[cse891] The Course, It Is Over.
C. Titus Brown
ctb at msu.edu
Thu Apr 29 12:08:09 PDT 2010
Thanks, all; have a great life/career/etc.!
--titus
--
Here's a tag cloud of your comments, followed by the comments
themselves.
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CSE 891 / Bioinformatics course objectives
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Goals:
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Teach process of interdisciplinary inquiry
Encourage skeptical inquiry
Expose people to some really neat (and recent) science
Make people give a public presentation
Make fun of Owen
Make course enjoyable
NOT:
teach detailed methods.
teach biology or algorithms.
Problems:
---------
No course outline, homework due dates, etc. up front ("Don't worry, be
happy" apparently doesn't work.)
Busy-ness/lazyness => lack of organization
Occasionally really bad lecture preparation (although it's quite
hard... waaah)
Poor follow-through on homework
Insufficient homework?
NOT:
failure to teach basic biology
failure to teach basic algorithms
and, not IMO, (general) lack of knowledge on my part (breadth!)
----
Comments from students:
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1. Teaching a class on interdisciplinary communication => good
2. Class on how to give a presentation was helpful
--
Lack of organization needs to be fixed
Fix bad lecture preparation - important. Only 30 minutes of lecture
required per week, but it should be better than it was.
--
Laid-back discussion-oriented class - good.
After presentations by students, a short blurb from you (good, bad)
would be nice.
--
Liked: variety of different topics; not too much pressure (HW was just
right)
--
General quality of discussion was quite high
You were fun to watch
Some of the student talks were boring or pointless; could change it to
be more of a journal club discussion led by the presenter, to discuss
and critique the science.
--
Like:
- made me understand larger context of my research
- pointed out what to watch for in bioinformatics
- gives background (theoretical) on what the research subjects are about
Bad:
- lecture notes would be (would have been) nice
- no clear grading policy
- homework feedback! what about data analysis exercises instead of
just reading?
--
I would have liked more of a detailed methods introduction in some
areas. (CTB - maybe guest lectures?)
--
When doing a topic (metagenomics, next-gen sequencing...) would be
helpful to have a summary or conclusion to know what knowledge to take
away.
More direct feedback on presentation and homework.
I thought it was a great course overall.
--
Things I liked:
The discussions that arose from the relaxed format of the class.
I feel like I have a better ability to communicate with computer
people regarding analysis of large data sets.
Things I disliked:
Lack of structured syllabus/hw schedule.
Even if you don't like ANGEL, some central place to retrieve HW and
papers would have been good - so use ANGEL.
It would be nice if you provided resources that evaluated different
algorithms for different purposes. For example - 16s alignment tools:
silva, greengenes, RDP pipeline. How do we know what to choose?
--
Liked:
broad discussions
broad papers/topics enhanced learning
Disliked:
poor organization
more background would have been good
in some cases this was the first time I ever saw a particular topic
--
Liked:
organization of course (I know, crazy, right?)
topics - they flowed very nicely from one week to the next
you interrupted the presentations to make sure people would get the
best/most information
Overall, I loved this course. I don't think there was one thing I
didn't like about it. I took another similar course through the CMB
department that did everything wrong you did right. So overall, GOOD
JOB!
--
- apathy on the part of the instructor encourages apathy on the part
of the student
- HW should be assigned on the papers being presented by students to
encourage discussion during presentations
--
re bad lecture preparation, much time could be saved if you didn't try
to get so specific with complicated examples and miss the main point.
--
more basic references provided at the beginning.
--
Liked:
- working through scientific problems with SCIENCE
- getting to see neat stuff in biology
- watching presentations
Disliked:
- Insufficient schematic for biology concepts (but not too bad)
--
Liked:
Amusing and informative at same time.
Excellent cynicism and critiques
Didn't mind the lack of a course outline
Disliked/to be improved:
Homework overview/discussion/comments afterwards would have been nice.
Definitely would have liked comments on improving presentations
--
Liked:
Recent, relevant articles and discussion about it
Very interesting topics!
Dislikes:
You talking more - would have liked more talking/explaining
No way to give feedback to presenters that sucked
Computer scientists sucked at explaining simple comp or stat stuff but
always explained the science stuff well
--
Liked:
focus on big picture, not relentless details
relaxed atmosphere: learn as much (or little) as you want
To improve:
Some kind of outline would be nice, even if it is just a skeleton
Many of your concerns were accurate
--
Like:
You encouraged participation, by participating enthusiastically --
opposite of other seminars I've taken.
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