title: Cannibalism, Kuru, and Mad Cows: Prion Disease As a "Choose-Your-Own-Experiment" Case Study to Simulate Scientific Inquiry in Large Lectures.
abstract: Despite significant efforts to reform undergraduate science education, students often perform worse on assessments of perceptions of science after introductory courses, demonstrating a need for new educational interventions to reverse this trend. To address this need, we created An Inexplicable Disease, an engaging, active-learning case study that is unusual because it aims to simulate scientific inquiry by allowing students to iteratively investigate the Kuru epidemic of 1957 in a choose-your-own-experiment format in large lectures. The case emphasizes the importance of specialization and communication in science and is broadly applicable to courses of any size and sub-discipline of the life sciences.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serrano
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liebner
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Justin K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Hines
mesh_terms: D005246:Feedback; D017096:Prion Diseases; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D012586:Science / Q000193:education*