Undergraduate Bioinformatics Workshops Provide Perceived Skills

Abstract

Bioinformatics is becoming an important part of undergraduate curriculum, but expertise and well-evaluated teaching materials may not be available on every campus. Here, a guest speaker was utilized to introduce bioinformatics and web-available exercises were adapted for student investigation. Students used web-based nucleotide comparison tools to examine the medical and evolutionary relevance of a unidentified genetic sequence. Based on pre- and post-workshop surveys, there were significant gains in the students understanding of bioinformatics, as well as their perceived skills in using bioinformatics tools. The relevance of bioinformatics to a student’s career seemed dependent on career aspirations.