Bioinformatics Learning 2.0: proposing an open source consortium for bioinformatics teaching materials

 I propose an open source consortium for bioinformatics teaching materials, including textbook chapters, slides, concept tests, homework and exam questions and answers, programming problems and data analysis projects, and software tools for using these materials in class and out.

To seed this effort I am contributing materials from two courses: a bioinformatics theory course (for Computer Science students) emphasizing probabilistic models and methods; and a genomics and computational biology course (for Life Science students).

This effort is based on several principles. First, bioinformatics is highly interdisciplinary, yet bioinformatics textbooks tend to each reflect only one disciplinary part of that. Furthermore, both available textbooks and the traditional lecture method fall far short of giving students adequate exercises to truly learn the concepts and skills. In effect, the job of writing all these teaching materials is too big for any one person. Instead, every teacher should be enabled to focus on writing materials in areas where they are expert, while drawing whatever materials they want from everyone else, via an open source consortium for sharing teaching materials.

Second, bioinformatics teaching should draw lessons from other fields such as physics teaching, where it has been shown that traditional lecturing (passive learning) is far less effective than active learning, where students answer and discuss problems in class. Specifically, I have developed teaching materials and software tools for in-class concept tests, defined as a question that challenges the students' understanding of a specific concept.

Whereas ROSALIND computational problems may be viewed as empirical (implicit) tests of mastery of a concept or skill, in-class concept testing explicitly teaches such mastery by challenging students to think about how to use a concept, and rapidly exposing the most common errors for all to see and understand. I illustrate with examples from the approximately 300 bioinformatics concept tests I have written for this effort.

I also present software tools for in-class concept testing, and for selecting and "re-compiling" content in flexible ways. Finally, I will discuss critical issues for such a consortium, such as automatic authorship tracking, sharing, and security.

Информация о лекции с сайта RECOMB Satellite Conference on Bioinformatics Education