Teaching your students about hygiene

i-f875c0b07d9b3cb6229668554781b35a-alice.jpgI don't know about you, but here at Purdue, the administration is doing everything it can to freak us all out about the prospect of a flu pandemic. We're getting emails about how we need to figure out ways to cover class material if the university closes, we need ways to contact our students with "the new plan" if everyone comes down with flu, ways to help students catch back up if they're out with the flu, and for those of us who teach first-year students, telling students about the student health center and how they need to get a receipt when they go visit it so as to excuse their absences.

However, inspired by my friend Moreena, my team of first-year engineering instructors and I also showed the original viral video, "Why don't we do it in our sleeves?" to my class last week, in our first session together.

Moreena talked about it in the context of educating folks to be more germ-free around Annika, with Annika's immune system suppressed so she wouldn't reject her liver transplants. (It was a little less critical in our class, maybe.)

Okay, the video was a little long for our class. But it went off very well -- they laughed, they cried, and then they coughed and sneezed in their sleeves.

If I were evaluating this educational intervention, I would say it was "very effective" in the short term. We'll see how long it lasts.

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Hi Alice,

This is TOTALLY the video that we have in our Disease Detectives exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I don't think we saw this particular piece when you came through town, but it's the exhibit with the giant nose. Do you recall?

Thanks for posting - it is indeed important!

The internet is so small! I love Moreena's blog--and I've lost track of the number of times someone on ScienceBlogs has referenced someone that I either know or whose blog would normally seem disconnected from scienceblogging but pops up anyhow.