Alarmed by the lack of HIV/AIDS awareness information available to young adults in India, second-year education graduate student Piya Sorcar M.A. ‘06 has developed an animated curriculum that teaches HIV prevention to students while avoiding the stigma associated with discussions of sexual practices.

The project is “a springboard, a way to start talking about AIDS and get the basics,” said Sorcar, who began the initiative after reading about India’s potential as the next “hot zone” for the AIDS epidemic and the lack of HIV education in the country’s population.

“What’s groundbreaking is that she’s shown that we can inform people about AIDS while respecting the culture,” said Communications Prof. Clifford Nass, an advisor to Sorcar’s Ph.D. project. “That’s an enormous accomplishment.”

The stigma associated with AIDS prevents open discussion of the disease in India. Young adults are one of the most rapidly growing HIV-positive populations in the country, but several states have banned sex education in schools, restricting the availability of HIV/AIDS prevention information to this vulnerable group. Sorcar’s challenge thus became, “How do we teach about taboo subjects without talking about them?”

Drawing heavily on research from the Schools of Education and Medicine, as well as departments of psychology and communication, Sorcar spent two years designing a culturally appropriate curriculum. She talked to students who recently arrived at Stanford from India to figure out what images maximized the comfort and effectiveness of their learning.

The result was Interactive Teaching AIDS, an animation-based tutorial featuring a friendly cartoon doctor and patient who guide participants through the biological aspects of AIDS transmission. The tutorial is available online and on a CD.

Emeritus Education Prof. Decker Walker, an advisor to the project, believes it “should make a real impact on public health education globally.”

In tests that Sorcar recently conducted in northern India, students showed significant gains in learning and retention levels after interacting with the 20 minute tutorial, and users overwhelmingly reported liking and feeling comfortable with the interface.

Nass described the results as “absolutely striking.”

“The fact that she could change the kids’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors so much without mentioning things that are taboo is just remarkable,” he said.

The number of students who understood that AIDS could not be spread through coughing increased from 65 to 94 percent after using the tutorial, and the percentage of students who knew that there is no cure for AIDS increased from 55 to 93 percent.

In addition, there are indications that the curriculum may have a ripple effect. One month after being exposed to the tutorial, nearly 90 percent of students reported sharing information they had learned from the tutorial with others. Sorcar hopes to harness this interest from young adults, who she called “the leaders of tomorrow.”

“I think we need to give young people some sort of tool they can get excited about and share with other people,” she said, “so they feel like part of the initiative.”

Sorcar initially conceived the project in 2005 while working on her master’s thesis for Stanford’s Learning Design & Technology program. She learned that despite India’s rapidly rising HIV-positive population and the hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into prevention efforts, the majority of Indians lacked basic knowledge about the disease.

When Sorcar surveyed students in India and learned that they believed HIV could be transmitted through coughing, kissing and contaminated water, she decided, “We can do better.”

The curriculum currently has two versions, one for India and one for other Asian countries. In the works are versions for countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as China, in addition to versions in Hindi and other Indian languages.

Plans to disseminate the curriculum free of charge to schools, NGOs, government organizations and individuals are underway.

Sorcar hopes to create similar applications for Facebook and Orkut — a social networking Web site popular in India — and to make her curriculum available from mobile phones.

“I still feel like this is just the beginning,” she said.

For more information visit www.interactiveteachingAIDS.org or contact Sorcar at sorcar at stanford.edu.