Description

Educators need to train the next generation of biology students to be data-savvy scientists who can apply their skills to address emerging challenges in human health, agriculture, and climate. The Genomics Education Alliance (GEA) is a community-based organization driven to sustain established efforts that incorporate genomics into undergraduate classrooms. Genome annotation and analysis, as a stand-alone effort or in conjunction with wet-bench investigation, has proven to be an effective way to a) introduce large numbers of biology students to bioinformatics, and b) provide students with a course-based research experiences (CUREs). GEA will collect and maintain an up-to-date framework, including accessible tools and research problems, that supports undergraduate genomics education and promotes CURE-based approaches to deliver such training. GEA seeks solution to lower barriers (e.g. technological, training, pedagogical) that educators face in bringing genomics to undergraduates at scale. We invite the community of researchers and educators working in genomics and related fields to join us in shaping this alliance with the aim of achieving transformative change, delivering genomics curriculum that can be globally implemented.

The GEA is excited to participate in the Cultivating Scientific Curiosity 2020 BIOME Institute and develop this resource. To provide more information on the members of the alliance and their genomics education projects, we have collected a number of posters describing those projects. Some members will be available to meet with during the second week of the Institute. The GEA’s current products include a series of curated lessons adapted from members of our alliance that engage students in bioinformatics and genomics. During the institute, we are looking for input on a draft inventory of Genomics Concepts that define learning outcomes for our curricula that will help educators select lessons to use in their classrooms. Also, Jason Williams will present a workshop to showcase our lessons using Jupyter notebooks to walk students through the analysis of genomic data (RNAseq). In addition, we present a poster on efforts towards developing templates to guide faculty in the creation of genomics CUREs. Heading into the fall, we will work with these templates and lessons to help Alliance members create CUREs based on RNAseq data. We are always looking for partners to implement any of our modular lessons then provide constructive feedback, to suggest new lessons to have the GEA maintain, or willing to share their experience with developing CUREs.

Introduction to the Genomics Education Alliance:

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