Computing in Life Sciences Through Hands-on Experience and Case Studies at Tuskegee University

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Biology has changed from an insular entity into a science dependant upon interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches. At the Tuskegee University (TU) and many institutions of higher education integration of bioinformatics and computational skills into the biology undergraduate curricula is an enterprise still in its infancy. This project advances that enterprise through development of a two-course sequence and five modules on bioinformatics and computing. These emphasize computational thinking and skills, provide students with hands-on experiences and a collaborative learning environment based on case studies and team projects, and rely on new learning enhancement software tools, instructional materials and lab manuals developed specifically for this project. Case study examples include identifying the alleles and paralogs of disease resistance genes in the sweet potato genome and mutation probablility and frequency during aging in the yeast.Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of this project lies in its initiative to develop materials and methods for teaching computational thinking to students in life sciences, its effort to develop comprehensive computer laboratory exercises that offer hands-on learning experience for the targeted student pool, and a case-study course design that challenges students to solve interesting problems in a collaborative learning environment. The project is designed to: promote excitement about computing in the minds of students in the life sciences; lead to student growth through interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary experiences; encourage students to apply computation in their individual research projects; and cultivate student interest in pursuing research careers. Broader Impacts: The newly developed modules, instructional materials and educational software tools are impacting more than 100 students per year at TU, a historically black college. The courses developed are being offered as science electives to students in the Department of Computer Science and to bioinformatics concentrators in the Department of Chemistry. The broader impacts of this project include student experiences, curricula improvement, faculty development, and the potential for adoption and adaptation by other institutions of the material and the way it is being integrated into courses. The activities are also increasing faculty collaboration among the departments of Biology, Computer Science, Chemistry, and Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. In addition, the modular nature of the developed teaching materials is facilitating their dissemination outside of TU, thus enhancing the curricula at other institutions. The reliance on R, an open-source cross-platform computing environment, and other open-source software is contributing to the broader impacts of this project. Dissemination of the generated teaching materials is being facilitated by a dedicated website http://bioinformatics.org/ctls/ (Computational Thinking in Life Sciences), developed and maintained by the PI.