AusVet's Training

Capabilities
Feedback and testimonials

AusVet training capabilities

AusVet staff are highly experienced trainers and regularly conduct training workshops in epidemiology and related fields. Our staff combine technical expertise and wide-ranging practical experience to offer you training that covers technical fundamentals and theory for any topic and that includes hands-on practical training to reinforce acquisition of knowledge and skills in our participants. We have run training courses in many countries around the world, ranging from introductory level courses to advanced and highly technical training.

AusVet has a philosophy of interactive and active participation in training, so that courses have an emphasis on group discussion and group/individual exercises and activities.

Our facilitators are friendly, capable and flexible. We have received awards for teaching and research in multiple countries, we are actively involved in training of post-graduate students and are regular authors or co-authors of refereed articles, conference papers and textbook chapters.

Delivering solutions has always been important for AusVet, and for many courses participants are encouraged to bring current work or data sets so that they can begin using their newly acquired knowledge during the course on problems that matter to them. This approach has led to rapid acquisition of skills and even on to further studies for some.

AusVet has programming and web-development expertise and has developed software tools and calculators that can be freely accessed through the web to enhance training courses, as well as web-delivered training material to ensure participants can access relevant material after the completion of a course. We have also developed a feature-rich software tool for course evaluation that can provide simple end-of-course feedback for clients or can be used to provide more detailed before and after testing to document the impact of particular training courses in improving participant knowledge and skills.

Workshop content is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs or delivered as "standard" packages in 2-5 day workshops (or occasionally longer), depending on subject matter and content. A number of workshops have already been developed and delivered and some of these are listed below. Additional subjects can be developed and workshops offered as required to meet client needs.

Specific courses

Specific courses currently available include:

Introduction to epidemiology

Overview of epidemiology
Patterns of disease and why they occur
Cause of disease and bias
Diagnosing and screening for disease
Measuring and comparing disease frequencies
Sampling from populations
Data collection and recording
Exploratory data analysis
Investigating disease problems
Planning epidemiological studies
Animal Health Programs

Introduction to surveillance systems

Reasons for surveillance
Definitions and classification of surveillance systems
Planning a surveillance system
Surveillance and tests
Measuring disease
Demonstrating freedom
Evaluating surveillance systems

Aquatic animal disease surveillance

Reasons for surveillance
Surveillance options
Sampling aquatic animals
- Cages and ponds
- Rivers
- Static species
- Oceanic species
Design and analysis of aquatic animal surveillance

Application of diagnostic tests

Understanding test characteristics
Aggregate (herd) test performance
Approaches to test evaluation
Prevalence estimation with imperfect tests
Pooled testing
Demonstrating freedom or detecting disease
Application of tests in other situations

Introduction to the R language and environment

Getting started
R packages
R expressions and syntax
R objects
Working with Vectors, Arrays and data frames
Inputting data and outputting results
Basic functions and operations in R
Exploratory data analysis using R
Basic statistics and data analysis in R
Conditionals and loops in R
Writing R functions and scripts
R graphics
Introduction to advanced R capabilities

Introduction to risk analysis

Risk analysis framework and terminology
Hazard identification, release and exposure assessments, consequence assessment
Risk estimation, consideration of level of acceptable risk
Risk evaluation, risk communication
Risk Management
Qualitative vs quantitative methods
Pathway diagrams
Introduction to quantitative risk analysis
Introduction to stochastic simulation

Field survey techniques

Introduction to animal health information and surveillance
Surveys and inference
Measures of disease
Sampling
Sampling in practice
Sampling sithout a sampling frame
Practical random geographic coordinates sampling
Introduction to survey planning
Prevalence surveys
Incidence rate surveys
Surveys to demonstrate freedom from disease
Data management
Analysing survey data
Presenting your results

Introduction to GIS

Installation and configuration of QGIS
Drawing maps
Introduction to GIS theory
Mapping with alternate data sources
GPS field data collection
Working with attributes - getting information from maps
Spatial operations (queries and joins)
Map projections, ellipsoids, map datum, and map units
Thematic maps

Analysis of complex surveillance systems for demonstration of disease freedom using stochastic scenario tree modelling

Purpose of disease surveillance
Concepts of freedom from disease / infection
Requirements for the analysis of non-random surveillance systems
Introduction to scenario tree modelling
Capturing risk and targeting in a scenario-tree
Expert opinion and other sources for parameter estimates
Stochastic modelling
Combination of components
Calculation of surveillance component sensitivity
Calculation of probability of freedom
Incorporation of historical surveillance data
Software for scenario-tree modelling

