Curriculum Design and Development

I would like to focus here on the various courses I have been involved with thus far and present the following for each course: the curriculum design and development and teaching methods.

BTN315: Undergraduate Bioinformatics module

Taught with: Prof. Alan Christoffels (alan@sanbi.ac.za), Dr Gordon Harkins (gordon@sanbi.ac.za) and Dr Hocine Bendou (hocine@sanbi.ac.za). The overall course coordinator is Prof Benjeddou (mbenjeddou@uwc.ac.za).

The BTN315:Bioinformatics module is an introductory course and includes basic introduction to concepts in Bioinformatics for example: Blast sequence alignments, Next generation sequencing, Phylogenetics and Comparative genomics. The course was designed to introduce third year students to Bioinformatics and attract them to do a postgraduate degree in Bioinformatics. The teaching and learning activities for the course included three one hour lectures and a practical assessment. The assessments for the course consisted of a practical assignment, one test and a final exam.

In 2022, i am introducing new content to the Bioinformatics undergraduate module (BTN315). The module will include topics like protein structure basics and methods in three dimensional protein structure prediction and its relevance towards drug design and discovery.

Bsc Honours Molecular Pathology module

Lecturer on Protein Structure Biology and Comparative Protein Structure Modeling for the BSc Honours Molecular Pathology module at the Division of Medical Virology, Stellenbosch University for 2020 and 2021.

Postgraduate Bioinformatics four week training course

My responsibilities for the course was to identify lecturers for different topics, design the structure of the course and provide training material for students attending the course. The total number of participant were 25 and they consisted of UWC, SU and UCT students across the Cape Peninsula. We also considered students from CPUT although very little to none were interested in Bioinformatics. The structure of the course consisted of lectures and practical hands-on exercises to develop students computational skills. The content of the course differs each year depending on the needs of the students. The graduate attributes we develop during this course is to give students the ability to analyse large amounts of genomics and proteomic data and be able to use statistical tests to answer biological questions. To achieve these attributes, for example, the students must be introduced to programming in python, Linux and to various online tools and databases . The course is extremely practical in nature to encourage students to think about a biological problem and decide what software tool will be most applicable to solving a problem.

A detailed time table of the course can be found below.

Additional teaching courses are listed in my CV and these are online Bioinformatics videos made for students all across Africa as part of the H3ABIONET project. H3ABioNet is a Pan African Bioinformatics network comprising 32 Bioinformatics research groups distributed amongst 15 African countries and 2 partner Institutions based in the USA which will support H3Africa researchers and their projects while developing Bioinformatics capacity within Africa.

Graduate attributes:

• The graduate attributes I have helped to develop in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses are; critical attitudes toward scholarship and creative problem solvers. Here I demonstrate to undergraduates how previous knowledge is applied to answer biological questions and current achievement and discoveries in science are illustrated in lectures. The theory that undergraduate students learn in class is applied to practical problems to illustrate concepts and applicability of real world examples are shown. This will allow students to have a deeper engagement with the theory in question and answer sessions. Relevant and current research problems encourages interaction between the lecturer and students and facilitates the transfer of knowledge.

• For the postgraduate students I encourage interaction with large data sets which is important for the 21^st century to develop critical skills to problem solving. Ensuring post graduate students provide quarterly progress reports within my research group develops individuals that can work towards deadlines within industry. Also when postgraduate students enter my research group desk space and a laptop is provided to assist the student with completion of his or her research project creating a conducive environment to learning.