Report on evaluation of trainee learning achievement : China FETPV Module 5 (weeks 2-3)

A threeweek intensive revision module was delivered in May and June 2012 as the final part of the two year China FETPV training programme involving a group of 14 trainees which had been selected by FAO. The second and third week were delivered by Cirad and FAO, the first by other trainers able to teach in Chinese. This was a revision module which covered a wide range of topics including biostatistics, disease frequency and causation, designing and evaluating animal health surveillance systems, outbreak investigations, risk assessment and risk communication, scientific writing, scientific presentations, and paper critiquing. The teaching was based on a combination of interactive lectures (with TurningPoint voting to enable audience participation), problem based group learning sessions with case study examples, and one to one mentoring on individual assignments. The teaching in weeks 2 and 3 was delivered jointly by four experienced veterinary epidemiologists from the Royal Veterinary College (Prof. Dirk Pfeiffer, Prof. Javier Guitian, Dr Julian Drewe) and Cirad, the French Research Centre for Agricultural Development (Sophie Molia). Overall learning achievement of trainees was moderate to good. The majority of trainees felt they improved by a lot or a moderate amount in 10 key skills identified at the end of the course, and indicated they would be happy to teach their colleagues some of their newly developed epidemiological skills. The trainees found certain areas difficult, in particular surveillance evaluation and quantitative risk assessment. A constraint to learning was the limited English language ability of several of the trainees. (Résumé d'auteur