of methodological skepticism that systematically and continuously asks Critical Questions, a philosophical approach is introduced to deal directly and systematically with students' (and publicly…

When students of the of the physical sciences transition from school to university, they discover that knowledge of calculus is as vital as arithmetic, and that there is precious little useful information written without calculus. However, the lack of calculus in pre-university physics studies persists, especially in its application to the…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all universities in the United States switched to online learning in March 2020. We, as educators, faced the reality of switching to online teaching using Zoom. Our approach was to use COVID-19 as the course content to help motivate preservice teachers (PSTs) and alleviate some of the challenges of online…

This paper describes the further development of the "Epidemiology of Eyam" project at Winchester College since the publication of our previous paper (French "et al" 2019 Phys. Educ. 54 045008). A much wider cadre of students have been involved with this recent phase of the study, and we have also benefitted from a sabbatical…

As COVID-19 accelerated through spring of 2020 the question became how will schools cope with protracted closure? Devising strategies to engage and educate students through full-time, online learning became a priority. At Tufts CSE we specialize in creating high school biomedical science curricula that foster engagement with science and build…

During the recent Ebola outbreak of 2014-15, science teachers were fighting a different kind of epidemic--an epidemic of misinformation. Despite the low risk of spread here in the U.S., some school districts closed schools when they learned that staff, parents, or students had been on the same flight as one of the infected Dallas nurses. A poll by…

Providing both introductory information and biosecurity protocols in laboratory, farm, and field settings is central to student learning and safety. However, even when clear protocols are provided, students do not fully understand the consequences of their actions. We present a crime scene that requires evidence investigation to improve basic…

In the current laboratory assignment, technical aspects of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are integrated in the context of six different bacterial outbreak scenarios. The "Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus Sequence" (ERIC) PCR was used to analyze different outbreak scenarios. First, groups of 2-4 students determined optimal…

A service-learning project appropriate for a biochemistry or advanced biochemistry course was designed and implemented. The project involved students partnering with a homeless shelter to design informational pamphlets to be displayed at the shelter for the clients' use. The pamphlet topics were based on diseases studied within the course.…