The goal of this project is to develop a digital media based program to teach high school student about immunology. We will develop an interactive digital media to teach minority students (high school) on the introduction of immunology and compare the efficacy of learning between traditional teaching and interactive media. We will develop three curriculums to teach group of high school students recruited from collaborating high schools from the South and West side Chicago suburbs. Three different materials are (1) standard classroom material, (2) combination of class room-based introductions and movie-based teaching media, (3) combinations of class room teaching, movies, and games. Movies are designed to capture the emotional attachment of students to the subject and will be shown prior to the games and lectures. After the learning session, each group of student will take a set of quiz to determine the level of understandings and interests in the subjects. Statistical analysis will be performed to determine if digital media /game-based teaching achieves better understanding of the subject by the students compared to the classical class room teaching.
One of the current roadblocks to promote more interests among students to the STEM- related field is a loss of motivation and interest in science during the middle school age. The goal of this project is to develop a new digital interphase?based teaching method for high school students and to increase interests in medical sciences with an emphasis on the field of immunology and infectious disease. We will develop two digital media contents, one is a collection of short movies involving patients with immunological disorders and the other is an interactive game, to test if these digital media could help students to acquire an increase in the interests and understanding of the subjects better than students taught by classroom based teaching.
