Excellent !!!

Great course

Nice course

CHALLENGING

AWESOME!!!

Excellent

Ieueuueue

Excellent

Fantastic

excelente

the besr

Good

nice

kool

nice

A

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I have never worked in public health. The first course in contact tracing was very easy for me. I got 94 on the Final, first try. This course was much more difficult for me. I didn't realize when Coursera offered it to me that it was a course using models. After I figured out how to have both Contessa and the course up on the computer at the same time, and make entries in Contessa at the same time the teacher did, I thought I was really getting it. What was difficult for me was S3 combined with S4. The course kept saying if you don't know S4, use S3. It took me 3 times to pass this test, failing #2 and #3 two times, because I didn't understand until the test gave me a hint, that the surveillance slider would be the way to answer 2 & 3. Hopefully you can explain the slider more. I never made the connection on the purpose of the slider and calculating S4. I think it needs to be explained more.

Very informative. ConTESSA could be a very useful tool for evaluating contact tracing programs. One issue seems to be a glitch in the program (or maybe I missed the direction to reopen program for each test) if used for multiple test once open. I was getting incorrect results for questions 2 and 3 in Quiz 3 even after meticulously calculating and entering the data. I finally closed my ConTESSA program and then reopened it so I had absolutely no connection to previous work. Entering the exact same numbers I got slightly different results and the correct answers. Maybe because I am working on a Mac or some data or assumptions remained from the Shire test. Not sure why, but just reopening the ConTessa program and reentering the data gave me correct results.

The whole course is about the idea of a numerical model for evaluating the impact of different strategies in preventing infections in your community.

The model is easy to understand and the web app is great.

However, I would like to know more about the model, which during the course is presented pretty much like a black box. You put the numbers in and you check the results. There's a long list of references but I doubt that reading all articles would help me understand the logic behind the model.

There's another thing I didn't enjoy, the last exam. I find the text of exercises that use the web app difficult to follow and understand.

The course is very informative and has excellent speakers. I had a little trouble with the inputs on the Contessa report as I would sometimes forget to change the inputs back to the original inputs to answer a new question and I kept getting the wrong answer and I couldn't understand wny till I read the hints that are being given to make sure you have the correct inputs for the question at hand. This helped me to correct my errors, although I did understand how to use the template. I then made sure to check all my answers and I passed the test.

It was tougher than the previous ones and thus could have been a little more detailed. I don't feel like the videos in the last modules were terribly helpful for completing the exam. Nevertheless, I buckled down and past it on the first try. And I certainly appreciate the health professionals who took the time to create the material we need to be successful at contact tracing and adjusting program parameters to get the best outcomes.

I have one recommendation for enhancing the ConTESSA model. The act of calculating 'average' values for the various inputs takes away the ability to identify super-spreader events and super-spreader people. The R0 for super spreader events and people would be far higher than for the society as a whole otherwise. That should somehow be taken into account.

Just a thought. Best wishes. I learned a lot.

~ Randall

This course was straightforward at first but I did have some trouble with calculations for the last two quizzes when inputting information into conTESSA. From my past experience with online courses I think the class is fair game, they provided as many resources to explain everything but there is a bit of self-teaching in some areas (which is expected). Overall, I enjoyed this learning experience, thank you!