@article{462b86181d504f16baf0c427a134a21c,
title = "An instructional definition and assessment rubric for bioinformatics instruction",
abstract = "The lack of an instructional definition of bioinformatics delays its effective integration into biology coursework. Using an iterative process, our team of biologists, a mathematician/computer scientist, and a bioinformatician together with an educational evaluation and assessment specialist, developed an instructional definition of the discipline: Bioinformatics is “an interdisciplinary field that is concerned with the development and application of algorithms that analyze biological data to investigate the structure and function of biological polymers and their relationships to living systems.” The field is defined in terms of its two primary foundational disciplines, biology and computer science, and its interdisciplinary nature. At the same time, we also created a rubric for assessing open-ended responses to a prompt about what bioinformatics is and how it is used. The rubric has been shown to be reliable in successive rounds of testing using both common percent agreement (89.7%) and intraclass correlation coefficient (0.620) calculations. We offer the definition and rubric to life sciences instructors to help further integrate bioinformatics into biology instruction, as well as for fostering further educational research projects.",
keywords = "assessment of educational activities, bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, proteomics",
author = "Tapprich, {William E.} and Letitia Reichart and Simon, {Dawn M.} and Garry Duncan and William McClung and Neal Grandgenett and Pauley, {Mark A.}",
note = "Funding Information: Both the validity and reliability of the rubric were considered. Validity of an assessment instrument relates to its ability to meaningfully measure a construct of interest. The validity of the rubric was evaluated by the project team using an iterative process that took advantage of the combined expertise of its members. As described above, the team consisted of four biologists (two of whom are former department chairs), one mathematician/computer scientist (a former department chair), a bioinformatician, and an educational evaluation/assessment specialist with a strong background in STEM learning. All members of the project team have a Ph.D. and significant teaching and research experience. Furthermore, the team had been involved in several projects on bioinformatics instruction, including work funded by the National Science Foundation, and had previously worked on lecture materials, labs, and general curriculum development efforts. The qualifications and experience of the team align with recommended strategies for determining assessment validity. The process used also supports our claim that the rubric is valid. 24,31 Funding Information: National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: 1122971 Funding information Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology",
year = "2021",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1002/bmb.21361",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "49",
pages = "38--45",
journal = "Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education",
issn = "1470-8175",
publisher = "John Wiley and Sons Inc.",
number = "1",
}