The Teaching of Immunology Using Educational: Gaming Paradigms

The Teaching of Immunology Using Educational Gaming Paradigms Patrick Clements Jeremy Pesner Jeremiah Shepherd University of South Carolina Dickinson College University of South Carolina Columbia, SC Carlisle, PA Columbia, SC [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT skills. Educational gaming is an exciting genre of computer programming that attempts to find interesting and compelling 2. EDUCATIONAL GAMES ways to teach while also being fun. Research has been conducted 2.1. Educational games in the past to determine what aspects make certain educational games Since computer games were first developed, there has been a effective, but there have been no conclusive findings. Combining significant market for educational games, largely aimed at information about successful educational gaming elements from younger children. Ideas were developed when educators noticed these studies with our own knowledge, we created an educational what a magnetic pull Pacman had on gamers. Malone stated that game that simulates the processes of human immune systems by the goals for educational games should be [2]: 1) Clear goals that using a “Tower defense”-type game. students find meaningful; 2) Multiple goal structures and scoring to give students feedback on their progress; 3) Multiple difficulty Categories and Subject Descriptors levels to adjust the game difficulty to learner skill; 4) Random K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General – Games. elements of surprise; 5) An emotionally appealing fantasy and metaphor that is related to game skills. Many educational games J.3 [Life and Medical Sciences]: Biology and genetics. released in the early 90s such as Reader Rabbit (The Learning Company), Math Blaster (Knowledge Adventure), The Oregon General Terms Trail (Broderbund Software), Number/Word Munchers Design (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium), and Math Rescue (Apogee Software) appear to roughly follow this form. Keywords Educational Gaming, immune system. 2.2. Educational games today As the sophistication of these games has increased, they have 1. INTRODUCTION found currency not only with improved games for younger In 2005, Jim Zheng and Daniel Shegogue coauthored a paper children, but for middle school, high school and even college entitled “Object-Oriented Biological System Integration: a SARS students. Despite these advances, games have been slow to find Coronavirus Example” which described a parallelism between favor with most educators. This can be attributed to a general object-oriented (OO) programming and biological systems. For trepidation around new media and methods, along with pundits example, a hierarchical relationship is characterized by who claim that games encourage violent behavior, stifle creativity, inheritance in OO, and characterizing an enzyme as a type of and/or reduce intelligence. However, in summarizing the many protein in biological systems, while multifunctionality is studies done, Kirkegaard found these correlations to be represented by polymorphism in OO, and enzymes catalyzing inconclusive at best, and some have claimed that in some cases different substrates in biological systems. Zheng then wanted to the experiments themselves were biased [1]. use an educational video game in order to teach interested students about the workings of the immune system. Considerable research has been done into the quantitative effectiveness of games as an educational tool with mixed results. The task of our project was to develop and program a game for It turns out that no one game experience captures everyone’s the task, using Zheng and Shegogue’s framework as a basis. As attention, thereby preventing games from being a universal frequent gamers ourselves, we were able to bring a lot of informal instruction method [4]. knowledge to the table, but our project required research into the workings of the immune system, the programmatic practicalities 2.3. Our educational game of one type of game over another, and how the game could be To develop our game, we first examined those which came before innovative, educational, and fun given our development time and ours. Most notable is a game called Immune Attack, developed by the Federation of American Scientists. It employs both 3D Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this graphics and voiceovers to present a polished, professional- work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee looking game. The basic story is that a student with a provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or nonfunctioning immune system injects a nanobot into her body. commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the The player then takes control of the device, which is charged with full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to stimulating her immune system to fight off various diseases. The post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific gameplay is reminiscent of other 3D spaceship pilot games (in permission and/or a fee. order to appeal to a genre many gamers are familiar with), but ACMSE '09 March 19-21, 2009, Clemson, SC, USA. portrays the various cells and pathogens in an accurate fashion. Copyright©2009 ACM 2009 978-1-60558-421-8/09/03 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004 ...