Organizing open training in Low- and middle-income countries

Dr Piraveen (Piv) Gopalasingam (he/him)

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Scientific Training Officer - EMBL-EBI

piv@ebi.ac.uk

2 May 2022

OLS-5 Cohort Call

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Talk outline

• Brief introduction
• Introduce training
• Knowledge and skills dissemination via training in LMICs

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Note: Please indicate if I am talking too fast!

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Question for all: indicate in the Zoom chat if you have delivered or contributed to any training, whether professional, or personal.

Scientific training officer at EMBL-EBI - a varied role

• Support course design, organisation and delivery
• Support trainers with session design and delivery
• Deliver instructor training
• Advocacy and policy for applied bioinformatics in Latin America
• Previous experience in university teaching, structural biology research
• Facilitation, coordination, knowledge brokering

2-day Train the trainer workshop, Brazil 2019

Structural bioinformatics course in 2020

Visiting a coffee farm, Colombia 2018

EMBL-EBI south building

What does training look like?

• Outdated idea - only “chalk and talk” or live lecture
• Trainees engage - aids learning
• Group exercises (e.g. short presentations, quizzes, discussion)
• Activities using collaborative boards and software/apps (Menti, Kahoot, Google forms)
• Virtual or hybrid, asynchronous, self-paced

Practical Transcriptomics: Differential gene expression applied to food production, Rebeca Campos Sánchez, (https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1118542.1)

The problem: underrepresentation of Latin American researchers and data in large Bio initiatives, and slow uptake of data-driven biology

The situation 5 years ago

Research in bioinformatics in Latin America is half the average world scientific production in the field

(Rivas, et al., 2017)

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Possible causes and Project

How did we address these issues?

We observed a big need for training, and a need to change how we operated in LMICs

• Language barriers - effective learning is difficult in second/third languages
• Different infrastructure availability - internet, compute power, electricity in some cases
• Lack of time and/or money
• Existing social inequity
• “Helicopter” research/work - rules to stop it.

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Not addressing these issues, leads to further inequity and training goals not met.

Individual

Institutional

National

Cultural*

*- worldwide phenomenon, difference is other confounding factors

Ten simple rules for organizing a bioinformatics training course in low- and middle-income countries

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Moore B, Carvajal-López P, Chauke PA, Cristancho M, Dominguez Del Angel V, et al. (2021) PLOS Computational Biology 17(8): e1009218. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009218

Workshop delivery

CABANA is a capacity strengthening project for bioinformatics in Latin America.

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• 28 bioinformatics workshops
• 18 presential
• 10 virtual

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• 835 people trained in bioinformatics
• 141 travel fellowships awarded and processed in total

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Bioinformatics

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• 12 Train the Trainer workshop
• 7 presential
• 5 Virtual

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Train the Trainer

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How can you contribute to training?

• You do NOT have to be a lecturer or performer to contribute to training!

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• Training assistant
• Virtual call support (admit people, troubleshoot in background)
• Organize/advise aspect(s) of training
• Advertising/post-training publicity (graphics, blog-writing)
• Proof-reading content
• Designing material/documentation
• Recording and post-production/upload
• Communicating with applicants/registrants
• Translation to other languages
• Advocate for considering LMIC needs

Additional resources

•Gamestorming: https://gamestorming.com/

•Learning activities (here and here)

•Bioinformatics training papers (collection)

•Developing short training course

•10 tips to designing a lesson (session)

•Teaching programming

•Organizing distance/remote training

•Project-based learning

•GOBLET: https://www.mygoblet.org/

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• Course design guide
• H3ABioNet training - https://www.h3abionet.org/training
• CABANA training - https://www.cabana.online/

Acknowledgements

EMBL-EBI, Training team, paper co-authors

CABANA project, consortium, secondees, workshop organizers and trainers

Maria Bernardi / Patricia Carvajal for slide dev.

Funders (UKRI - GCRF)

Additional training from WCS�CUSPE Seminars

Photo credits: Jeff Dowling (EBI comms)

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CABANA consortium, secondees and advisors, Lima all-hands meeting 2019.

Thank you for listening, any questions?

You can ask me anything – here are some potential topics:

• Things I would have done differently in research
• Other career paths I considered
• Barriers & support I experienced
• Mental health

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Email: piv@ebi.ac.uk

Twitter: @Cascade21

GH: @PivG

FB: piraveeng

You can ask me anything!

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Appendix - training design tips and feedback form links (editable)

Learning outcomes form the basis for your session and course. Learning activities should be related

• Learning outcomes often start with verbs
• “List, Design, apply”
• Learning activities should allow outcomes to be achieved
• Ejemplo: “List” verb - knowledge
• Activity should involve listing, remembering, choosing correct answers, etc.

Course/session aim

Learning outcomes

Course/session title

Learning activities

Planning the course

•Scientific, networking, and social elements

•Scientific – in what order will you deliver the various elements of the course content

•Social/networking – refreshment and meal breaks, opportunities for networking

•How long do you have to deliver the course?

•How long should your day be?

•Theory vs practice

•Even in a very practical course, theoretical explanation sessions are helpful for introducing topics

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Other course planning considerations

•Course welcome and introduction

•Welcome your trainees, give any health/safety details etc

•Intro to course, aims and expectations

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•Start of day

•Brief intro of what is to come, can check everyone is in, all happy

•End of day

•Quick recap, again check everyone is ok, good time for discussion

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•Final wrap-up session and feedback collection

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Feedback form templates

• CABANA Post-course feedback template
• CABANA 2 year long term feedback template
• General tip for feedback form design:
• Ask specific, clear questions
• Use a mix of open and closed questions, and use these appropriately for the things you want to know
• Only ask questions that you will be able to act on afterwards (e.g. data for you/trainers to improve practice, data for presenting to project/organisation, etc.).
• Do not ask *too many* questions - although I do not know what the magic number is!