The following passages are unmodified student responses (32 out of 38) to a Course Survey administered by OMET.

The standards the instructor set for me were

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Too low: 0

Appropriate: 24

Too high: 8

How many hours per week did you usually spend working on this course outside of classroom time?

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Less than one hour: 0

One to three hours: 8

Four to six hours: 14

Seven to nine hours: 4

Ten or more hours: 4

The instructor created an atmosphere that kept me engaged in course content

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 4

Neutral: 6

Agree: 15

Strongly agree: 11

The instructor was prepared for class

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 1

Neutral: 1

Agree: 11

Strongly agree: 19

The instructor treated students with respect

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 0

Agree: 7

Strongly agree: 25

The instructor was available to me (in-person, electronically, or both)

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 1

Agree: 12

Strongly agree: 17

N/A: 2

The instructor evaluated my work fairly

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 1

Neutral: 2

Agree: 14

Strongly agree: 14

The instructor provided feedback that was helpful to me

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 4

Neutral: 5

Agree: 13

Strongly agree: 8

N/A: 1

I learned a lot from this course

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 1

Neutral: 3

Agree: 17

Strongly agree: 11

The instructor creates an inclusive learning environment for all students

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 0

Agree: 8

Strongly agree: 24

Course assessments provided the opportunity for me to demonstrate an understanding of the course material.

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 2

Neutral: 5

Agree: 16

Strongly agree: 8

Assignments helped me improve my problem-solving abilities.

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Strongly disagree: 2

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 2

Agree: 15

Strongly agree: 13

Examinations provided opportunity to demonstrate what I learned in the course.

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 2

Neutral: 8

Agree: 13

Strongly agree: 9

I could ask a question or make a comment if I wanted to

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 2

Agree: 9

Strongly agree: 21

This course helped to broaden my interests

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 2

Neutral: 3

Agree: 17

Strongly agree: 10

Not requiring Python would positively impact my learning experience in this course

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Strongly disagree: 9

Disagree: 13

Neutral: 7

Agree: 2

Strongly agree: 1

Incorporating required programming assignments enhanced my understanding of course material

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 2

Neutral: 7

Agree: 10

Strongly agree: 12

I feel more confident about pursuing a career in computational biology after taking this course (if desired)

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Strongly disagree: 3

Disagree: 3

Neutral: 9

Agree: 10

Strongly agree: 7

The skills learned in this course are relevant to my career goals

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 1

Neutral: 5

Agree: 16

Strongly agree: 9

This course should be split into computational biology major and non-major sections

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 9

Neutral: 5

Agree: 8

Strongly agree: 9

The computational biology major curriculum effectively integrates biological concepts with computational methods

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Strongly disagree: 1

Disagree: 0

Neutral: 6

Agree: 16

Strongly agree: 9

The computational and biological components of the computational biology major are well integrated

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 1

Neutral: 2

Agree: 21

Strongly agree: 8

Research opportunities in computational biology at Pitt are readily available to students

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Strongly disagree: 0

Disagree: 5

Neutral: 23

Agree: 3

Strongly agree: 1

Industry connections are readily available to computational biology students

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Strongly disagree: 2

Disagree: 6

Neutral: 21

Agree: 2

Strongly agree: 1

What did you like best about how the course was taught?

