Meeting the Viruses and Making them Visible

Abstract

Recent years have seen, for obvious reasons, a massive increase in awareness of the impacts that viruses have on our lives – but have also seen a massive increase in misinformation and potentially harmful misconceptions. To help young and lay audiences engage with the science of viruses, and encourage an interest in virology as a discipline, we have created a range of applications and activities. A core feature of these applications and activities is an attempt to help with visualizing virus particles themselves – helping to ground understanding in a three-dimensional mental image of what a virus 'looks' like. In this extended abstract we outline the applications and activities that have been created. We also outline how we are supporting reuse by other educators who may wish to use them in their own teaching for high-school and entry level university studies.