The quantitative methods boot camp: teaching quantitative thinking and computing skills to graduate students in the life sciences.
The quantitative methods boot camp: teaching quantitative thinking and computing skills to graduate students in the life sciences.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004208
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发表时间：
2015-04
影响因子：
4.3
通讯作者：
Springer M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Stefan MI;Gutlerner JL;Born RT;Springer M
在过去的十年里，生物学家收集大量数据的能力迅速提高。因此，至关重要的是，研究生物学家在他们的培训期间获得必要的技能，以可视化、分析和解释这些数据。为了开始满足这一需求，我们为哈佛医学院的生物学研究生开发了一个定量方法的“新兵训练营”。这门短而密集的课程的目的是使学生能够使用计算工具来可视化和分析数据，增强他们的计算思维能力，并模拟和扩展他们对复杂生物系统行为的直觉。新兵训练营使用统计学、图像处理和数据分析中的生物例子来教授基本编程。这种教学编程和定量推理的综合方法通过展示这些技能与他们在生命科学实验室的工作的相关性来激励学生的参与。学生还有机会分析自己的数据或更详细地探索感兴趣的话题。这门课的授课方式包括简短的讲座、苏格拉底式的讨论和课堂练习。学生在课堂上花了大约40%的时间解决短题和长题。较高的教师与学生比例允许学生在需要时获得帮助或额外的挑战，从而增强了所有掌握水平的学生的体验。从课程的最后五个课程(2012至2014年)的期末调查中收集的数据显示，学生报告了很高的学习收益，并认为课程为解决他们在研究中遇到的数量和计算问题做好了准备。我们在这里概述我们的课程，再加上在知识共享许可下在线免费提供的课程材料，应该有助于促进其他人的类似努力。
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.
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DOI：
10.1187/cbe.10-05-0071
发表时间：
2010
期刊：
CBE life sciences education
影响因子：
--
作者：
Depelteau AM;Joplin KH;Govett A;Miller HA 3rd;Seier E
通讯作者：
Seier E
影响因子：
4.3
作者：
Searls DB
通讯作者：
Searls DB
影响因子：
8.2
作者：
Simmons, Joseph P.;Nelson, Leif D.;Simonsohn, Uri
通讯作者：
Simonsohn, Uri
影响因子：
4.3
作者：
Eglen, Stephen J.
通讯作者：
Eglen, Stephen J.
影响因子：
4.3
作者：
Costa, Manuel Joaeo;Galembeck, Eduardo;Torres, Bayardo B.
通讯作者：
Torres, Bayardo B.