Publication Date
12-1-2023
Journal
Journal of Biomolecular Techniques
DOI
10.7171/3fc1f5fe.30644720
PMID
38268995
PMCID
PMC10805364
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
12-4-2023
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Humans, Educational Status, Students, Biotechnology, Curriculum, Faculty
Abstract
Core facility laboratories are an essential part of the successful research enterprise of many universities around the world. Core facilities provide state-of-the-art instrumentation and technologies to support research of all faculty, postdocs, and students on a fee-for-service basis. Academic next-generation sequencing cores are typically "full service" facilities, and access to and training on their instrumentation is limited to core staff. To address these limitations, we provided graduate students with technical training at our core facility. We developed a 1-week noncredit-bearing workshop and recruited 6 graduate students (N = 6) as part of a pilot program. The program involved online teaching, classroom-based teaching, and hands-on training in next-generation sequencing library preparation and sequencer operation. A post-participation survey revealed highly positive outcomes in terms of skill development and increased awareness of technologies offered by the core facility. A workshop of this scale could be incorporated into the graduate curriculum and extended to core facilities that focus on other technologies. We believe that introducing formal standardized teaching spearheaded by core facilities would improve the graduate student curriculum and hope that this study can provide guidance on curriculum design for similar workshops.
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