Burrell grad helps develop game at Duquesne University teaching about vaccines

Brinley Kantorski remembers playing “The Oregon Trail” educational video game when she was a student in the Burrell School District.

While many of the game’s players will remember the line, “You have died of dysentery,” Kantorski said her games always ended in drowning as she tried to get her wagon party across a river.

“It’s one of my earliest memories of playing a game for fun, but I was learning at the same time,” she said.

Kantorski, a 2005 Burrell graduate from Upper Burrell who lives in Moon, is now part of the Partnership in Education team at Duquesne University, which is creating a new game to reduce anxiety about covid-19 and combat vaccine misinformation for children, parents and teachers.

The as-yet unnamed tabletop board game will challenge players to tackle a hypothetical global pandemic by researching, developing, testing and distributing a vaccine to save humanity. A complete and playable version of the game is expected to be ready by late spring or summer following play testing and adjustments.

“It’s a cooperative game,” said John Pollock, a professor of biological sciences and director of the Partnership in Education. “When you play Monopoly and other board games, you want to win and beat everybody else at the table. This game is going to be a game where if everybody works together, you’re going to save the world.”

It will follow “You Make Me Sick,” a 2020 game from the partnership that teaches students about infectious diseases, including covid. Both games were funded by Science Education Partnership awards from the National Institute of General Medicine at the National Institute of Health.

Pollock has received more than $1.4 million from the program for this project and other digital media. It is the fourth award to him and the Partnership in Education, totaling $6.3 million in funding from the National Institute of Health since 2001.

Like “You Make Me Sick,” the new game first will be available online to print and play at home or in schools for free, Pollock said. A boxed version eventually will be made.

“Our goal is to teach kids about viruses and vaccines and what they are and where they come from and how they’re tested and validated and empower them with fundamental information,” Pollock said. “This generation of kids who play these games will grow up and know the facts about vaccines in general and not be scared of them.”

Pollock said Kantorski, director of education and multimedia development who also worked on “You Make Me Sick,” is taking the lead on developing the nuts and bolts of the new game. She works with Sarah Will, lead artist and designer.

After Burrell, Kantorski attended Duquesne, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2009 and a master’s in secondary education science in 2010. She is pursuing a doctorate in instructional technology, for which her dissertation is exploring whether educational video games are effective.

“I’m excited to be working on it. I’m excited to play it, and I’m excited to share it with people,” Kantorski said.

The game will model how researchers learn about a pathogen and produce treatments to fight it, including how it is tested for safety and distributed, all while battling the spread of the disease in the population.

To help teachers and fit into classroom periods, the game is modular and broken into phases that can be played in 10-25 minutes.

“Every time you play the game, the pathogen you’re fighting has a unique combination of traits,” she said. “The game is infinitely replayable because the combinations of characteristics are different every time you play.”

Getting the scientific information from experts and translating it to understandable gameplay is a delicate balance, Kantorski said.

“The goal, first and foremost, is to make a fun and enjoyable game,” she said. “The bonus is that players will learn something at the end of it.”

Covid is not directly referenced in the game, but Kantorski said players probably will be able to draw similarities between their experiences with it and things happening in the game, such as tracking the disease’s spread through the population and things that could reduce it, such as wearing face masks, or make it worse, such as misinformation on social media.

“We’re not trying to convince (anyone) about anything related to covid. I’m going to put forth this factual information, hopefully in a fun way, and maybe that will make you consider information in a new way,” she said. “Playing a game is inherently participative. You are making the decisions. I think that participating in information or in the learning process itself is a really powerful thing.”

Kantorski said anyone interested in helping test the game should contact the Partnership in Education through its website, thepartnershipineducation.com.