🕵️ Disease Detectives B

How We Prepare

This team's prep runs on two things: weekly coaching sessions and Detective's Desk, our study site. They're built to reinforce each other. Here's why we keep both, and how they fit together.

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Detective's Desk

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), a vocabulary matcher, flashcards, and a randomized case generator, so review doesn't mean re-reading the same page.

Full case simulations. Five complete outbreak investigations to work start to finish, each teaching a different concept the real test rewards.

Personal progress tracking tags exactly which subtopics are strong and which aren't, instead of one overall score. 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 full mock exams under real tournament timing, the closest thing to the actual test day.

How the two fit together

Detective's Desk does the teaching: guides and video walkthroughs cover new material first, games and drills build repetition, all on a student's own schedule. Weekly sessions don't start from scratch: we use each student's progress data to spend our time together on their actual weak spots, plus the one thing that can only happen with a partner in the room, working a case under a real clock. Closer to competition, sessions get more frequent and more hands-on, ending in full mock exams that mirror tournament conditions. Neither piece replaces the other. The site makes the material always available, and the sessions make sure it's actually sinking in.