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A first course in computing with applications to biology
Ran Libeskind-Hadas is the R. Michael Shanahan Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College. He received the A.B. in applied mathematics from Harvard University and the PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research is in the area of cophylogenetics.
Eliot Bush is Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvey Mudd College. He received the A.B. in biology from Harvard University and the PhD in biology from the California Institute of Technology. His research interests in computational biology have focused on the evolution of noncoding sequences in mammals.
Corresponding author. Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. Tel.: +909-621-8976; Fax: +909-621-8465; E-mail:hadas@cs.hmc.edu
Received December 6, 2012.
Accepted January 16, 2013.
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.
文章网址:http://bib.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/28/bib.bbt005.abstract
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