Guides + video walkthroughs teach the material first. Each of the 3 units opens with a narrated overview, on a student's own schedule, not waiting for a session to hear it explained.
Games and drills build repetition: a speed round (Quickfire), Vocab Drill (matching and flashcards), Guess the Pathogen, and Frequency Drill for rates and death rates, so review doesn't mean re-reading the same page.
Case work. Five complete outbreak investigations to work start to finish, plus the Case Generator, which builds a fresh outbreak every time: epi curves, 2×2 tables, study designs, relative risk and odds ratios.
Field Exam. Full practice exams in the tournament's format (matching, multiple choice, written answers and a case study), timed against 20 minutes. An AI grader scores the written answers against a checklist, point by point.
Personal progress tracking. Every drill, case and exam fills in a Mastery Map of all 18 topics, plus a Readiness score, so it's clear which topics are strong and which aren't. That data is what decides where session time actually goes.
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Weekly Coaching Sessions
Targets what's still not sticking. Since the guides and videos already teach the material, session time doesn't start from zero. We use each student's progress data to go straight to the specific concepts (like relative risk vs. odds ratio) that are still tripping them up.
Practices the real event format. Disease Detectives is worked as a pair, on the clock, dividing up the case packet and the math. That's a skill you can only build with a partner in the room, and no app replaces it.
Keeps momentum and accountability. A standing weekly session is structure a website can't provide on its own.
Ramps up before competition. In the final weeks before an invitational or regionals, we increase frequency and run timed assessments at team meetings: one try, 20 minutes, results after they close. It's the closest thing to the actual test day.