Systems Biology Education Modules to Promote Computational Thinking in High School Students

Integrating physical active learning exercises with computational simulation has been shown to enhance students' computational thinking skills. We have created four education modules for high school outreach focused on various physiological and disease phenomena. All modules include three major components: (1) Hands-on Modeling: an activity to provide a hands-on or role-playing approach to the phenomena being modeled. (2) Virtual Model Tutorial: a guided tutorial to develop a NetLogo model of the biological or disease phenomena. (3) Virtual Model Creation: a deliverable in which students create their own virtual model by making modifications to the model they created in the tutorial.