Clinical trials

Design of veterinary clinical trials
Introduction to statistical principles for clinical trials
Power analysis and sample size
Critical appraisal of the literature
Examples of trial design

Statistics

Introduction to statistical principles
Choice of statistical tests
Power analysis and sample size determination
Simple statistics: contingency tables, t-tests, ANOVA, regression
Introduction to linear models
Introduction to logistic regression
Introduction to poisson regression
Introduction to survival analysis
Introduction to STATA
Advanced statistics: multilevel modelling

Spreadsheet training

Introduction to Excel
Advanced Excel tips and tricks

Database training

Introduction to Access and SQL
Advanced Access and SQL
PostgreSQL / MySQL for national level databases
Spatial databases for Health Information
Web based database interfaces for national solutions
Using open source database solutions for performance

Feedback and testimonials

Testimonials from recent courses involving AusVet staff provide convincing feedback on the success of our training. All testimonials were provided by course participants in normal feedback assessment and are reproduced here verbatim.

Australian Veterinarians in Industry (AVI) shortcourse on Statistics in Animal Health. 23-24 March 2009, Sydney

Evaluation question: "My comments about the course:"

Nigel has an excellent presentation style and makes statistics easy to understand
Excellent course notes and online access to information
Excellent examples were used to illustrate key statistical fundamentals
This workshop was extremely well structured and run and follow-up workshops run in a similar fashion on pertinent issues would be greatly appreciated

Risk-based surveillance training and analysis workshop, 9-20 March 2009, Nairobi, Kenya

Evaluation question: "My comments about the presenter are:"

Very articulate and clear in his presentation, practical examples well thought out and easy to follow.I think he has a lot of experience and I can learn a lot from him.
The presenter has very good subject matter knowledge and very good skills of communicetion
Intelligent, suave and gifted academician.
Very good, well prepared, profound knowledge of epidemiology
High capacity to involve all of us to participate every step of the course, very clear to explain the subjects and the clear definition of the terminology to make easy our comprehension of the subject
He has a good background on epidemiology and looks at things in a practical way. He has vast experience in the profession. Topics which seem difficult were simplified for everybody's understanding.
It is obvious that the presenter has a tremendous experience in this feild so he shared a lot with us. I would like to thank him very much for the effort he made.
He preapred the material in well organized and understandable manner. I appreciate his effort to make the training very easy and the way he transfered the knowledge. Therefore I was able to express myself confidently. The training was very helpful to me for the future in doing the risk based surviellance in my country.
Knowledgeable in the topic and very skilled in passing the knowledge to his trainees
Extra brilliant epidemiologist and adult trainer. He made impossible things appear simple. The software he has designed will enable me to take surveillance to a new level.
He articulates the hard stuff to make it appear simple and easy to grasp. He is experienced, intelligent and in touch with reality. This is demonstrated by the way he blends the real life scenarios with the the workshop contents. He is conversant with teaching adult learners in terms of the right speed of the deleivery of the contents, making sure not to loose them on the way. When the going gets tough like is the case with the difficult formulae, he knows how best to go about it, "Don't worry, the computer can do it for you " which gives you hope. I feel previledged to have been taught by him and I look forward to another training by him - may be a refresher or another one in another emerging area.
Epidemiology is a creative science that require a lot of reasoning and imagination, hard work and devotion and basic knowledge of different branches of science, especially biometrics for which the presenter is highly talented. For instance I can say that if the course was provided by local colleagues it would be very difficult to understand because of the lack of good approch and simplicity.

Application of diagnostic tests, 22-24 July 2008, Geelong

Evaluation question: "What was the best thing about the workshop?"

The presenters were great at explaining things and making sure that we understand & giving us examples to do. Getting us to participate.
The obvious depth of knowledge of the presenters. Plainly work well together, providing additional information to support each other's sessions.
Good team of presenters
Angus and Evan work very well as a team and their teaching styles complement each other.
Experienced presenters with field experience
2 speakers made it not boring and speakers are well prepared and very energetic
Comprehensive, knowledgable presenters, relevant to vets
Broad overview of diagnostic tests given and appropriate uses/interpretation of tests. Good introduction to software tools. Presenters very knowledgable and provided clear explanations and promoted good discussion.

SPS Evaluation workshop (training in surveillance, risk analysis and zoning), 6-10 October, 2008, Luang Prabang, Laos