Viruses and immunity – interpreting infographics

Infographics combine text with graphic images. Their key feature is simplicity – getting a message across in a manner that is easy to visualise and understand. 

Infographics consist of three components – the visual component, the content component and the knowledge component. The knowledge component is the insights that come from the text and images.

D-Bug Fun Facts: Vaccines & Antivirals

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This infographic shows how vaccines work – creating antigens that trigger our immune system to build antibodies to defeat the pathogen.

Download as a PDF.

Rights: University of Otago

Infographics have literacy components that students may need support to understand. The article Understanding infographics provides background information on how they are constructed and why they are useful communication tools. 

In this activity, students observe and interpret infographics created by The Science of Medicines – Whakatere Waka project to aid student understanding of viruses and vaccines. The activity includes probing questions to help students make sense of the ways in which infographics present information.

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• develop literacy skills for interpreting the information in an infographic

• discuss the purpose of an infographic

• discuss how an infographic gets the message across

• discuss information they have gathered from an infographic of interest to them.

Download the Word file (see link below).