Global Pandemics explores five major pandemics in world history

Introducing Global Pandemics: a cutting-edge, browser-based, digital learning experience—designed to enhance student understanding of the role of pandemics in world history. One year in the making, and involving a talented, interdisciplinary team from around the world—the new product features cutting-edge digital learning design, web animation, interaction design, and digital storytelling.

GLOBAL PANDEMICS
Plague of Athens

Presenting **Chapter 1: “To Do No Harm,”** the story of Nikos of Athens, a physician during the Plague of Athens, 429 BCE, who struggles to treat the multitude who fall ill during this world-upending ordeal, causing him to question everything he holds dear, from his faith in Apollo, healer under the gods, to the meaning of his Hippocratic Oath, and what is truly at stake in medical ethics.

Global Pandemic

The Plague of Athens
The Black Death
Smallpox
The Spanish Flu
HIV/AIDs
Region

Classical Greece
Europe, Asia
Empire of Anahuac (Mexico)
Western Front, Global
Congo, SF, Global
Time Period

5th C BCE
14th C
16th C
1918-1920
1980s-present

Over 50 uniquely designed, animated web pages featuring hours of engaging, rewarding learning material for students to explore. The product combines digital storytelling with interactive learning design to craft a complex pedagogical experience that immerses students in the power of story.

Applied Educational Research

Global Pandemics provides historical context for students about the challenges COVID-19 has presented to people around the world. The design of Global Pandemics is positioned at the nexus of innovative pedagogical, theoretical, and technological practices—including narrative studies, multimodal literacies, and game-based learning research. Synthesizing the best of history games, visual learning, interactive textbooks, and history apps, Global Pandemics introduces novel features, design elements, and affordances—demonstrating the effectiveness of applied educational research to enhance learning outcomes. The central question posed is whether—and to what degree—the innovative digital learning design of Global Pandemics will result in a measurable increase in student interest, engagement, and understanding of key concepts in epidemiology as well as the role of pandemics in world history. A secondary question is how to iterate product design to improve engagement and successful learning outcome metrics even further.

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Global Pandemics, Chapter 1: “To Do No Harm,”
Plague of Athens, 4th Century BCE

Building on a rich tradition of digital media and learning research, Global Pandemics immerses and engages students through meaningful choice and multimodal interaction design; provide systems-based interpretations that emphasize complexity, interdependencies, and causal connections; played out within a problem space that encourages students to perceive connections between past and present—making that understanding more visceral, tangible, and real—and in the process sparking enthusiasm for learning about the past. Global Pandemics offers an innovative solution for engaging millennial students and inspiring curiosity for learning about history.