Evaluating an Inquiry-based Bioinformatics Course Using Q Methodology

Faculty at a Midwestern metropolitan public university recently developed a course on bioinformatics that emphasized collaboration and inquiry. Bioinformatics, essentially the application of computational tools to biological data, is inherently interdisciplinary. Thus part of the challenge of creating this course was serving the needs and backgrounds of a diverse set of students, predominantly computer science and biology undergraduate and graduate students. Although the researchers desired to investigate student views of the course, they were interested in the potentially different perspectives. Q methodology, a measure of subjectivity, allowed the researchers to determine the various student perspectives in the bioinformatics course.