Presenter: John A. Pollock, Partnership in Education, Duquesne University This presentation will provide advice through examples of successful and not so successful interactive media projects. Our perspective is from an academic world, where evaluation and assessment are integrated into the entire logic model of development and workflow. Out goal is to produce innovative and engaging resources that enrich STEM and health literacy. While our target audience are late elementary through middle-school tweens, projects are developed with a general public audience in mind. Many projects have benefited from development carried out in concert with co-development of exhibits for local science museums, which then transition to schools and general public use. The materials produced have included animated digital dome, group interactive media, single-player video games, Apps, and interactive museum exhibits, tangible exhibits, comic books and broadcast television. Published studies on statistically significant learning will be discussed along with the imperative undercurrent of the need for the gaming experience to be fun.

1. John Archie Pollock, Ph.D.
Professor • Biological Sciences
Co-Director of the Chronic Pain Research Consortium
Director of the Partnership in Education
www.duq.edu/pain • www.sepa.duq.edu
How People Learn:
Stories from Transmedia for STEM and Health Literacy

2. Outline
 Motivation
– Sharing science with the general public creates learning opportunities
– But there’s a problem
 Process
– Why telling stories matters
– How to focus on Fundamental Principles
– Knowing your audience
 What we have learned
– Narrative matters
– Visual learning is strong

3. But what is the problem?
– Let’s think about science literacy in our country.
– How science literacy impacts health literacy.
 Motivation !
‘Two Cultures’ - C. P. Snow
Rede Lecture - Two Cultures, 1959.
‘Scholarship of Integration’ - Ernest Boyer
Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.
The Scientist/Communicator can add a useful dimension to the discussion and teaching of science.

4. The story is out there:
2009!
1995!
Chris Mooney makes the point that:
People integrate new information based on their
pre-existing worldviews,
and that failure to account for this fact will lead
to continued failures in science communication.

5. PISA
Programe for
International Student
Assessment
(15 year olds)
Average
(white)
USA
36th
2012!

6. Let me show you a clip from
WAITING FOR SUPERMAN
Directed by Davis Guggenheim

7. Let’s talk about reading a bit more.

8. 2009 Program for International Assessment (PISA)
Reading (15 year olds)
Average
USA
24th

9. Science literacy among adults.
J.D. Miller (2010) Adult science learning in the Internet era - 2010. Curator, 53, 191- 208.
But only 28% could read the
New York Times - Science
or understand NOVA
Civic Scientific Literacy, 1988–2008.

10. National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)!
http://nces.ed.gov/naal/!
1992
90 million adults
score in the lowest
categories
2003
110 million adults
score in the lowest
categories

11. Weak health literacy costs the U.S. health care system at least $240 billion/yr.
The below basic person is not
necessarily below basic in all
assessment categories.
Below Basic Basic Intermediate Proficient
Prose
50 33 15 2
Document
51 29 18 1
Quantitative
61 26 11 2
Percent adults with Below Basic health literacy
Health Literacy!

12. 2 1/2 - 1 million years ago
Scientific American
boisei habilis
Scientific American

13. 2 1/2 million years ago
1 1/2 million years ago
Simple Stone Tools
Recent discovery of 150 tools from 3.3 million years ago

14. 1 1/2 million years
quality tools and …
Scientific American

15. 1 million years ago
Control fire!
And story telling...

16. – Humans have been telling stories
and listening for a million years.
– Humans love a good story.
Lots of time and lots of climate
variation.

17. www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl and www.koshland-science-museum.org
Mt. Toba Explodes
But there is more than just weather.
*!404 ppm!
X!
So what’s next after Mt. Toba & the Genetic Bottleneck …

18. Telling stories with pictures that last a long time…
that are extremely accurate.!
that animate the event.!
Bhimbetka, India
and make us really wonder.!

