A summer program designed to educate college students for careers in bioinformatics.

A summer program was created for undergraduates and graduate students that teaches bioinformatics concepts, offers skills in professional development, and provides research opportunities in academic and industrial institutions. We estimate that 34 of 38 graduates (89%) are in a career trajectory that will use bioinformatics. Evidence from open-ended research mentor and student survey responses, student exit interview responses, and research mentor exit interview/survey responses identified skills and knowledge from the fields of computer science, biology, and mathematics that are critical for students considering bioinformatics research. Programming knowledge and general computer skills were essential to success on bioinformatics research projects. General mathematics skills obtained through current undergraduate natural sciences programs were adequate for the research projects, although knowledge of probability and statistics should be strengthened. Biology knowledge obtained through the didactic phase of the program and prior undergraduate education was adequate, but advanced or specific knowledge could help students progress on research projects. The curriculum and assessment instruments developed for this program are available for adoption by other bioinformatics programs at http://www.calstatela.edu/SoCalBSI.

Valid and reliable authentic assessment of culminating student performance in the biomedical sciences.

There is increasing pressure, both from institutions central to the national scientific mission and from regional and national accrediting agencies, on natural sciences faculty to move beyond course examinations as measures of student performance and to instead develop and use reliable and valid authentic assessment measures for both individual courses and for degree-granting programs. We report here on a capstone course developed by two natural sciences departments, Biological Sciences and Chemistry/Biochemistry, which engages students in an important culminating experience, requiring synthesis of skills and knowledge developed throughout the program while providing the departments with important assessment information for use in program improvement. The student work products produced in the course, a written grant proposal, and an oral summary of the proposal, provide a rich source of data regarding student performance on an authentic assessment task. The validity and reliability of the instruments and the resulting student performance data were demonstrated by collaborative review by content experts and a variety of statistical measures of interrater reliability, including percentage agreement, intraclass correlations, and generalizability coefficients. The high interrater reliability reported when the assessment instruments were used for the first time by a group of external evaluators suggests that the assessment process and instruments reported here will be easily adopted by other natural science faculty.