BRAKE the OUTBREAK: a free online simulation helps students learn about vaccination, social distancing, R, and herd immunity

BRAKE the OUTBREAK: a free online simulation helps students learn about vaccination, social distancing, R, and herd immunity

ABSTRACT Brake the Outbreak (BTO) is a free, online simulation of infectious outbreaks designed for educational use. A student using the simulation chooses a disease, vaccination percentage, social distancing rates, and other inputs. BTO then visually displays the resulting outbreak as it proceeds,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jessica Albert, Amanda Nouwens, Rena Ahn, Anna Muller, Kait Raffensperger, Grace Nguyen, Tristan Wisont, Anastasia McConachie, Parveet Mundi, Margaret Fitzgibbon, Nathaniel Kremer-Herman, Robert Rutherford
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Society for Microbiology 2025-08-01
Series:Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education
Subjects:
active learning
student project
open source
SIR model
epidemiology
Online Access:https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jmbe.00062-25
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Summary:ABSTRACT Brake the Outbreak (BTO) is a free, online simulation of infectious outbreaks designed for educational use. A student using the simulation chooses a disease, vaccination percentage, social distancing rates, and other inputs. BTO then visually displays the resulting outbreak as it proceeds, including summary data, such as incidence and prevalence. BTO also shows emergent results like reproductive rate (R), which can be used to determine and test the herd immunity threshold (HIT) of the outbreak. BTO has been tested in the undergraduate microbiology classroom, where results suggest its use can enhance the learning of epidemiological content.
ISSN:1935-7877
1935-7885

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