19. Then it warmed up.
10,000 years ago
The warm-up gave us a chance to adapt:
 Cultivation - spreading seeds
 Selective breeding - desirable traits

20. Cities
Çatalhöyük - a city 9,000 years ago (Turkey)
– Thousands of people
– Cultivate wheat
This is an artist’s impression of Çatalhöyük. Image credit: Dan Lewandowski

21. Things began to happen fast
5,000 to 8,000 years ago an age of invention
Riding horse
Wheel & plow
Sail
Written language
Beer recipe 5,100
years ago
The British Museum

22. Writing took off:
Epic of Gilgamesh (4,100 years ago)
Hammurabi’s laws (3,800 years ago)
Egyptian Book of the Dead (3,500 years ago)
Torah (Pentateuch) (2,800 years ago)
But the Scientific Method by Descartes and others about 400 years ago…
Musée du Louvre!

23. So what do I think:
With a million years of evolution, our brains are wired
to tell and listen to stories.
We are not necessarily wired to read.
We have to learn that.
We are not necessarily wired to think critically about
science and health.
We have to learn that.

24. What to do?
Tell stories
Use great visuals (scientifically accurate)
Follow fundamental principles that relate to your
audience
Reinforce the message across media platforms
Challenge your audience to actually read

25. Process
Why telling stories counts
How to focus on Fundamental Principles

26. Example #1:
Here is the challenge:
Kids who receive an organ transplant frequently fail to take their medicines.
32% among kidney recipients
31% among liver recipients
16% among heart recipients
Many kids die.
Dobbels et al Pediatr Transplant (2005)
Nevins Pediatr Transplant (2002)
Griffin Elkin Pediatr Transplant (2001)
Rianthavorn et al Transplantation (2004)
Focus on Fundamental Principles

27. Example #1:
Understanding medications significantly increases
self-responsibility among heart recipients.
McAllister et al Prog Transplant (2006)

28. Example #1:
Teach patients about Prograf (anti-rejection drug).
Among other things, they need to know about:
• IL-2
• T-Cells
• Immune System – relevant cell biology
• Central Dogma – DNA RNA Protein

29. What we did.
Lawrence, Stilley, Pollock, Webber,
Quivers (2011)
Promoting Independence and
Adherence in Pediatric Heart
Transplantation.
Progress in Transplantation, vol. 21, 1,
March 2011, pg 61-66.
PMID: 21485944

30. What we did.
Started with a booklet designed by university hospitals.
Create a patient survey based on booklet
In the form of a comic book
Flip Books – for things that move or change
Places to write comments and questions
Places to doodle
The comic book was then turned into a simple animated video story.

31. The comic book:

32. The iPad video:

33.  What we have learned.
• Children
– Average Improvement 64%
– Range of improvement -8% to 300%
• Parent
– Average Improvement 7%
– Range of improvement -19% to 53.8%
Before! After!
1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! 8! 9!
1.0!
2.0!
1.5!
0.5!
0.0!
2.5!
Question No.!
Meanscore!
What’s Next: A new video game on the immune system.

34. Video Games on the Immune System
• It’s NOT a Battle Zone!
• The immune system is a vast
distributed intelligence.
• The immune system collects
information and makes
decisions.
Example #2:

35. the video game…!

36. Audience Testing & Evaluation

37.  game should have progressive difficulty
 students want more complex objectives
 splinter is boring
 What we have learned.
What’s Next: A new video game on the immune system – take 2.

38. Audience Testing - Formative Evaluation
7th Grade
Example #3:

41. Winning game levels 1 - 3 !
clears Benny’s acne.!

42. Level 4 - viral infection!

43. Level 4 – viral infection!

45.  “game is fun because it is really difficult”
 students appreciated being able to pause and read
about their characters (the immune cells) and then got
better at game play
 students learned about the immune system
 What we have learned.
What’s Next: A board game.

46. You don’t always need an App.
A board game
with Gerra Bosco and others

47. Something new:
Do kids learn when they watch a digital dome show?
Example #4:

48. An Experiment:
Wilson, Gonzalez, Pollock (2012)
Evaluating learning and attitudes on tissue engineering: A study of
children viewing animated digital dome shows detailing the
biomedicine of tissue engineering.
Tissue Engineering (Part A), vol 18, no. 5 576-586.
PMID: 21943030

50. Knowledge item:
Item type:
% Correct
Before Show:
% Correct
After Show:
1. What is a stem cell?
Multiple
choicea
28
76
3. Is there blood in your bones?
Yes/No 41
97
6. What does extracellular matrix mean?
Multiple
choicea
13
68
Did children learn from the film?
Children’s
drawings on
the survey.
Wilson, Gonzalez & Pollock (2012) Evaluating learning and attitudes on tissue engineering: A study of children viewing animated digital dome
shows detailing the biomedicine of tissue engineering. Tissue Eng Part A. 2011 Sep 26. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 21943030

51.  children learned from a single exposure
 children learned equally well from both styles
 Though they prefer animated characters telling the story
 children learned to visualize and draw new complex systems
 What we have learned.
What’s Next: Facing the fundamental principles of evolution head-on.

