Pandemic storytelling and student engagement: how students imagined pandemics before COVID-19 pandemic.

FEMS microbes Pub Date : 2024-09-17 eCollection Date: 2024-01-01 DOI:10.1093/femsmc/xtae029
Moamen M Elmassry
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Student engagement is one of the critical issues in science classes. This commentary explores the value of storytelling in microbiology education and student engagement. It is a result of an undergraduate exercise, where students were asked to draft short stories on pandemics before the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. conducted in 2016-2019). The analysis of student writings (total of 244 short stories) aimed to understand the students' perception of pandemics, the diseases they chose to write about, and their level of knowledge of pandemics. Interestingly, 56.6% of students chose viruses to be the cause of their pandemics, 35.7% chose bacteria, 4.5% chose parasites, and a single student chose a fungus. Respiratory mode of transmission was the top pick in the stories (30%), followed by fecal-oral route, sexually transmitted, and skin-to-skin contact. Therefore, their choice of respiratory diseases as the focus of their short story may suggest their limited understanding of pandemics beyond such diseases. The varying levels of detail in the stories suggested that storytelling could be insightful in identifying knowledge gaps and engaging students. Two exciting questions remain: (1) For the students who wrote those short stories before the COVID-19 pandemic, how did they feel when it hit? (2) If the students are asked again to write a pandemic short story, what would it look like nowadays? A deeper understanding of epidemiology and the social impact of pandemics is crucial for developing effective pandemic preparedness and response plans, and undergraduate courses can play a vital role in this endeavor. Overall, this commentary highlights the value of storytelling in engaging students to assess their knowledge of specific subject matters.

讲大流行病故事与学生参与:在 COVID-19 大流行之前学生如何想象大流行病。
学生参与是科学课的关键问题之一。本评论探讨了讲故事在微生物学教育和学生参与中的价值。在 COVID-19 大流行之前(即 2016-2019 年),学生被要求起草有关大流行病的短篇故事。对学生作文(共 244 篇短篇小说)的分析旨在了解学生对大流行病的看法、他们选择写作的疾病以及他们对大流行病的了解程度。有趣的是,56.6%的学生选择病毒作为大流行病的病因,35.7%的学生选择细菌,4.5%的学生选择寄生虫,还有一名学生选择真菌。在这些故事中,呼吸道传播方式占首位(30%),其次是粪口途径、性传播和皮肤接触。因此,他们选择呼吸道疾病作为短篇故事的重点,可能表明他们对此类疾病以外的流行病了解有限。故事的详细程度各不相同,这表明讲故事在发现知识差距和吸引学生方面可能很有见地。还有两个令人兴奋的问题:(1) 对于在 COVID-19 大流行之前写这些短篇故事的学生,当大流行来临时,他们的感受如何? (2) 如果再次要求学生写一个大流行短篇故事,现在的短篇故事会是什么样子?深入了解流行病学和大流行病的社会影响对于制定有效的大流行病防备和应对计划至关重要,而本科生课程可以在这方面发挥重要作用。总之,这篇评论强调了讲故事在吸引学生参与评估他们对特定主题的知识方面的价值。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.30
自引率
0.00%
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审稿时长
15 weeks
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