Fostering bioinformatics education through skill development of professors: Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors
Open accessAbstract
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.
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Confidence surveys detect an increase in participant ability to apply new content to their own research in bioinformatic workshops.
“This has been observed specifically in bioinformatic workshops where confidence surveys detect an increase in participant ability to apply new content to their own research (Shade et al., 2019) and teaching needs (Zhan et al., 2019).”
From Student‐led workshops: Filling skills gaps in computational research for life scientists (2021) · cites this paper as Zhan et al., 2019
These workshops trained faculty in computational methods in order to support the development of relevant courses at their own institution.
“These workshops trained faculty in computational methods in order to support the development of relevant courses at their own institution.”
From Student‐led workshops: Filling skills gaps in computational research for life scientists (2021) · cites this paper as Zhan et al., 2019
Two examples of workshops focused on faculty development of data skills are the Genome Solver Project and the Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors training.
“Two such examples of workshops focused on faculty development of data skills are the Genome Solver Project (Mathur et al., 2019) and the Big Genomic Data Skills Training for Professors training (Zhan et al., 2019).”
From Student‐led workshops: Filling skills gaps in computational research for life scientists (2021) · cites this paper as Zhan et al., 2019
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- Authors
- Zhan, Y. A., Wray, C. G., Namburi, S., Glantz, S. T., Laubenbacher, R., & Chuang, J. H.
- Affiliations
- The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine (US)
- Jackson Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wray, Charles Gregory
- Chuang, Jeffrey H.
- ORCID
- Venue
- PLOS Computational Biology
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2019-06-13
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e1007026
- ISSN
- 1553-734X (ISSN-L)
- 1553-7358
- PMC
- PMC6563947
- OpenAlex
- W2951271808
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 0.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS Computational Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- The Mouseion at the JAXlibrary (Jackson Laboratory) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Cancer Institute (P30CA034196)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R25GM129169)
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (R25EB022365)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Keywords
- bioinformatics education, faculty development, computational biology, undergraduate curriculum, liberal arts colleges, regional universities, short courses, faculty shortage
- MeSH terms
- Big Data, Curriculum, Faculty, Humans, Computational Biology, Databases, Genetic
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