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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