Abstract

The occurrence of epidemics and pandemics has always been part of our history and will continue to pose a threat to our global health in the future. The good news is that a wide variety of players in the healthcare sector are working together to combat these threats, infectious diseases, and track down their causes. Detective work, so to speak. EDDi aims to make this work tangible in the form of a serious game for use in university teaching, telling the story of an outbreak in Hamburg.

Project

A team of health scientists, epidemiologists, and game designers is pursuing the development of a realistic learning scenario based on game-based learning, which playfully forms the interface between theory and practice in academic teaching. As Epidemic Disease Detectives, the basic epidemiological knowledge and learners' skills are developed and consolidated within a case study, accompanied by reference materials. In the form of a serious game, the target group is prepared for realistic tasks of detecting and containing disease outbreaks. Furthermore, EDDi will be made available to other tertiary education providers as a digital, open, and modifiable example learning scenario (open educational resource) to facilitate further development and design of new case studies

How can I use EDDi? EDDi is a modifiable Open Educational Resource (OER) and primarily addresses both trainees and lecturers in higher education. The OER comes in two formats:

Goals and Content

The EDDi project pursues problem-based, self-directed learning of principles and practices of outbreak investigation in the format of a serious game. The nature of the serious game supports interactive learning of important decision-making and steps in collaboration with participating disciplines in a controlled learning environment. EDDi thus enables theoretical knowledge to be linked to practical experience and subject-related information sources to be both critically evaluated and meaningfully applied.