HSLS faculty members Kelsey Cowles, Rebekah Miller, Rachel Suppok, and Sera Thornton are recipients of an Innovation in Education Award from the Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) for their proposed project “The Case of the Charming Clinician: An Instructional Medical Misinformation Escape Room for Health Sciences Students.” These awards are given annually to recognize faculty for projects that represent advances over existing methods to promote and support student learning.
In The Case of the Charming Clinician, learners will play as investigators tasked with determining whether a new miracle health product is safe and effective, and whether the viral video promoting it is authentic or AI-generated. The interactive health-misinformation-themed puzzle-based escape room will improve health sciences and pre-health students’ ability to successfully navigate a complicated information landscape that includes AI-generated imagery, deceptive charts and graphs, and biased and misleading language in the popular press and on social media.
With funding from ACIE, development of The Case of the Charming Clinician will begin in summer 2024. It will then be pilot-tested in two health sciences courses in spring 2025. After the initial pilot program, any Pitt health sciences faculty will be able to request an escape room session for their courses. The Case of the Charming Clinician will also be offered periodically as a standalone activity in Falk Library, where it will be open to any interested members of the Pitt community.
This new instructional escape room builds on the concept of The Euphorigen Investigation, a misinformation escape room designed for use in public libraries that was developed by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. Cowles, Miller, and Suppok have previously hosted The Euphorigen Investigation in local public libraries, the Pitt Pre-Health Resource Center, and in Falk Library. The Euphorigen Investigation will be hosted in Falk Library again for anyone interested in participating on Friday, August 23.
~Colleen Ashley