As the Table Top Exercise requires a basic understanding of infectious disease epidemiology concepts and terminology, refreshing some background knowledge through the EDDi Welcome Tutorial is recommended, either individually or in small groups. The tutorial can be given to students as preparatory homework. In addition, students may be advised to familiarize themselves with the Epidemiology Cheat Sheet and bring a copy.

Materials:

EDDi Welcome Tutorial: Interactive Powerpoint Presentation (.pptx) ↗
Using an interactive Power Point presentation, the tutorial offers an insight into the basics of epidemiology as well as the gameplay of theEDDi Serious Game. Start the presentation on your computer and follow the instructions by clicking on the integrated buttons and materials. There is a total of six educational videos to prepare for the different tasks of the exercise, accessed via embedded links to video-based learning materials on epidemiology. Clicking on the element will redirect you to the third-party provider (YouTube).

EDDi Epidemiology Cheat Sheet (.pdf) ↗

Although extensive, we advise printing the EDDi Case Study and EDDi Investigation Notebook (one set per group). The printouts may be reused provided that all tasks are solved by the students on an extra sheet. A calculator is needed for some of the tasks.

Materials:
EDDi Case Study: Description of the case scenario including tasks (.pdf) ↗
EDDi Investigation Notebook: Reference materials relevant to the case study (.pdf) ↗

To facilitate the exercise, we recommend having one facilitator (e.g., lecturer, tutor, experienced student) per working group who can assist with any problems. For each facilitator, one EDDi Solution Guide should be provided. If this is not possible, one Solution Guide can be given to each student group to assist with any questions or problems.

Materials:
EDDi Solution Guide: Guide for facilitators including solutions (.pdf) ↗

#1 Make sure you have completed all preparations and all printouts are available.

#2 Before starting the exercise, explain the overall outline of the exercise (learning objectives, resources needed, time to complete the exercise).

#3 Assign the course to working groups of 3-5 individuals per grooup and, if possible, organize one facilitator for each group. Each group shall be provided with one EDDi Case Study and one EDDi Investigation Notebook printout. The Case Study provides the main storyline and tasks and points to important reference materials in the Investigation Notebook. The groups will then work on the exercise independently.

#4 During the exercise, assistance can be sought through the facilitators or the Solution Guide. Make sure to keep an eye on the time!

#5 The exercise should be closed with a final discussion and exchange of findings and experiences (approx. 15-20 minutes). To learn more about the real outbreak event, further reading materials can be found in the Investigation Notebook and shared with the class.

Approx. 2.5-3 hours (estimate) = approx. four course units á 45 minutes;
the course units may be spread over two sessions á 1.5 hours

If you would like to revise, rewrite, or build a new narrative upon this case study, editable materials are available on the HOOU website under an open license.

Artwork by Annabell Koenen-Rindfrey, licensed under CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The artwork was developed using Affinity Designer 1.9.9 (iPad version).

Epidemiological trends by Juliane Boenecke, licensed under CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Graphs were developed using software R Studio (Version 1.0.136), packages rgdal, sp, ggplot2, ggsave, readr and base.