Overview
This week's homework assignment links you to a website run by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It is part of their educational outreach. They put together a set of short case studies of disease outbreaks that require you to analyze data and answer questions as you seek to identify the cause of a particular disease outbreak and the steps needed to contain it. Although this covers these diseases and their control in an oversimplified fashion, it introduces you to some actual outbreaks, makes it clear why they can be challenging to decipher, and introduces some of the tools used by epidemiologists to trace and control disease outbreaks.
Link to CDC game pageLinks to an external site.
Level 1 of the game has 12 outbreaks you can choose among. You can scroll through them and pick the 5 that interest you most. For each of those 5, work your way through the outbreak, answering questions and investigating. You will earn points in each of these activities by answering questions correctly and, in some cases, by seeking additional information. Having more points will earn you a higher grade on the assignment.
At the end of the 5 (or more) outbreaks that you work through, click on "Scores" at the bottom and take a screenshot of your score. It will look something like this (though you will have a different score; I attempted more than 5 outbreaks - you can earn a maximum of 1500 points per outbreak but don't expect to get full credit on all you attempt):
In addition, type up the following information for each of the 5 outbreaks you investigated:
1) Name of case
2) Cause of outbreak - the disease organism itself (as well as how it is transmitted)
3) One interesting thing you learned in this particular investigation (about the disease or how it spreads) - describe/explain this in at least 3 sentences. This should be specific to what you learned in this interactive activity for that disease.
Submit this all as one document. It can be a Microsoft Word document, a PDF, or a jpg.