Cannibalism,Kuru,and Mad Cows: Prion Disease As a “Choose-Your-Own-Experiment” Case Study to Simulate Scientific Inquiry in Large Lectures

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. © 2016 serrano et al.