Immune Attack: Teaching Kids About Science and Researchers About Designing Learning

School science is focused on subjects that can be explicitly
formalized: topics deemed age appropriate are those that can be
explained to the student explicitly.  This has resulted in a K-12
science curriculum that largely ignores the molecular aspects of
biology, chemistry and physics.  However, children are able to
comprehend large amounts of information intuitively.  In “The Process
of Education,” Jerome Bruner proposes, the Spiral Curriculum as a
method for creating deep understanding of scientific concepts.  The
Spiral Curriculum requires a period of intuitive knowledge gathering
and then a formal education.  Bruner points out that five year old
children are too young to be taught explicitly about grammar:  they do
not understand the meaning of the word “noun,” for example.  However,
five year olds can use the rules of grammar to build unique correct
sentences.  Molecular Science can be taught to students in the same
way, and a video game can make this intuitive knowledge gathering
phase possible.  Immune Attack is an immersive video game designed to
provide a student with her first introduction to the molecular world.
Immune Attack presents novel objects--various cell types and many
proteins--in an intuitive format.   Learning the rules of the game and
winning the game means becoming familiar with the behavior of these
cells and the characteristics of the proteins.  Because the game and
the objects are faithful representations of nature, the player gains
intuitive knowledge about cell and proteins by playing the game.  We
expect that the presentation of cell biology in Immune Attack will
leave students with an understanding of interactions between different
cell types, how these interactions are mediated by proteins, and how
cells modify which proteins they express in response to their
environment.  To determine the extent of learning, we are
collaborating with middle school and high school teachers to conduct
controlled evaluations, using another video game as a negative
control.  We will discuss our findings.  We will also discuss how
teachers can effectively take advantage of this intuitive knowledge as
they integrate Immune Attack into their curriculum.