Nanocourses: a short course format as an educational tool in a biological sciences graduate curriculum

An Open-Source Toolkit To Expand Bioinformatics Training in Infectious Diseases

As access to high-throughput sequencing technology has increased, the bottleneck in biomedical research has shifted from data generation to data analysis. Here, we describe a modular and extensible framework for didactic instruction in bioinformatics using publicly available RNA sequencing data sets from infectious disease studies, with a focus on host-parasite interactions. We highlight lessons learned from adapting this course for virtual learners during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Bringing Real-World Microbiology Experiences to Undergraduate Students in Resource-Limited Environments

Undergraduate microbiology curriculum should be amenable to periodic changes to incorporate new developments and ideas. The curriculum should be used not merely as a way to disseminate facts but also as a way to allow students to experience the process of science. In the context of undergraduate microbiology education in Osmania University (Hyderabad, India), existing curriculum does not explicitly allow students to engage in deeper understanding of concepts and understanding of the process of science, both in lecture and laboratory courses. The assessment methods that are currently used are limited in scope as they only test factual recall and superficial understanding of the subject and very minimally assess critical thinking skills. Another factor hampering innovation in the broader context of undergraduate education is the unavailability and inaccessibility to adequate resources. To address the issue of resource-limitations in implementing activities that expose undergraduate students to real-world microbiology experiences, a collaboration between a research institute and two teaching colleges was formed. This collaboration involved teacher and student workshops on exploring microbial diversity using 16S rRNA analysis with a view of blending novel research questions with technical skills in the undergraduate microbiology lab. This effort is an example of educators providing students with authentic experiences and, helping them gain critical knowledge and research skills in microbiology even under resource constraints, and students demonstrating motivation to participate in similar activities in the future. The collaborative effort described here can be a broadly sustainable model to improve overall undergraduate education in relatively resource-limited environments.

Eleven quick tips for running an interdisciplinary short course for new graduate students

Quantitative reasoning and techniques are increasingly ubiquitous across the life sciences. However, new graduate researchers with a biology background are often not equipped with the skills that are required to utilize such techniques correctly and efficiently. In parallel, there are increasing numbers of engineers, mathematicians, and physical scientists interested in studying problems in biology with only basic knowledge of this field. Students from such varied backgrounds can struggle to engage proactively together to tackle problems in biology. There is therefore a need to establish bridges between those disciplines. It is our proposal that the beginning of graduate school is the appropriate time to initiate those bridges through an interdisciplinary short course. We have instigated an intensive 10-day course that brought together new graduate students in the life sciences from across departments within the National University of Singapore. The course aimed at introducing biological problems as well as some of the quantitative approaches commonly used when tackling those problems. We have run the course for three years with over 100 students attending. Building on this experience, we share 11 quick tips on how to run such an effective, interdisciplinary short course for new graduate students in the biosciences.

Null effects of boot camps and short-format training for PhD students in life sciences

Many PhD programs incorporate boot camps and summer bridge programs to accelerate the development of doctoral students' research skills and acculturation into their respective disciplines. These brief, high-intensity experiences span no more than several weeks and are typically designed to expose graduate students to data analysis techniques, to develop scientific writing skills, and to better embed incoming students into the scholarly community. However, there is no previous study that directly measures the outcomes of PhD students who participate in such programs and compares them to the outcomes of students who did not participate. Likewise, no previous study has used a longitudinal design to assess these outcomes over time. Here we show that participation in such programs is not associated with detectable benefits related to skill development, socialization into the academic community, or scholarly productivity for students in our sample. Analyzing data from 294 PhD students in the life sciences from 53 US institutions, we found no statistically significant differences in outcomes between participants and nonparticipants across 115 variables. These results stand in contrast to prior studies presenting boot camps as effective interventions based on participant satisfaction and perceived value. Many universities and government agencies (e.g., National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation) invest substantial resources in boot camp and summer bridge activities in the hopes of better supporting scientific workforce development. Our findings do not reveal any measurable benefits to students, indicating that an allocation of limited resources to alternative strategies with stronger empirical foundations warrants consideration.

Public health 101 nanocourse: a condensed educational tool for non-public health professionals

Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows-including those at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)-have somewhat limited opportunities outside of traditional coursework to learn holistically about public health. Because this lack of familiarity could be a barrier to fruitful collaboration across disciplines, HSPH postdocs sought to address this challenge. In response, the Public Health 101 Nanocourse was developed to provide an overview of five core areas of public health (biostatistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, health policy and management, and social and behavioral sciences) in a two half-day course format. We present our experiences with developing and launching this novel approach to acquainting wider multidisciplinary audiences with the field of public health.

The quantitative methods boot camp: teaching quantitative thinking and computing skills to graduate students in the life sciences

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the ability of biologists to collect large amounts of data. It is therefore vital that research biologists acquire the necessary skills during their training to visualize, analyze, and interpret such data. To begin to meet this need, we have developed a “boot camp” in quantitative methods for biology graduate students at Harvard Medical School. The goal of this short, intensive course is to enable students to use computational tools to visualize and analyze data, to strengthen their computational thinking skills, and to simulate and thus extend their intuition about the behavior of complex biological systems. The boot camp teaches basic programming using biological examples from statistics, image processing, and data analysis. This integrative approach to teaching programming and quantitative reasoning motivates students’ engagement by demonstrating the relevance of these skills to their work in life science laboratories. Students also have the opportunity to analyze their own data or explore a topic of interest in more detail. The class is taught with a mixture of short lectures, Socratic discussion, and in-class exercises. Students spend approximately 40% of their class time working through both short and long problems. A high instructor-to-student ratio allows students to get assistance or additional challenges when needed, thus enhancing the experience for students at all levels of mastery. Data collected from end-of-course surveys from the last five offerings of the course (between 2012 and 2014) show that students report high learning gains and feel that the course prepares them for solving quantitative and computational problems they will encounter in their research. We outline our course here which, together with the course materials freely available online under a Creative Commons License, should help to facilitate similar efforts by others.

Leading change: curriculum reform in graduate education in the biomedical sciences

The Division of Graduate Medical Sciences at the Boston University School of Medicine houses numerous dynamic graduate programs. Doctoral students began their studies with laboratory rotations and classroom training in a variety of fundamental disciplines. Importantly, with 15 unique pathways of admission to these doctoral programs, there were also 15 unique curricula. Departments and programs offered courses independently, and students participated in curricula that were overlapping combinations of these courses. This system created curricula that were not coordinated and that had redundant course content as well as content gaps. A partnership of key stakeholders began a curriculum reform process to completely restructure doctoral education at the Boston University School of Medicine. The key pedagogical goals, objectives, and elements designed into the new curriculum through this reform process created a curriculum designed to foster the interdisciplinary thinking that students are ultimately asked to utilize in their research endeavors. We implemented comprehensive student and peer evaluation of the new Foundations in Biomedical Sciences integrated curriculum to assess the new curriculum. Furthermore, we detail how this process served as a gateway toward creating a more fully integrated graduate experience, under the umbrella of the Program in Biomedical Sciences.

Catalyzing curriculum evolution in graduate science education

Strategies in life science graduate education must evolve in order to train a modern workforce capable of integrative solutions to challenging problems. Our institution has catalyzed such evolution through building a postdoctoral Curriculum Fellows Program that provides a collaborative and scholarly education laboratory for innovation in graduate training.