Abstract: Objective To assess the need-oriented epidemiology teaching for the part-time Master candidates of Public Health (MPH students). Methods In February 2019, thirty-five part-time postgraduates with master's degree in public health who took the epidemiology course in the 2019 spring semester of Peking Union Medical College were selected as the research objects. The students' background information and learning needs were collected by the pre-class anonymous online survey. Based on the collected data, epidemiology course was scheduled. The students' final scores and satisfaction measured by anonymous online survey were used to evaluate the course. Results Totally 61.3%(19/31) of part-time MPH students have no medical background. There was a gap of learning needs between MPH with without medical background and those without medical background. However, all the students had the consistent need to improve their capacity building to apply knowledge learnt in clinical or public practice by the group discussion practice class. Based on these results, the courses were scheduled to include the teacher-centered classes for theory and students-centered case discussions in groups to improve the training knowledge application. By the end of course, 65.7(23/35) of students scored 80 or more. Totally 80.0%(28/35) of students were “very satisfied” with teacher-center classes, and the rest were “satisfied”. Conclusions The need-oriented courses are developed to meet the learning needs of students with or without medical education experience and were well evaluated by part-time MPH students with good learning outcomes.

Key words: Part-time, Master of Public Heath (MPH), Epidemiology, Need-oriented teaching