Addressing the Digital Divide in Contemporary Biology: Lessons from Teaching UNIX

Serghei Mangul; Lana S Martin; Alexander Hoffmann; Matteo Pellegrini; Eleazar Eskin

doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.06.007

Addressing the Digital Divide in Contemporary Biology: Lessons from Teaching UNIX

Trends Biotechnol. 2017 Oct;35(10):901-903. doi: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.06.007. Epub 2017 Jul 15.

Authors

Serghei Mangul¹, Lana S Martin², Alexander Hoffmann³, Matteo Pellegrini⁴, Eleazar Eskin⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Computer Science, University of California Los Angeles, 580 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, Boyer Hall, 611 Charles Young Drive, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Electronic address: smangul@ucla.edu.
² Department of Computer Science, University of California Los Angeles, 580 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
³ Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California Los Angeles, 611 Charles E Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁴ Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 801 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁵ Department of Computer Science, University of California Los Angeles, 580 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Department of Human Genetics, University of California Los Angeles, 695 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

PMID: 28720283
DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.06.007

Abstract

Life and medical science researchers increasingly rely on applications that lack a graphical interface. Scientists who are not trained in computer science face an enormous challenge analyzing high-throughput data. We present a training model for use of command-line tools when the learner has little to no prior knowledge of UNIX.

Keywords: command line interface; computational biology; education; training.

MeSH terms

Computer Literacy*
Electronic Data Processing*
Genomics / education*
Genomics / methods
Programming Languages*
User-Computer Interface*

Abstract

MeSH terms

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