Want to know what IDI-BD2K students did last summer? To kick off BD2K week, we will have a poster session Wednesday November 7 from 11:30AM-12:50PM in the lobby of the New Natural Sciences Building in UPR Rio Piedras.
The workshop was a resounding success with 35 learners registered, and 13 more on a waiting list. Attendees ranged from undergraduate and graduate students to faculty and staff. We need to do more Carpentries workshops!
Participants in the Data Carpentry Genomics workshop
Instructors were Nelly Selem from Mexico and Humberto Ortiz-Zuazaga from Rio Piedras, and a group of volunteer helpers: Eveliz Peguero, Sebastian Cruz, Israel Dilán, Abraham Avelar, and Kevin Legarreta Gonzalez.
Carpentry workshops teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers, so they are a great match for IDI-BD2K’s goal of creating diverse teams of scientists looking at turning biological data into biomedical knowledge.
Participants learned how to manipulate next generation sequencing data to see variants in a population of E. coli. To do this, they used cloud computing resources, logged in remotely, processed files on the command line, and wrote scripts to automate parts of the analysis.
What I learned at the workshop.
The Carpentries also disseminate best practices on teaching in STEM, as informed by research and the instructor’s experience. The green and red papers on learners desks or laptops are one example. Learners are asked to place the green paper on their laptop if they complete an exercise, and a red one if they get stuck. This feedback helps maintain an appropriate pace for the workshop. I forgot to use the stickies the first day of the workshop, and at times we went too fast.
One thing I didn’t like about the first day of the workshop.
INCREASING DIVERSITY IN INTERDISCIPLINARY BIG DATA TO KNOWLEDGE PROGRAM PRESENTS:
THINKING LIKE A DESIGNER
4-DAY WORKSHOP
AUGUST 13TH-16TH, 2018
8:30AM-4:00PM
UPR RÍO PIEDRAS
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE ROOM A 143
This 4-day workshop will introduce students to the design thinking process through a series of hands-on collaborative activities combined with theoretical and practical lectures. Students will focus on a design challenge of their choosing and ground their process in a human need. By utilizing creative problem solving techniques, students will seek to understand the problem from the user’s perspective, generate ideas, make their ideas tangible, and gather actionable feedback. Collaboration as well as communicating their ideas and crafting a compelling narrative will be a consistent thread throughout the workshop.
