Chapter 2 For new instructors

Welcome to new and seasoned instructors alike! We are excited to have you use a C-MOOR module in your class. This section of our OTTR book is specifically for instructors and will help you prepare for teaching a C-MOOR offering as a part of your class.

2.0.1 Course-based undergraduate research experiences

A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) is a high impact practice (HIP) where students learn through authentic research. In addition to the standard concepts of the material and the technical skills required to complete lab exercises students gain critical thinking skills troubleshooting their research projects. They don’t just learn about science; they practice it!

2.0.2 How C-MOOR supports you

Our curriculum is designed to be accessible for anyone to teach and aims to remove many of the barriers that prevent instructors from trying computational biology methods.

No previous experience in bioinformatics required. We’ll help with the code: We provide all code templates required to complete the analyses. You just bring your expertise as a researcher! For support with code and other technical issues reach out to us with a post on the C-MOOR Academy Discussion Forum. Someone will assist you as soon as you are available.
Our curriculum comes with lectures, assignments, and rubrics for you to use: We do as much as possible to take the workload of creating these materials off your back. But you’re not beholden to use them; if you have materials you’ve used over the years and prefer to use or want to use only parts of ours you’re free to do so.
We designed our miniCUREs to be modular to fit into your course: Our miniCURE curricula are designed to be compact, with just 6 main sessions followed by project work. We’ve taught our RNA-seq miniCURE in pre-established classes, such as introductory biology. You don’t have to design your entire course around them and the modules fit easily into your lessons about gene expression and microbiology.

2.0.3 New instructor to-do list

If you haven’t taught a C-MOOR curriculum in the past, here’s a list of tasks you should do, ideally before the semester begins:

Make an introductory post on the C-MOOR Academy Discussion Forum in the general category. We recommend including:

Your name
Your institution
The class you’re teaching that uses C-MOOR modules
Your area of research expertise
Any previous experience with bioinformatics
The cloud platform you will be using to teach (see next item)

Set up on a cloud platform: C-MOOR uses either SciServer or AnVIL for our cloud computing needs. If you’re not sure which is right for you, please mention this in your forum post so we can get you set up on whichever is more appropriate. Once you’ve chosen your cloud platform, follow the instructions in the respective section to access modules and learn how to grant your students the same access. While you can technically run the modules locally, running them on a cloud platform will prevent the need for students to download all the neccessary components and provides you easier access to updates.
Go through the modules yourself: Familiarize yourself the curriculum and how to use the cloud platform and our fill-in-the-blank code chunks. Look through our resources and see what support is currently available; for example, our C-MOOR RNA-seq guide and our student made How To Get Started With Your C-MOOR Project Guide.
Look over our generic C-MOOR Poster Rubric and alter it as neccessary. The rubric is designed so that you can choose what sections you want included in your students’ posters and what weight (point values) you want to give to each element. Students will use the rubric as a checklist as they create their posters. Some instructors share this rubric at the start of their class. Others may leave it until later. If you have a specific symposium or conference in mind, tailor the rubric to suit that venue (ex. if your school’s research day requires posters with abstracts and no introductions, change the rubric to reflect this requirement).
Consider your syllabus and where each module fits into your class schedule. We provide estimated times for each module and the activities within as well as sample schedules from instructors who have taught the curriculum before. Some instructors teach a wet lab alongside the C-MOOR curriculum, using downtime (ex. waiting for the results of a gel electrophoresis lab) to do computational activities.
Have students create an account on your chosen cloud platform and provide the neccessary information to you: Do this well in advance of the first day you’re using the C-MOOR curriculum to avoid technical issues on the day of (ex. students without Google associated email addresses on AnVIL, students who have unknown errors logging into SciServer). You will need to collect the students’ email addresses (AnVIL) or their usernames (SciServer). We recommend using tools in your LMS or a Google form to expedite this process.