Name of the course
VSNS BioComputing Course
Eligibility Critera
The VSNS BioComputing Course has been developed and offered by the University of Bielefeld, Germany, which is a state-run degree-granting university in the state of Northrhine-Westphalia, part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The course has been offered in 1995 and 1996; altogether 56 students (out of 71) received a Certificate of Attendence, i.e. they completed the course successfully. Students were assessed by the instructors and coordinators based on their online participation, submission of homework, and other contributions to the course. Certificates were awarded and signed by the student's instructor, the course's chief coordinator (Georg Fuellen), and the academic supervisor and co-coordinator of the course (Robert Giegerich). Interaction between students and instructors was done over the Internet, via electronic conferencing and email.
Name of the institution hosting the course
Technische Fakultät, Research Group in Practical Computer Science, University of Bielefeld, Germany.
Co-sponsor is the Virtual School of Natural Sciences, a member school of the Globewide Network Academy, Texas, USA.
The 1998 course will be hosted by the School of Computer Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA.
Name, professional title, e-mail address, and telephone number of the developer(s) of the course
Georg Fuellen, Research Assistant, fuellen@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de / fuellen@alum.mit.edu, +49 521 106 2903 / +49 521 895107 (answering machine).
Robert Giegerich, Professor, robert@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de, +49 521 106 2913.
Rebecca Parsons, Assistant Professor, rebecca@cs.ucf.edu, (407) 823-5299; (Rebecca Parsons is a course instructor since Spring 1995, and a co-developer since fall 1997).
A brief description of the instructional goals of the course. Who is the course for and what are they supposed to get from it?
We provide bioinformatics training for biology and computer science students and researchers focussing on a guided introduction to biosequence analysis. Our offerings shall be
One of the primary goals of the course is to allow the exchange of information between bench-workers and computer scientists. Bioinformatics is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavour. As such, it requires significant communication effort from the individuals in the discipline to make any progress. This course provided, and continues to provide, opportunities for students and researchers in computer science, biology and the life sciences to interact with each other to understand the real issues arising in the computational analysis of sequence data.
Our offerings have a mixed audience, from the undergraduate student to the senior researcher not familiar with bioinformatics. In 1995/96 we had 71 students altogether, from 18 countries, 75 % of them life scientists and 25 % computer science, mathematics and engineering students. There were 12 undergraduates, 40 graduate students, 12 postdocs and 7 senior researchers from other disciplines. Even after the 11-week course, many of them still make use of our material for reference purposes. Many aspects of the course are described in our 1997 Report at http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Transfer97/welcome_e.html, and in our paper
F. M. De La Vega, R. Giegerich & G. Fuellen. Distance Education through the Internet: The GNA-VSNS Biocomputing Course. Proceedings of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing '96, edited by Lawrence Hunter and Teri Klein, World Scientific Publishing, 1996.
Participants should obtain a sound understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the main methods used in bioinformatics, and be able to use the tools efficiently via the WWW. A critical aspect of the design of the course is the personal interaction amongst the students and between the students and the instructor. The classes utilized the BioMOO as a virtual classroom, allowing plenty of discussion between instructor and students. Many distance learning courses rely on email as the sole communication medium, reducing the degree to which students can learn from their peers' interactions with the instructor. The mix of background training of the instructors and students is also crucial to supporting the interdisciplinary nature of the material. The personal attention through the online course meetings allows students of diverse backgrounds to understand the material and grasp its relevance.
A brief description of the format and structure of the course. What instructional activities does the course involve and how are those activities completed by students?
We have run courses in 1995 and 1996 which lasted for 2.5 months each, and expect to run a new course in the fall of 1998. During the course, students read the hypertext material, work with the animations (provided for 3 critical concepts), do the homework, and once a week discuss text and homework in small groups of 4-6, guided by a dedicated instructor.
One of our animations is JAVA-based; it enables a three-dimensional visualization of a sequence comparison (alignment) as a line in a cube. Another allows the step-by-step calculation of such a sequence alignment, in the two-dimensional case, on the BioMOO conferencing system itself: a student simulates the calculation of the alignment, while the instructor and the fellow students watch the process. The third animation allows the exploration of the alignment algorithm with different parameter settings.
The study groups typically include a mixture of life scientists, computer scientists and engineers. The group discussions focus on reviewing the homeworks, expanding upon the more difficult material and discussing both how the techniques are applied and how effective they are in research and problem-solving in the real world. Homeworks are designed to assist in understanding the material and in getting the students to utilize the online tools available.
The following statement outlines a typical user pattern:
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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 10:12:31 +0100
From: brennan@icrf.icnet.uk (Paul Brennan)
Dear George,
I would like to vocalise my support of the Biocomputing Course. I
attended the first one which substantially increased my basic understanding
and the pratical application of biocomputing. It enabled me to use these
skills in my Ph.D. thesis and a publication.
It think such a course should fall into the brief of the EBI.
Teaching others about bioinformatics is as important as supporting the
networks and databases. It was the fact that the course was run over the
net and on a part time basis that allowed me to attend. I would never have
been allowed to attend a course on this at a location away from my country.
For this reason my attendance at the Biocomputing Course was better than
any other kind of course on biocomputing available.
---------------
Now, one and a half years later, Paul Brennan works with us and
2 Bielefeld students on a research project via telecooperation,
involving the analysis
of cytokine promoter sequences, and he will help organize the
planned 1998 course. Indeed, a lot of our past users contribute to the
project in a spirit of mutual benefit.
A brief description of the assessment criteria used to evaluate the course and a summary of any assessment data collected to date.
The evaluation of our online courses was very positive.
The 1996 survey at the end of the course was returned by
81% of our students, and at that time 3/4 of all students
were still actively participating in class. Two thirds said
they did their homework, and an overwhelming majority felt
that they had a better understanding of the inner workings
of sequence analysis tools, and that they will continue to
use the WWW-tools they learned about. Please see the last
section of our report for a more detailed analysis, at
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Transfer97/results_e.html.
Additionally, Lisa Guernsay from the ``Chronicle of Higher
Education'' wrote an independent review of the 1996 course, see
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Adm/chronicle96.html.
Course Material: http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/
Guided Tour: http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/PaulAllen/
We have tested the Webpages using Netscape 4 on a SUN Unix workstation; if you experience any difficulties, missing images, inadequate design, please contact us. We can easily send you printouts of our submission. In case of email problems, here is also our fax number: +49 521 106 6411.