Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. Tel.: +909-621-8976; Fax: +909-621-8465;
Brief Bioinform. 2013 Sep;14(5):610-7. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbt005. Epub 2013 Feb 28.
We believe that undergraduate biology students must acquire a foundational background in computing including how to formulate a computational problem; develop an algorithmic solution; implement their solution in software and then test, document and use their code to explore biological phenomena. Moreover, by learning these skills in the first year, students acquire a powerful tool set that they can use and build on throughout their studies. To address this need, we have developed a first-year undergraduate course that teaches students the foundations of computational thinking and programming in the context of problems in biology. This article describes the structure and content of the course and summarizes assessment data on both affective and learning outcomes.
我们认为，大学生物学专业的学生必须掌握计算方面的基础知识，包括如何构建计算问题；开发算法解决方案；在软件中实现解决方案，然后测试、记录并使用他们的代码来探索生物现象。此外，通过在第一年学习这些技能，学生可以获得一套强大的工具，他们可以在整个学习过程中使用和构建。为了满足这一需求，我们开发了一门本科一年级课程，在生物学问题的背景下教授学生计算思维和编程的基础知识。本文介绍了课程的结构和内容，并总结了情感和学习成果评估数据。