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• Although he started off with high expectations concerning our coding ability, he was adaptable and made coursework and homework assignments much more appropriate given the class’s feedback on the difficulty.
• There was a lot of coding experience
• The fact that Prof. Maldonado is fair and easy to talk to, provides explanations and helps wherever he can.
• I liked the flexibility and the lecture style. Very engaging! Loved this class and the professor!
• I enjoyed the emphasis on application and projects in this class. I found having something to apply the Python I was learning was very useful in digesting the techniques.
• I liked the Tue–Thur learn and apply the learning format.
• I enjoyed the lectures in class.
• Dr. Maldonado was very engaging and cared a lot about the student’s success in the course and our overall understanding of computational biology. He was incredibly flexible in how he taught the class and incorporated our feedback to better align the content toward our knowledge base.
• You wanted students to be engaged, and was very open to changing the course so that the students can succeed.
• I liked the information we focused on in class because it was relevant to my major and future field of work.
• The instructor has great energy and is always so friendly.
• Lectures were well structured and had a lot of information provided in the slides.
• grading structure is very fair
• The projects
• I liked how fair the exams are and the fact that they are weighted a lot less than the projects.
• I liked how the lectures were split up. A lot of the content can be very overwhelming, but having a lecture for foundations and then another for methodology really helped make the content more manageable and less overwhelming.
• I really liked the coding based projects because it felt more hands–on and applicable to real world comp bio than just only studying from a slideshow
• I appreciated that he addressed the situation that some people in the class had difficulty with Python in the homework and solved it by asking our opinion. He is the first professor in my experience who genuinely cares about his students’ views. I think it’s a great thing to do and very helpful.
• I enjoyed the challenges of the python assignments, Alex did a great job balancing making coding hard but accessible.
• The lecture style with slides was helpful.
• There was a genuine interest in the course material by the professor which made the learning environment significantly more engaging than other classes I have taken.
• I really appreciated how the instructor was receptive of student feedback and made efforts to create a course in which all students could perform well. As someone who is completely new to computational biology, I feel that the professor’s willingness to appropriately adjust assignments ensured my success and also pushed me to learn the content.
• I enjoyed the quality and flow of the presentations
• I like how things are explained in class, and questions are answered in ways that make sense.
• The conceptual tuesday and the methodology Thursday.
• I liked the way the class was split up with the foundational stuff being on one day and the methodology being on another day. It helped a lot in being about to understand the background knowledge and have the time to conceptualize it before diving into the actual techniques and getting practice with them.
• I liked how hands on and in–depth the assignments were, that was very helpful.
• I liked how the lectures were separated between foundations and methodology. I also enjoyed the project–based assignments and how they had a higher weight compared to the quizzes.
• I like how your slideshows are very engage and you explain topics in great detail
• I liked the way the lectures were split up, and I also appreciate how many lectures we had more hands on stuff

If you were teaching this course, what would you do differently?

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• He was able to change his teaching styles and fix his mistakes. Towards the end of the semester, I have no complaints about the course.
• Provide more conceptual practice to help with the quizzes
• N/A
• Not sure!
• I would provide more resources for learning python such as video demonstrations that demonstrate concepts and techniques. I found some projects difficult with the python base that was given and I had to resort to using online resources and CS friends to explain certain coding concepts. A better basis of these concepts on the methods days would be useful, but I feel that recorded lectures or demonstrations would have been very useful for these harder projects. In addition, I felt that some of the computational biology foundations concepts were slightly outside the scope of this course. For example some of the lectures included organic chemistry, genetics, and biochemistry as a main part of the theory, however, the only requirement for this class is Biology 2. This was only a minor thing though, and overall I really liked the content covered in class and found that applying python coding to these concepts made the projects more engaging.
• I would remove the use of wordy adjectives and verbs in the slides that don’t affect the learning outcomes.
• I would administer quizzes that are less difficult, and change the grading scheme, and administer easier and more beginner friendly python work.
• I understand that by coding the programs used for bioinformatics and structural biology, we gain a better understanding of what those programs are doing. But coming in with no programming experience and little time to learn programming, I found this to be incredible difficult and wished that programming was made to a minimum.
• Id have more quizzes as well as not make the projects as complicated as they were. The reason id have more quizzes is that there were only four quizzes meaning that they werent really quizzes they more like mini midterms. Because you’d have to learn a midterms worth of content but only have very few questions, so there was not a lot of points to protect the grade, cause each question can lose you a lot of points. So what id do is make more quizzes so that way the grade isnt only reliant on 4 quizzes with so much content we need to memorize, instead thered be like 10 or however many quizzes i see fit to help protect there grades. I found the projects difficult but that may have only been me so i dont know.
• I would provide students with a study guide about what information is necessary to do well on the quizzes and what information is just included for us to learn about something cool.
• NA
• I would make python problems shorter or worth less points. The python expectations were well beyond beginner python levels – this course should probably not be considered a biology elective for non–comp bio majors.
• nothing
• Nothing
• I would probably teach basic python concepts in class.
• The only thing I would do differently is make more use of tophat. I like that it is used for anonymous questions, but adding questions to check for the class’s understanding would be helpful in identifying what the class is struggling with.
• I know the course content is challenging in and of itself but maybe adjusting the lectures/lecture style somehow so learning the conceptual parts is more engaging.
• I think it was well organized, maybe doing attendance and recording the class lecture would be good
• I would actively call on students. There was a extreme lack of participation from the class which made the lectures feel very awkward.
• I would make it a point to actually teach python in class, and I’d make assignment instructions clearer.
• There is a lot of material in the course so if there could be a bit more supplementary practice material available that would make doing the homework and quizzes less stressful,
• This isn’t a critique of the instructor but rather for the department. I think that having an introductory CS class as a heavily recommended prerequisite would be beneficial for future students of this class. Since coding was an integral part of the class homework for the majority of the semester, I think that students will have a smoother transition into the course if they have foundational coding knowledge.
• I would make sure that there were more resources for quizzes and exams.
• More explanations on how to do the python homework, especially for people that don’t have previous python knowledge
• In the beginning of the course, the coding was pretty stressful, as there was a lot of high–level coding with no coding prerequisites required. Adding the step by step approaches in the p–sets really helped.
• This is kind of an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think having two full weeks for the homework assignments made a difference for me. I think I would have rather had only a week or week and a half for the homework, and that way we could have fit in more assignments that reflected the things we learned that week or the week prior.
• I struggled with python because I had no prior coding experience, so perhaps if I were teaching this course I would place more emphasis on building these coding skills to complete the problems successfully. Perhaps, I could hold extra office hours or practice problems for basic python skills. Or, holding two sections for those with CS experience and those without CS experience.
• I would include more python support and video directions when using computational tools
• I would definitely be a little more clear with the instructions given in the projects.