52. Part of Darwin2009: A Pittsburgh Partnership
www.sepa.duq.edu/darwin
Art and Science:
Spiral of Life
Example #5:

53. Example #5:
The challenge:
www.pewforum.org/files/2013/12/Evolution-12-30.pdf
Influenced by religion and politics:
43% of Republicans believe in evolution versus 67% of Democrats
Public Views About Human Evolution

55. Script by David Lampe
Developed with ETC
Darwin Synthetic Interview
Also used in Pittsburgh Public School
(enrollment ~27,000)

56. Did you learn anything?
69%
Would you recommend
this to a friend?
76%
Darwin Synthetic Interview

57. Post-Survey Total respondents: n=3954
“Ask Darwin!” A Synthetic Darwin Interview.
A museum interactive kiosk installed in the Carnegie Science Center.

58. First depiction of a tree-like diagram.
Charles Darwin's notes 1837.
Darwin had one:
All Life is connected by common ancestors
We need an image for Evolution

59. In the top 20 of the most downloaded papers from Leonardo (MIT Press) for 2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015.

61. Spiral
of
Life
V:
Animal
Evolution
App.
18ft
x
10ft
Pittsburgh
Zoo
&
PPG
Aquarium

62. Used as an interactive space where children can place their drawings on the spiral.

63. Spiral of Life V: Bird Evolution
App. 7 ft x 6ft
National Aviary

64.  70 % (n=3476) reported ‘satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’ with their
level of enjoyment, learning, and information
 48% were able to correctly identify where humans evolved,
even though humans were not explicitly marked on the image.
 “Please identify the region with the origin of life.”
 What we have learned.

65.  70 % (n=3476) reported ‘satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’ with their
level of enjoyment, learning, and information
 48% were able to correctly identify where humans evolved,
even though humans were not explicitly marked on the image.
 “Please identify the region with the origin of life.”
 What we have learned.
What’s Next: let’s see what we can learn from television.
Aviary Science
Center
Zoo
Correct Position 60.30% 29.63% 24.30%
Top Left/Top Middle 12.50% 38.00% 42.90%
Sample size (n) 976 1080 3584

66. A television show pilot for PBS.
Kids explore science.
Broadcast September 2010 WQED•Pittsburgh
A story of broken bones and much more…
Creator – John Pollock
Executive Producers – John Pollock & David Caldwell
Produced in collaboration with Planet Earth Television

67. Audiences surprise us with some bits of knowledge,
but people almost always mess up how big is big.
Brief step back:
Other things that we have learned along the way…

70. Study how people learn from the SCIENTASTIC! TV show.

71. We also find:
Significant Increase:
• Kid’s belief that science helps them understand what they see around them.
• Willingness to find an expert and ask them questions.
Ulna?

72. An hour-long special for Public
Television.!
Kids explore science.!
Focus on SLEEP!
National Broadcast 2014/2015!
What’s Next: Let’s build and adaptive, branched, interactive e-reader/e-book.

73. “City Hacks and the Search for Sleep” !
By Kate Messner & John Pollock!
Together with :
•!

74. •!“City Hacks and the Search for Sleep” !
By Kate Messner & John Pollock!
Together with :

75. “City Hacks and the Search for Sleep” !
By Kate Messner & John Pollock!
Together with :
•!

76. “City Hacks and the Search for Sleep” !
By Kate Messner & John Pollock!
Together with :
•!

77. Together with :
Synthetic Interview – the app!!

78. Transmedia with rich visual and strong narrative can help:
• improve reading literacy and engage the aliterate
• improve science literacy and spur curiosity about everyday science
• add new dimensions to problem solving skills
• can strengthen visual understanding of complex systems

79. Thank You!
pollock@duq.edu!