# Carpentries model to teach Epidemiology Arindam Basu University of Canterbury School of Health Sciences arindam.basu@canterbury.ac.nz @arinbasu on Twitter slides live at: https://hackmd.io/@arinbasu1/caphia-slides ## What this short presentation will cover - How might we use lessons from The Carpentries to teach Epidemiology - What is The Carpentries - My description of how I port the Carpentries style lessons to Epidemiology --- ## What do we teach when we teach Epidemiology - Use of information on disease distribution and determinants for public health - Disease prevention and health promotion - Disease distribution - Determinants of diseases - Students should learn to apply these skills in real life --- ## Lectures are great for - Theory of Epidemiology - Principles of Epidemic investigation/modelling - Principles of Epidemic modelling - Principles of Internal validity - Principles of Causal Inference - Theories of counterfactuals --- ## Discursive classrooms are great too - Discussion of Exemplars (John Snow, James Lind) - Discussion of DAGs and SWIGs in counterfactual theories of causation - Debating Epidemiological Study designs - Critical appraisal of epidemiological studies using GRADE approach - Drafting of exposure assessment using questionnaires (social epidemiology) --- ## Epidemiology is applied, so we need to reinforce - Standardised mortality/morbidity/prevalence - Stratified analysis of two by two tables - Calculation of Absolute Risk, Relative Risk, PAR% etc - Sample size estimation and power calculation - Hands on analysis of epidemiological data analysis using Epi Info/Stata/R --- ## The Carpentries  --- ## What the Carpentries style instruction can do - Move novices to competent practitioners - Impact mental models - Guided instructions consolidate practice - Live coding embody the practice of guide by the side - Feedbacks and formative assessments help deliberate practice --- ## Novices, competent practitioners, and experts | Awareness/Content | Does not Know | Knows | | ----------------- | ------------- | ---------------------- | | Does not know | Novice | Competent practitioner | | Knows | Expert | Master | --- ## Theory of mental models - Novices struggle with unconnected facts - Competent practitioners connect facts - Competent practitioners need heuristics and practice - Experts and Masters operate in a state of flow - Experts have **blind spots** - So how can Experts teach Novices? --- ## Mental model of a novice  --- ## Mental model of the expert  --- ## Mental models of typical entry level students in our courses - May have crammed a lot of facts about biology and health in previous courses - When asked can tell us a lot about isolated facts - Cannot connect isolated pieces of information - Challenge: move them to the stage of competent practice - Helps: Repeated spaced hands-on activities --- ## Competent epidemiology practitioners - Given a problem, can set up an action plan - Assess studies and existing situation - Read and interpret graphs, - Set up models - Rapidly collect data and match with the extant models - Take action and put together teams - Knows when to take action in face of sparse data --- ## Using mental models to teach Epidemiology - Provide practice opportunities - Allow for guided practice - Teacher models and shows how to - Students repeat after the teachers - Discussion takes place with the conscious practice --- ## Guided instructions - Teacher sets up the scaffold - Teacher models the solution step by step - Students follow through - Teacher then provides formative assessments - Teacher provides feedbacks - Students solve problems in pairs --- ## Work in pairs: peer instructions - One student works on the computer - Another student helps her - Then they take turns - This helps real time collaboration - Pair up advanced students with relatively novices --- ## Live coding and deliberate practice - Teacher selects a problem - Teacher presents the problem - Teacher works on the computer to solve it - Students follows the teacher to work on the computer - Question, answer, explanations - Slow pace, one topic at a time --- ## Practice with different problems with some guidance - Show how to calculate standardised rates - Provide new data sets - Ask the students to work out on their own - Discuss the assignment --- ## Live coding in practice at UC: steps of calculating standardised prevalence - Tell them the steps: - First step: enter the age-specific prevalence - Second step: enter the SEGI world population - Third step: multiply the age-specific prevalence with the SEGI numbers - Fourth step: Add up the numbers in SEGI population --- ## Illustration of live coding: step 1: age-specific prevalence  --- ## Illustration of live coding: step 2: SEGI population  --- ## Illustration of live coding: steps 3 and 4: mulitply and add  --- ## Interact and take questions from students - Respond to students' questions - Each student sticks sticky notes on the back of their computers - This is done so that they do not have to remove their hands while working - Teacher stops to answer questions --- ## Formative assessments using Multiple choice questions - Prepare multiple choice questions in advance - Stop and ask these questions before proceeding to each next step - One or two multiple choice questions to clarify and test high impact topics - Everyone should undestand before moving to the next step - One formative assessment every 10-20 minutes of class --- ## Formative assessments using faded examples - Use collaborative documents for this - Google Docs, Hackmd (we use this) - Write the steps - Ask the students to fill in --- ## End of class feedbacks from students  --- ## Sample feedback  --- ## Lessons learned - Plan early - Explain - Group students in pairs - Teach in pairs --- ## Next steps - Arrange a formal evaluation of the style - It is possible to teach Epidemiological methods using the Carpentries style