School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Ensuring competency attainment in Epidemiology and Biostatistics among MPH students
Glenda Lawrence – UNSW
Priscilla Robinson – La Trobe
Matthew Knuiman – UWA
OverviewIntroduction – GL
Overview of current PH competencies design – PR
Examples of teaching approaches
Biostatistics – MK
Epidemiology combined with biostatistics – GL
Overview of epi/biostats core content and assessments in MPH programs in Australia - GL
Discussion
Competency in Epi and BioAs PH educators, how do we ensure competency
attainment in epidemiology and biostatistics by MPH graduates?
What are the common teaching and learning approaches, challenges, and needs?
minimal versus ideal levels of knowledge and skill in epidemiology and biostatistics among graduates of generalist public health degrees plus UG vs PG vs HDR
optimal methods of assessment
innovative strategies in learning and teaching
Assessment – formative / summative
Curriculum delivery
Curriculum development
Program graduate attributes / learning outcomes
PH competency framework
Opportunity to considerNew Australian PH competency framework currently being
developed – 21st century workforceInternational frameworks
Is guidance needed in ‘translating’ competency frameworks to course curriculum?
Assessment of attainmentExam vs more authentic practice based assessment?Could there be a collaborative approach to ensuring
competency attainment e.g. assessment item bank?Benchmarking opportunities
Priscilla RobinsonCompetency Frameworks
Matthew KnuimanCore Biostatistics Unit - UWA
UNSW approachCombined Epidemiology and Biostatistics core unit
Taught concurrently to internal students face-to-face and external students online
Pre-semester workshop – includes intro SPSS tutorial
Weekly 2 hour lecture – recorded on Echo360
Weekly learning activities aligned to learning outcomesSPSS ‘how to’ videos for each module’s learning activities
Weekly optional 3 hour ‘clinic’ - one-to-one help by tutors
Weekly face to face tutorials; online tutors for externals
‘de-Greeked’ biostats
Students220 students in S1 2014
66% external (part-time)
External students time poor; often more experienced in epi and biostats than internal students
Many fearful initially, particularly of stats and SPSS
Often pleased with own development across the 12 weeks of the course
Course contentEpi Biostats
Measures of frequencyIncidence, prevalence,
age specific and standardisation
Measures of AssociationRR, OR, AR, PAR etc
Study designs Study validitySelection biasMeasurement errorConfounding & effect modCritical appraisal of
published papers – cohort, RCT, case-control
Screening tests and programs
Synthesis of evidence – systematic reviews and meta-analysis
Presenting dataSummary descriptive
statistics and data variationNormal & other
distributionsPrecision and confidence
intervalsHypothesis testing and
inferential statisticsMeansProportionsIndependent/pairedNon-normal data
Correlation & regressionSample size estimation &
testing
Other topicsTaught in Foundations in PH unit
Basic demography
Routinely collected data
Surveillance
Outbreak investigation
Why teach epi/biostats in one course?
Helps make the relationship between the two disciplines explicit for students (de-siloing)
Learning activities and assessment tasks used to integrate epi and stats knowledge and skills
Most students now embrace combined teaching (compared to 2008 when first run)
Some complain of workload, but fewer now (expect 10 hours per week – UNSW standard)
Evaluation UNSW standard questionnaire + focus groups + webinar +
solicited de-identified feedback
High overall student satisfaction
98% satisfied – 49% in the strongly agree category
Feedback varies considerably for external vs internal studentsdifferent levels of proficiency – external students generally achieve higher
marks
external students very time poor – selective in use of resources e.g. often don’t listen to lectures but read and complete LAs
Students like 2 assignments – HATE exam (but many achieve high marks) Is an exam a realistic way of assessing competence / achievement?
Seen by staff to help address issue of plagiarism/collusion
Student quotes“I generally really enjoyed the structure and content of the
course and was surprised that I did so, as was fearful of the subject and so put it off until my second last course! I actually think it was a useful and practical course and have already found myself applying it to my work.” EXTERNAL STUDENT 2014
“I thought the assignments were pretty consistent with the course content and weekly learning activities. Having more smaller assessments might make the course less stressful (40% exam is huge!).” EXTERNAL STUDENT 2014
The best part I enjoyed as an external student were the podcasts as these allowed contact with facilitators. Another area that I found important was the discussion groups because these also encouraged instant feedback from lecturers and students alike.
Course notes - brilliant! So well-ordered, succinct and yet thorough. To be honest I only read the lecture slides if I didn't understand the course notes and only listened to the lecture if I still didn't understand.SPSS videos a life saver -some things just can't be explained in writing.Discussion forums great when responses quick, which was most of the time.
Overview of Australian MPH coursesScanned websites of 14 universities for available
information on MPH epi and biostats units
All teach topics listed in competencies in intro coursesVary in some topics such as demography, multiple regression
Most use SPSS to teach hands-on data analysis
Most teach epi and biostats in separate courses
Many offer both face-to-face and online options
Most assess LOs using assignments plus open book exam in both epi and stats~35% to 70% of the course
Discussion pointsAs PH educators, how do we ensure competency attainment in
epidemiology and biostatistics by MPH graduates?
What are the common teaching and learning approaches, challenges, and needs?
Consider
minimal versus ideal levels of knowledge and skill in epidemiology and biostatistics among graduates of generalist public health degrees plus UG vs PG vs HDR
optimal methods of assessment – exam vs other ‘authentic’ approaches
shared bank of assessment items (collaborative approaches)?
innovative strategies in learning and teaching
Opportunity to considerNew Australian PH competency framework currently being
developed – 21st century workforceInternational frameworks
Is guidance needed in ‘translating’ competency frameworks to course curriculum?
Assessment of attainmentExam vs more authentic practice based assessment?Could there be a collaborative approach to ensuring
competency attainment e.g. assessment item bank?Benchmarking opportunities
Acknowledgements
UNSW colleaguesLois MeyerAndrew HayenBayzidur RahmanAnita Heywood