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Interactive Resource For Teaching Epidemiology Now Available Free Of Charge

ActivEpi Web

New Spanish Version Released

ActivEpi has been called “an electronic teaching tool”, “a multimedia electronic textbook”, and “a multimedia learner-interactive course”. It has been used by instructors all over the world for both online and lecture classes since 2003. However it is described, ActivEpi teaches the fundamentals of epidemiology and is now available for the first time on the web at no cost as ActivEpi Web. Developed in 2001 in English by David Kleinbaum, professor of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, the teaching tool was first presented on CD-ROM with a companion textbook and a shorter pocket guide written by Kleinbaum and colleagues Kevin Sullivan and Nancy Barker.

In an email to The Epidemiology Monitor, Kleinbaum called the new ActivEpi Web a unique multimedia text covering basic and intermediate concepts and methods of epidemiologic research. He added, it is a “uniquely teachable” means of learning about basic epidemiology as well as how health science and mathematics education are intimately connected.

Description

ActivEpi uses a range of multimedia effects to motivate, explain, visualize, and apply epidemiologic concepts, integrating video, animation, narration, text, and interactive question and answer sessions.  As individuals differ in their learning skills, the ActivEpi and the Companion Textbook offer different, but nevertheless intertwined options on how to learn epidemiology. ActivEpi’s multimedia interactive approach is particularly useful for self-study or for short courses in epidemiology, either in a traditional classroom setting or in a distance learning setting.  ActivEpi can be used as the primary text for a standard lecture course or alternatively for individualized learning.  For individual learning, ActivEpi explains both fundamental and complex epidemiological concepts by allowing the users to study at their own pace and repeat the material using different "learning while doing" approaches. 

The website link for free access to ActivEpi Web is:  http://activepi.herokuapp.com
Once you click on this link, readers can sign up for ActivEpi Web. Specific details on the sign-up procedure and how to get oriented to this electronic text are provided at www.activepi.com. Readers who wish to purchase the supporting textbook and pocket guide in English will have to purchase them from Springer Publishing. The web version is the primary instructional text or teaching resource since it is multimedia and interactive, according to Kleinbaum.

Spanish Versions Now Available

ActivEpi and its supplements have been translated into Spanish as ActivEpi Español software and Companion textbook and are now freely downloadable. The multimedia software for the Spanish version works only on Windows computers. ActivEpi Español is not directly available as a CD-ROM disk, but rather the contents of the CD-ROM can be downloaded, all 340 MB of it in a large zip file, to the hard drive of your computer or a thumb drive. 

The Spanish translation and initial programming for ActivEpi Español were funded through a grant from Higher Education for Development (HED) with funding from USAID/Paraguay.  The project was completed with support from the Pan American Health Organization, which has also made the electronic distribution of the product possible through its website.

The interactive software and an ebook ActivEpi Español are available as a single zip file and can be downloaded using the following link:

https://tinyurl.com/ks87c7s

Instructions for downloading and installing the software are included in the above download but can also be found separately in the following web page:

https://tinyurl.com/kr5dlk4 


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