Affirmative Domain Reflection Questions
Reflect on your goals from the beginning of class. Did your goals change as you practiced the course learning objectives?
I think my goals coming into this course were undefined and I was unsure of what I was getting into. As I progressed through the course, I learned more about what we would be doing and who I would be collaborating with. I felt more at ease with the material and what was expected from me. I think as I progressed my goals changed to wanting to understand more about RNA-seq, NGS and transcriptomics as a whole. I hope to use this material further into my career and enhance my coding skills as well.
List the most poignant affective learning domains (any feelings, values, motivations, and attitudes) associated with specific LOs. Pick one from each unit and describe how the affective domain impacted your learning experience.
For unit one I was nervous to introduce myself to everyone knowing I probably had the least experience with biotechnologies. For unit 2 I would say I was intimidated by the amount of information we were being given and I felt a bit uncomfortable with the new material. For units 3 and 4 I felt more comfortable be I know a bit about NGS and the HPC, so I was excited to expand on that material. For units 4,5 and 6 I felt lost and worried I would not understand the material, but I was extended a helping hand from my team and Dr. Sjogren and DeLorean and was able to get back on track. By the time I got to unit 8 I was excited to see our final results and compile all the new and exciting knowledge I was able to obtain in 8 short weeks. I think the weekly grapple and affirmative domain reflections were a good source of taking a second to reassess where we were in the course and get back on track
Did you gain a greater appreciation for previous material as you build upon lessons learned?
I gained a greater appreciation every week as we gained more knowledge and got further into our project. It was nice to take things slow when we went over the coding and scripts because as a class and in individual teams we could troubleshoot where some of us were messing up. This class builds off of so much that we have learned in BIT 410 and then each week as we progressed into the world of transcriptomics. This course really did have a great pace and I was a pleasure to learn with everyone at whatever level we were all at.
How will you use lessons and skills from this course in your career trajectory?
I hope to use the lessons learned in this course as much as I possibly can. I hope to work in Pharma/therapeutics in RTP when I am finished with my engineering degree. I think course will help me greatly while I further my career hopefully creating new drugs with the help of utilizing plants and other genomes. I am excited to gain more knowledge on this topic and to hopefully use my news skills to help better other people’s lives with new and exciting drugs and therapeutics.
How can this course be improved in future offerings? Please give specific suggestions for revision, omission, addition, or delivery of content.
I said that the pace was good for this course there were times when we could have moved a bit faster, but overall, it worked out in the end. It allowed us the time to work on our portfolios and team project if we were ahead of schedule. I think it could help if the two days were split up evenly when it comes to time. I think a 5-hour day is a lot and could easily be spread into maybe two 3-hour classes since its online it is easy to play catch up if needed. I understand if it was in person, we would need the full 5 hours for in-person labs. I think maybe posting all the units on the Moodle site in the beginning of the semester could be helpful so we could get ahead if needed. I know at time we were not able to watch the movies ahead of class. Overall, it’s been a great course and I would recommend it to others if offered in the future.