No abstract

It is increasingly difficult for teaching to keep pace with rapid advances in technology, especially at the interface of several disciplines. We describe here the development and implementation of an interdisciplinary bioinformatics course focused on preparing the future scientific workforce. Central to the course is a project-centric teaching paradigm to engage students in applying the concepts of cyberinfrastructure through the integration of the disciplines of biology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics in the field of bioinformatics. In this project, Bluefield State College (BSC) professors and their students were introduced to the concepts of cyberinfrastructure (CI) through the application of genomics software tools and data. The cornerstone of the project-centric approach was the development and implementation of educational modules centered on applying a transdisciplinary approach to specific and typical challenges that are faced by current scientists in the area of pathosystems biology (hostpathogen-environment interactions). The course modules were further modified by BSC to fit their students and training objectives. We report here the first implementation of the CI course and a summary of our initial observations to aid others in implementing similar courses. Specifically, we discuss materials developed at Bluefield and implementation of the Center for Applied Research and Technology (CART) Course Management Service (CMS) at BSC in the delivery of the course as well as the assessment.