Transcript Slide 1

The Research
Team
About
Infectious
Disease
The Schools
Project
Hot Topics
Disease Dynamics
Welcome to the Disease Dynamics pack.
This is a permanent record of an exciting
project which linked secondary and primary
schools with leading researchers from the
University of Cambridge in using maths and
science to understand how disease spreads
through populations.
We are grateful to the Wellcome Foundation
for funding this project.
Pandemic (H1N1) 2009
Influenza
Influenza Vaccination
Antibiotic Resistance (AMR)
HIV Infection
Motivate
Activities
Links
Pedagogic Aims of the
Motivate Project:
•to enrich students’
mathematical/scientific
experience and widen their
educational horizons
•to build confidence & a
sense of belonging to the
mathematical/scientific
community
•to develop creative and
critical thinking, and an
understanding of maths and
science as relevant, living
subjects
•to develop cross-curricular
resources for schools
•to enable students to carry
out mathematical/scientific
research for themselves
WORK AND PLAY:
DISEASE SPREAD,
SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
AND DATA
COLLECTION IN
SCHOOLS
This research project,
funded by the
Wellcome Trust, was
a collaboration
between a
Mathematics
Research Team in the
Department of
Applied Maths and
Theoretical Physics
(DAMTP) at the
University of
Cambridge, the
Motivate Project and
UK schools.
This project gave
students and teachers
the opportunity to …
•extend the curriculum in a
real-life context
•link maths and science
•participate in genuine
research
•work collaboratively and/or
individually on tasks both
within the school and with
other schools
•give presentations on their
work, and to respond to
questions and receive
feedback on it
Research Focus:
School students collected data which was used by the research team
for research into disease dynamics.
The data forms a significant and valuable data set.
Overview of topics considered during this project:
The importance of understanding disease spread.
The advantages and disadvantages of vaccination.
The ethics of data collection
Collecting and analysing the data: how to do it
What problems might be encountered
Overcoming problems
Schools’ part in the research:
To gather baseline information about one or two local primary schools by phone or email.
To go into primary schools to collect questionnaire data.
To determine from the data how primary children mix with each other, focusing on interactions both
within and between classes.
Preliminary analysis of the data.
Presentation of findings.