What additional resources or support would enhance your learning experience if you wanted to pursue computational biology as a career?

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• N/A
• N/A
• Internships
• More examples of what can be done with a computational biology degree and what careers in this field apart from research entail.
• More integration to research, industry or even more real–life applicable coding applications.
• Extensive training in coding languages such as Python.
• If you gave resources to where we can learn the material outside of class, cause i always tried to go on to youtube to learn some of the material, but there was almost always never anything to learn from other than the slides.
• More information about opportunities to learn more about the field and future job outlooks.
• NA
• N/A
• none
• Maybe a mixed wet / Computational lab add on
• I would like connections with more computational biology professors and possibly for research.
• The computational biology curriculum is relatively static, all students take the same foundational computer science, biology, and chemistry courses, there are only three computational biology courses to choose from, and only one elective is needed. However, there are many different types of ways to use computational biology as a career. The ability to individualize your course work and tailor your major to your specific goal would be extremely helpful. I feel that as the curriculum is now, students will have more freedom and better success post graduation if they did a computer science major with a natural science minor or vice versa. Changing the curriculum or pushing students harder to find research that actually interests them would help enhance the learning experience of all Pitt undergraduates studying computational biology.
• I think incorporating/informing students of comp bio opportunities at pitt (research, etc.) and especially in industry would be helpful.
• It would be nice to have individuals to connect with to discuss career openings after graduation.
• Make research opportunities much more well known to students.
• If I were to pursue a career in computational biology, I would search for self–guided coding classes to increase my skill set.
• Researcher presentations
• I am not pursing it as a career
• Getting insight on any professors that are looking for research assistants.
• I am not pursuing a career in computational biology.
• na
• I would say more time making sure we understand the basics, also going over different ways to code to get the same output, and also just having more professors that teach computational biology.

What are your career goals after graduation?

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• I want to pursue a career in plant science research, my next step will to be to work as research associate for a year and reapply for PhD programs next cycle in plant biology.
• Something under the CompBio umbrella, still not positive what
• Medical School
• Work in environmental biology.
• Industry
• Graduate School
• Lab technician
• Med school hopefully
• I hope to pursue med school or go into biotech.
• PhD in system biology
• Hospital Administration
• optometry school
• Research
• I want to go to CAA school or get a job related to computational biology.
• I plan on attending graduate school and studying to become a genetic counselor.
• Not sure, probably a phd
• Ill work for the forest service for a few years, and then hopefully pick up a data analytics job. Its up in the air though what will happen.
• I want to pursue a PhD in cell or cancer biology.
• Medical school.
• After graduation, I hope to go to graduate school and become a professor. I also wish to perform research in parallel with this.
• Med school
• Going to medical school
• Industry in computational biology or data science.
• PhD in Bioinformatics, Genomics/Comp Bio, or a related field
• Either graduate school or medical school, still not sure yet
• Medical school
• gap year and medical school
• Masters program, then hopefully medical school