Immune literacy—the ability to hear, learn, read, write, explain, and discuss immunological content with varied audiences—has become critically important in recent years. Yet, with its complex terminology and discipline-specific concepts, educating individuals about the immune system and its role in health and disease may seem daunting.

Immunology education has historically been delivered at the graduate level. Calls for reform in biology education and increased workforce demand for individuals trained in immunology have spurred efforts to examine immunology education at the undergraduate level. The Undergraduate Immunology Education Consortium, a newly formed international group of immunology educators representing diverse institutions, is contributing to this effort through the development of curricular resources and student learning outcomes. We have identified a set of fundamental concepts that are critical to the understanding of immunology for undergraduate students and align with the 2011 AAAS Vision and Change Report. To identify consensus among immunology educators this group distributed an initial online survey to immunology educators to evaluate the identified fundamental concepts. Following survey feedback, the concepts were revised, submitted for further evaluation by immunology educators in focus groups, and then distributed in a final survey. Analyses of the data from the initial survey demonstrated that the respondent pool represented a varied and diverse range of expertise. Although teaching experience and current role in teaching influenced the proportion of time allotted to some immunology subtopics, topics of greatest emphasis included innate immunity, adaptive immunity, host-pathogen interactions, and molecular mechanisms. An understanding of current curricular practices by immunology educators will further aid in the refinement of the fundamental concepts, their interdisciplinary use in a diverse range of undergraduate science curricula, and future collection of assessment data to analyze effective best practices.

Even before coverage and updates on COVID-19 became a daily event in mainstream news, mass media was already full of science-focused current events stories. While relevant to our everyday lives, many popular press science articles overstate conclusions, misstate details or, at worst, purposefully spread disinformation.

The need to focus on immunology education has never been greater. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has revealed that a significant proportion of our society is vaccine hesitant. Some of this hesitancy may stem from a general lack of understanding of how the immune system and immunological interventions work. In addition, social media platforms undercut public health efforts by quickly propagating a multitude of misconceptions and erroneous information surrounding the science behind these interventions. The responsibility to be advocates for science is well recognized by immunology researchers, educators, and public health professionals, as evidenced by the rich body of resources developed to communicate science to the lay audience. Scientific jargon, however, can be a barrier to effective communication and can negatively impact learning and comprehension. The field of immunology is especially laden with discipline-specific terminology, which can hamper educators’ efforts to convey key concepts to learners. Furthermore, a lack of consistency in accepted definitions can complicate students’ conceptual understanding. Learning resources, including textbooks, published in print or available online, and exclusively digital resources, continue to serve as the primary sources of information for both educators and students. In this article, we describe a vast heterogeneity in learning resource glossary descriptions of two key conceptual terms: antigen and immunogen. We provide a perspective on pedagogical strategies to address these critical terms. Using current knowledge, we recommend an approach to standardize the definitions of the terms antigen and immunogen within the immunology educator community.

Until recently, immunology education was primarily introduced at the graduate level. However, in the age of modern medicine, a fundamental understanding of the immune system is becoming increasingly critical. The immune system affects every organ system in the body, and entails many concepts that are critical for training students who wish to pursue health professions or research-intensive careers. In addition to medicine, ecologists and computer scientists have lately been attracted to the field to investigate problems related to ecoimmunology or for development of machine learning tools for disease modeling. The need to focus on undergraduate immunology education has been strongly recognized and advocated for in several recent publications. In response to this need, we, a newly formed task force of undergraduate immunology educators, have identified fundamental concepts that are critical to the understanding of immunology for undergraduate students. We have aligned these fundamental statements with the overarching concepts described in the AAAS report “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action”, and are now gathering feedback on these guidelines from undergraduate educators at large. Establishment of these guidelines is consistent with new pedagogical practices that emphasize conceptual understanding of the subject over rote memorization and provides a framework needed to introduce students to immunology. The goal of this project is to solicit feedback from the immunology community in an effort to achieve consensus regarding the fundamental concepts in immunology that are critical for STEM-focused students to comprehend.