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Fostering bioinformatics education through skill development of professors: Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors.

ABSTRACT: Bioinformatics has become an indispensable part of life science over the past 2 decades. However, bioinformatics education is not well integrated at the undergraduate level, especially in liberal arts colleges and regional universities in the United States. One significant obstacle pointed out by the Network for Integrating Bioinformatics into Life Sciences Education is the lack of faculty in the bioinformatics area. Most current life science professors did not acquire bioinformatics analysis skills during their own training. Consequently, a great number of undergraduate and graduate students do not get the chance to learn bioinformatics or computational biology skills within a structured curriculum during their education. To address this gap, we developed a module-based, week-long short course to train small college and regional university professors with essential bioinformatics skills. The bioinformatics modules were built to be adapted by the professor-trainees afterward and used in their own classes. All the course materials can be accessed at https://github.com/TheJacksonLaboratory/JAXBD2K-ShortCourse.

SUBMITTER: Zhan YA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6563947 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Fostering bioinformatics education through skill development of professors: Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors.

Zhan Yingqian Ada YA Wray Charles Gregory CG Namburi Sandeep S Glantz Spencer T ST Laubenbacher Reinhard R Chuang Jeffrey H JH

PLoS computational biology 20190613 6

Bioinformatics has become an indispensable part of life science over the past 2 decades. However, bioinformatics education is not well integrated at the undergraduate level, especially in liberal arts colleges and regional universities in the United States. One significant obstacle pointed out by the Network for Integrating Bioinformatics into Life Sciences Education is the lack of faculty in the bioinformatics area. Most current life science professors did not acquire bioinformatics analysis sk ...[more]

PMID: 31194735

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Project description:Developing a position on a socio-scientific issue and defending it using a well-reasoned justification involves complex cognitive skills that are challenging to both teach and assess. Our work centers on instructional strategies for fostering critical thinking skills in high school students using bioethical case studies, decision-making frameworks, and structured analysis tools to scaffold student argumentation. In this study, we examined the effects of our teacher professional development and curricular materials on the ability of high school students to analyze a bioethical case study and develop a strong position. We focused on student ability to identify an ethical question, consider stakeholders and their values, incorporate relevant scientific facts and content, address ethical principles, and consider the strengths and weaknesses of alternate solutions. 431 students and 12 teachers participated in a research study using teacher cohorts for comparison purposes. The first cohort received professional development and used the curriculum with their students; the second did not receive professional development until after their participation in the study and did not use the curriculum. In order to assess the acquisition of higher-order justification skills, students were asked to analyze a case study and develop a well-reasoned written position. We evaluated statements using a scoring rubric and found highly significant differences (p<0.001) between students exposed to the curriculum strategies and those who were not. Students also showed highly significant gains (p<0.001) in self-reported interest in science content, ability to analyze socio-scientific issues, awareness of ethical issues, ability to listen to and discuss viewpoints different from their own, and understanding of the relationship between science and society. Our results demonstrate that incorporating ethical dilemmas into the classroom is one strategy for increasing student motivation and engagement with science content, while promoting reasoning and justification skills that help prepare an informed citizenry.

Project description:Background Dental informatics (DI) is an emerging discipline. Although the accreditation agency governing dental education programs asserts the importance of informatics as foundational knowledge, no well-defined DI courses currently exist within the standard predoctoral dental curriculum. There is a nationwide lack of DI academic programs. This training gap is due to a lack of qualified dental informaticians to impart knowledge on DI.Objective This paper aims to introduce a novel conceptual framework for an interdisciplinary DI program in preparing students to become dental informaticians.Methods In 2023, we developed a standalone graduate certificate program in DI at Indiana University (IU) School of Dentistry (IUSD) in collaboration with IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and IU Fairbanks School of Public Health. Feedback was collected through online surveys to assess course quality from students who took Introduction to Health Information in Dentistry. Feedback was analyzed qualitatively, utilizing a thematic analysis approach. Common responses relevant to DI education were grouped into themes.Results Five major themes emerged during our analysis of the students' feedback: foundational knowledge and skills; experiential learning: learning by doing; access to resources and working on clinical information systems; health promotion through team-based learning; and retention of knowledge assessment and application. A conceptual framework was formulated through these themes as a guideline for future program improvement. This interdisciplinary educational program framework showed how students and faculty from various disciplines could collaborate, learn from each other, and bring in expertise from different domains. The collaboration happens in clinical, laboratory, and virtual settings to acquire hands-on learning through practice and research projects.Conclusion The developed conceptual framework aligns with the interdisciplinary nature of DI. It can potentially be adopted by other interdisciplinary informatics programs in health and non-health care disciplines.

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Fostering bioinformatics education through skill development of professors: Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors.

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Fostering bioinformatics education through skill development of professors: Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors.

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