Lecturer in Healthcare Sciences, Dr Peter Causey-Freeman and Lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning, Fran Hooley – both based in the Division of Informatics, Imaging and Data Sciences – presented an innovative new teaching method to the Academic Practice and Technology (APT) conference and International Society for Computational Biology (ISMB) conference in July . Their presentation, Embedding skills for a new Profession by teaching programming in an immersive and authentic environment, was met with high praise at both conferences, receiving great feedback from attendees.
Overview
The 15-credit unit – Introduction to Programming – launched in November 2019 as the third in a new distance learning PG Cert in Clinical Bioinformatics and has received some great feedback in its inaugural run (see How Manchester’s PG Cert in Clinical Bioinformatics made me a better dermatologist and feedback video from another student https://youtu.be/TiIEyEeNiaU ).
The unit simulated real-world experiences by building a situated learning environment that used agile project methods and authentic problem-solving activities to emulate clinical programming best-practice. Clear instructions, signposting and support, ensured comfort with course materials delivered using Jupyter Notebooks via GitHub. This use of industry-standard platforms and downloadable content also encouraged post-course lifelong-learning.
Teaching methods
The unit followed a social constructivist model geared to help students to learn individually and as a team through the tool Slack. Synchronous online support from experienced facilitators helped encourage group-based peer-to-peer support which afforded more time for educators to support struggling students. By prioritising pedagogy over technology, the learning design resulted in incremental coding activities supporting a variety of learners. Methods such as sprints provided real-world problem-based learning using real user-stories.
Back to practice
The students directly contributed to the clinical bioinformatics toolkit by developing resources for personal practice or for co-development of the VariantValidator software, used in clinical practice worldwide.
What’s next?
More real world programming challenges are currently being gathered for the second run this year with the aim to produce even more resources to add to VariantValidator. There are plans to evaluate this run more thoroughly to see how to close the continuous improvement loop and also measure the impact back in practice.
Further links:
For a more in depth look at the approach please read the following blog posts:
- https://medium.com/i3hs-hub/embedding-skills-for-a-new-profession-by-teaching-programming-in-an-immersive-and-authentic-ade0122108fe – is an in-depth article on the methods and tools we used.
- Moving to online teaching: lessons learned trying to build engagement in an online programming course – is a reflection on building engagement in the course resulting in five key lessons we learned.