key: cord-0724636-8uk7mhbh
authors: Umar Aliyu, Rabi'u; Hassan Wara, Sanusi; Umar Dandare, Shamsudeen; Salihu Shinkafi, Tijjani; Yusha'u Muhammad, Awwal; Hassan Yankuzo, Mohammed
title: Development and teaching of a bioinformatics course to biochemistry major students in a Nigerian University during COVID‐19 pandemic
date: 2021-04-13
journal: Biochem Mol Biol Educ
DOI: 10.1002/bmb.21510
sha: 37572b21f25964ad11ad61bbad4ebf4cfad09cf0
doc_id: 724636
cord_uid: 8uk7mhbh

The influence of bioinformatics is pervasive affecting many biological disciplines resulting in changes in biosciences globally but not so in, Nigeria as the course is never taught in any public tertiary institution. This article describes development and teaching of bioinformatics integrated into bachelor's degree programme in biochemistry, during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Resources from the course are available for use by colleagues and students.

The influence of bioinformatics is pervasive on biosciences including biomedicine and organismal biology, hence dynamically changing education in the sciences globally. Consequently, in America and Europe, there had been calls for educational reforms. The BIO 2010 report 1 advocates the inclusion of "quantitative biology" in the curricula. The American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) recommends the "ability to use computers as information and research tools" as one of the skills students should acquire. However, the situation is quite different in Nigeria as bioinformatics is neither offered as part of a degree programme nor as a course on its own. 2 To fill the void, on the resumption of the corresponding author at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria, I felt the need to develop a course in bioinformatics to be integrated into the biochemistry major curriculum in order to augment students' skills and competency and to improve employability or chance of enrolment into Masters programme in molecular biology or bioinformatics abroad. This adventure was novel because in Nigeria there is no autonomy in course development. There is also the need to inculcate active learning in our students. Armed with the requisite approval, the researchers set up a team christened "the bioinformatics group".

We used the backward design approach 3 to develop the course curriculum. The learning goal was to extract biological information from databases; and the objectives included to be able to define bioinformatics and its rationale, to perform sequence alignment, to query NCBI, EBI etc. using BLAST and its versions. The contents included databases, multiple sequence alignment, molecular biology, evolution and genetics. 4 Methods of assessment included homework, group discussions and class performance. Due to lack of funding, we donated the basic infrastructure for teaching the course and the resources while the university provided the Internet connectivity.

Fifteen students were used for pilot testing. The course was to be taught for 15 weeks with 3 h each week for theory, hands-on-exercises using face-to-face lectures. However, when the university was closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we concluded the lectures online using Zoom. Bioinformatics exercises (a string of bacterial DNA sequence made available by Paul Craig under the heading "Analysing a DNA sequence" at http://personal. tcu.edu/yryu/50133/bioinformatics_exercises.pdf) were adopted for use by our students to accomplish tasks such as identifying open reading frames, translation of the sequence by copying and pasting on the translate tool on ExPASy server (http://www.expasy.org.tools/dna/html) and identification of the bacterial source of the protein. Some modules of the course are available at http:// moodle.udusok.edu.ng/e-resources/Science/Biochemistry/ (registered students) or in Appendix S1 (educators and general public) for use and reuse. Feedback was promptly given by the tutors. Active and collaborative learning was encouraged due to their positive effects on learning. Challenges included unreliable Internet connectivity and poor power supply. Overall, the students were thrilled by the course and were satisfied with it: "We feel great to learn bioinformatics and the lecturers are superb for teaching us using Zoom, the first time in the University". The performance of the students was very good. We intend to extend teaching the course to diverse set of students.

Fueling education reform: bio 2010-biology for the future

Computational biology and bioinformatics in Nigeria

Understanding by design

Bioinformatics for undergraduates: steps towards a quantitative bioscience curriculum

Development and teaching of a bioinformatics course to biochemistry major students in a Nigerian University during COVID-19 pandemic

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Rabi'u Umar Aliyu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2404-9311