Detection and remediation of scientific misconceptions using systems thinking approaches in an interactive simulation of infectious disease

Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (in Collaboration with the University of Idaho)

UCF PI: Roger Azevedo

Scientific misconceptions are becoming increasingly pervasive and damaging to the national interest. The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted how misconceptions related to infectious disease can pose serious medical, economic, and social challenges by increasing non-compliance with public health recommendations and undermining trust in scientific institutions. Unfortunately, once scientific misconceptions are adopted by an individual, they are notoriously difficult to remediate by merely presenting the “correct” information. We need educational programs and tools that integrate evidence-based information with broader societal factors, representation of individual risk, and multiple representations of information to improve our ability to correct misconceptions. Our goal is to create an innovative, sustainable, and reproducible educational program that: (1) Creates and deploys an innovative game-based simulation to educate users about infectious diseases, (2) Inspires young people from diverse backgrounds to consider careers in biomedical research, (3) Provides teachers with engaging and easily adopted digital tools that build students’ systems thinking and data science literacy skills, and (4) Conducts innovative STEM education research about the remediation of misconceptions using systems thinking and Advanced Learning Technologies.