Operation Outbreak

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 1 study (1 review), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description

Operation Outbreak is a hybrid educational disease-transmission simulation programme that uses a Bluetooth-enabled mobile application and live social interaction to help students investigate contagion and public-health concepts.

Components

• Operation Outbreak experiential simulation: Operation Outbreak is a hybrid experiential simulation combining a mobile contact tracing application with a live, schoolwide event in which students experience and analyze the spread of a simulated pathogen. The review describes it as a simulation that "models disease transmission through the release of a virtual pathogen transmitted via Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices, allowing students to explore real-time, real-world patterns of contagion safely and repeatedly, without the risks of actual infection." It bridges digital and physical learning environments, requiring live social interaction to be actualized, and can be implemented as a schoolwide simulation or in smaller, class-based and m (Kelly McNeil et al. (2026))

Claims

• The review reports that real-world experiential simulations offer affordances beyond virtual-only formats, including heightened presence through embodiment, place, and face-to-face social immersion [+W]
• The review reports that students learning with serious games often perform better on content knowledge assessments than those in traditional settings [+W]
• The review reports that participants in simulation-game conditions had significantly higher skill-based knowledge outcomes than those in non-game conditions [+W]
• The review reports that simulation games support near transfer of knowledge but evidence for long-term or far transfer is less robust [+W]
• The review reports that role-playing exercises significantly enhanced students' 21st-century skills including communication, collaboration, and critical thinking [+W]
• The review reports that embedded analytics, timely feedback, and structured reflection strengthen conceptual consolidation and learning gains [+W]

Related Products and Programmes

-

Key Sources

• Kelly McNeil, Sharin Jacob, Quinn Burke, and Stefani Pautz Stephenson. (2026). Operation Outbreak: Exploring the Affordances and Challenges of Experiential Simulations in Education for Scalability. Digital Promise. https://digitalpromise.dspacedirect.org/items/5b9d16cb-7253-49d0-9d95-e510b6951d4b

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	operation-outbreak
title	Operation Outbreak
description	Operation Outbreak is a hybrid educational disease-transmission simulation programme that uses a Bluetooth-enabled mobile application and live social interaction to help students investigate contagion and public-health concepts.
status	review
moved_from	element/operation-outbreak-experiential-simulation
product_kind	programme
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — kelly-mcneil-2026

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.