$10.00 ...$5.00. The biological information dispensed during the gameplay is both Figure 1. Immune Response Process [3]. correct and useful for the player to achieve the stated goals, which are usually tasks related or complementary to those of the cells the player is learning about. With all this information in mind, we began to devise our game. We wanted to ensure that our game was distinct from Immune Attack, and we came up with several differences: for one, Immune Attack focuses on the innate immune system, while our goal was to teach the adaptive immune system, which will react differently to different antigens. In addition, the complexity of Immune Attack has a steep learning curve to effectively control the nanobot, especially if the player has never played a “space combat” game before. Finally, there is little incentive to play Immune Attack again once it has been completed, as the level designs and objectives do not change. While this game appeared to fulfill most of the qualities Malone laid out, it did not contain an adjustable difficulty level, nor were most elements of the game random (which could lead to players quickly becoming bored with repetition). 3. IMMUNE SYSTEM The immune system includes many interdependent systems of the body, which act to stop invasions by pathogens. Pathogens are any object that causes disease and include bacteria and viruses. When a pathogen enters the bloodstream either through a cut or the mucous membranes in the nose and mouth, it is first recognized by phagocytic cells like macrophages (“big eaters”)(Figure 1 step 1). Phagocytes recognize objects as being Cytotoxic T cells also bind to ATCs and remember a specific either “self” or “non-self” through a protein complex on the antigen. They respond to IL-2 by dividing into more Cytotoxic T surface of all vertebrate cells called the Major Histocompatibility cells [3]. Cytotoxic T cells are responsible for destroying cells Complex (MHC). After partially digesting any “non-self” cells that are infected by pathogens with the antigens from the ATC in the phagocyte will present portions of the cell called antigens on order to stop the multiplication of pathogens (Figure 1 step 6). its surface using MHC (Figure 1 step 2). Helper T cells then use Another type of cell that aids the immune system is the Natural this information to direct the immune responses of the body [3]. Killer (NK) cell, which acts much like a Cytotoxic T cell, The immune system acts to remove pathogens from the body by destroying cells that do not have “self” MHC presentations or two methods called the cell mediated response and the humoral have damaged MHC presentations (such as cancerous cells) [3]. response. Both responses are triggered by Helper T cells. A 4. SOFTWARE PROCESS macrophage that has digested a “non-self” body will then secrete We knew from the start that our game would not be able to match chemicals called cytokines (regulatory molecules that activate Immune Attack in terms of technical prowess, but could appeal to cells of the immune system). Specifically, the cytokine secreted a more “lighthearted” gamer. We envisioned a game with two by macrophages is called Interleukin-1 (IL-1) (Figure 1 step 3). dimensional graphics, controls that were very simple to learn, IL-1 signals Helper T cells to bind to the macrophages presenting constantly-updating circumstances, a difficulty setting, a list of the antigen-MHC of pathogens. The Helper T then releases more high scores, and randomly generated levels to move about in. cytokines, this time Interleukin-2 (IL-2) (Figure 1 step 4). IL-2 This would satisfy all of Malone’s points except for the fantasy triggers both the humoral (B Cells) and cell-mediated (Cytotoxic element. While Immune Attack dispensed the biological facts T Cells) responses of the immune system. For the humoral around a fantasy story, we wanted to keep non-realism to a response IL-2 stimulates B Cells, but for the cell-mediated minimum so that the biological processes and facts would remain response it stimulates Cytotoxic T cells [3]. the focus of the game. When devising the actual gameplay, we B Cells bind to antigen presenting cells (ATCs) and remember the considered the idea of a Real-Time Strategy Game (in which the specific antigen for targeting. Once activated by IL-2 (Figure 1 different cells were directed around in turn-based combat), a step 5), B cells respond by developing into either Plasma cells shooter (in which a single white blood cell would move around (Figure 1 step 7) or Memory cells (Figure 1 step 8).

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