An essential skill for STEM undergraduates is the ability to understand the world by manipulating, visualizing, and analyzing data to make or evaluate claims. Current online debate, without peer-reviewed literature, explores which of two common R syntax environments (base R or tidyverse) is best for teaching novice R users. In an in-person…

The rise of "big data" within the biological sciences has resulted in an urgent demand for coding skills in the next generation of scientists. To address this issue, several institutions and departments across the country have incorporated coding into their curricula. I describe a coding module developed and deployed in an undergraduate…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the Bioinformatics course to switch from on-site teaching to remote learning. This shift has prompted a change in teaching methods and laboratory activities. Students need to have a basic understanding of DNA sequences and how to analyze them using custom scripts. To facilitate learning, we have modified the course…

Biology is a data-driven discipline facilitated greatly by computer programming skills. This article describes an introductory experiential programming activity that can be integrated into distance learning environments. Students are asked to develop their own Python programs to identify the nature of alleles linked to disease. This activity…

Epidemiological models have enhanced relevance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this note, we emphasize visual tools that can be part of a learning module geared to teaching the SIR epidemiological model, suitable for advanced undergraduates or beginning graduate students in disciplines where the level of prior mathematical knowledge of…

Increasingly, students training in the biological sciences depend on a proper grounding in biological statistics, data science and experimental design. As biological datasets increase in size and complexity, transparent data management and analytical methods are essential skills for undergraduate biologists. We propose that using the software R…