Bridging Course
Course Title
Course Responsible
Teachers
| Name | Department | City | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriele Berg-Beckhoff | gbergbeckhoff@health.sdu.dk | IST - Sundhedsfremme | |
| Line Remmen | lremmen@health.sdu.dk | IST - Sundhedsfremme |
Student teachers
| Name | Department | City | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christopher Fisker Jensen | chjen20@student.sdu.dk | ||
| Ida Simmelsgaard | idsim20@student.sdu.dk |
Course secretary
| Name | Department | City | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sabine M. Talbot | sta@health.sdu.dk | Sundhedsvidenskab, Fakultetssekretariat |
Aim and overall content
Mandatory prerequisites
Relationship between the learning objectives, type of teaching and type of examination
After participating in the module, the student should be able to:
- Describe the most commonly used study designs and frequently used epidemiological terms
- Calculate basic epidemiological measurements
- Evaluate the quality of scientific (quantitative) articles along with risk of bias and confounding
- Describe basic biostatical concepts and when to use which
- Analyse small datasets descriptively and look for associations
- Interpret statistical results and evaluate significance
Learning Objectives - Knowledge
- Descriptive and analytical epidemiology
- Study designs: ecological study, cross sectional study, cohort study and case-control study.
- Measurements: incidence, prevalence, mortality, RR, OR and different kinds of standardizations + other measures.
- Concepts: Causality, bias (information bias, selection bias) and confounding
- Descriptive biostatistics: variables, graphs, tables (frequency, two-by-two)
- Inferential statistics: t-tests, chi2-tests, correlation, ANOVA, linear regressions and logistic regressions.
- Concepts: Significance, p-values and confidence Interval
Learning Objectives - Skills
Through the module the student will be able to:
Epidemiology
- Critically assess the quality of scientific studies
- Evaluate whether scientific results are reliable and/or relevant to consider
- Discuss strengths and weaknesses of scientific studies and suggest ways to improve quality
Biostatistics
- Conduct basic statistics (within same areas as described under knowledge) in the statistical programme STATA
- Conduct both crude and adjusted models in STATA and check for possible confounding effects
- Interpret basic output from statistics made in STATA and evaluate the significance of results
Learning Objectives - Competencies
Through the module the student will practice:
- Communication (oral and written) of knowledge and skills
- Collaboration with other student
The student will be able to:
- Identify individual learning needs and structure individual learning in different learning environments
Teaching format and feedback
The course is online and consists of two parts.
The first part (during July and August) of the course consists of electronical activities, each focusing on a specific topic within three main areas; Philosophy of Science, epidemiology and biostatistics. All activities use multiple learning activities such as readings, video and audio podcasts, wikis, hyperlinks for relevant webpages, knowledge tests and exercises. There are several possibilities for feedback through automatic knowledge test, exercises and personally through discussions forums where students can ask questions.
The second part (last week in August) consists of lectures, group discussions and practical exercises. This part summarizes what already has been learned and further adds aspects of in biostatistics analysis. Feedback is ensured using competitions during lectures, plenary discussions and by instructors in statistical exercises.
MySchedule
Expected student workload in this course
The ECTS value of this course is 7,5 ECTS corresponding to a student workload of 210 hours.
In total there will be 23 teaching hours, leaving 187 hours for self-study and preparation. The student should expect on an average to spend 26-27 hours per week on this module.
Examination regulations
Exam
Name
Time of examination
The ordinary exam takes place immediately after the end of the module.
Tests
Compulsory paper
EKA
Name
Description
Students write an individual evaluation of a scientific article. They are provided with five epidemiological articles, from which they can choose one to critically read and reflect on the used methods. To pass the exam a scientific reference style must be applied correctly and the length of the paper must be 3-5 pages (7200-12000 characters). Front page, table of contents, and references are not included in these numbers. The written assignment provides a short introduction to the field, describes the epidemiological design and methods along with the statistical methods used in the chosen article. In addition, the assignment should discuss the quality of the article based on what has been learned in the course and provide the student’s own conclusion on quality and relevance of the study.
The articles will be available at the last teaching day and students have 73 hours to do the exam.
All rules and regulations on written assignments must be followed incl. regulations on front pages.