There are 2 pieces of summative assessment;

1. An open book on-line examination weighted at 100% (assessing all LO's)
2. A 500 word contribution to a discussion forum to assess LO 1 (weighted 0%) pass/fail

Both elements of assessment must be passed

Formative assessment:
Students will receive formative feedback throughout the module comprising of a combination of weekly task related online feedback and also comments directed through discussion boards during the course of the delivery of the module. Skype, or telephone tutorials will also be offered.

This module will describe what epidemiology is and how epidemiological methods are used to make informed decisions within public health. The module will include the principles of Epidemiology, various measures of morbidity, measures of frequency and association, data collection and the reliability and validity of epidemiological research designs. This module will also provide an introduction to statistics and statistical analysis and a number of inferential statistical techniques will be included (e.g., t-tests, correlations, chi-square, Analysis of Variance and Multiple Regression). The student will be given basic theoretical and practical skills for planning, undertaking and interpreting epidemiological research, analysing data sets and in reporting findings.

Students will follow an 8 week guided study programme and access a range of support material via Blackboard. Students will also be required to access additional support material independently. Understanding of key concepts will be self-assessed via weekly questions posed on the Blackboard discussion group. Weekly Tutor feedback will be provided for this formative assessment.. Students should engage in on-line discussion sessions and will be required to support discussions with evidence based arguments.

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities: (2 hours)
2 hours Skype tutorial

Guided Independent Study: (148 hours)
100 hours representing a combination of further and additional reading and a series of optional tasks and activities
48 hours specific preparation the module exam

Access to an appropriately specified PC with internet access and accompanying Microsoft Word, Excel, SPSS, Blackboard VLE, Adobe and Java software.

Course textbooks and online Library facilities

Bonita R, Beaglehole R, Kjellsrom T (2006). Basic epidemiology. WHO Geneva 2006, 2nd ed. This book can either be purchased in paper form, or downloaded free of charge as a PDF file from: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241547073_eng.pdf
Donaldson L, Scally, G (2009). Donaldsons' Essential Public Health. Radcliffe Publishing, 3rd ed.
Field A (2013). Discovering statistics using SPSS. Sage Publications Ltd, 4th ed.
Stewart A (2010). Basic statistics and epidemiology: a practical guide. Radcliffe Publishing, 3rd ed.

Epidemiology and Basic Statistics are core elements of Public Health and this module will describe epidemiology and how epidemiological methods are used to make informed decisions within public health settings. It will introduce you to statistics and statistical analysis and provide you with the theoretical and practical skills for planning, undertaking and interpreting epidemiological research, and reporting findings within public health settings.