New to NGS? Struggling with bioinformatics? Looking for help?
University of Leicester’s Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Analysis Support Hub (BBASH) offers courses in bioinformatics with an emphasis on next-generation sequencing. To help us understand your training needs we invite you to fill out this survey.
Your responses will help us to shape our courses to your needs.
Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Analysis Support Hub (BBASH) University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
e: ngstraining@leicester.ac.uk
Additional information in response to requests from the comments:
Q: Why ask the Biostars community?
A:Our current courses have attracted people all over Europe, so we understand there is a broader interest, than just local need for trainings like ours.
Q: Is this an online course?
A: Our current courses are run locally. The questionnaire linked here is to aid course development, to understand what interest people, therefore if respondents indicate need for other forms of delivery we could consider that as well.
We understand that filling in a survey from a UK provider may not be relevant to everyone here, but we appreciate anyone who takes the time to tell us what is needed "out there". We simply would like to deliver courses that are actually useful for those who need training.
Good to see more Genomics and Bioinformatics in my Alma mater.
Isn't this type of training mostly of interest in local area? How many people are traveling a significant distance to attend these type of courses?
Good point, unless it's also about online courses.
I know of a few people that did or would travel a reasonable amount for such a course. If ecSeq and EMBO courses, none of them online, can be advertised why wouldn't this one be. I remember looking for courses like these several years ago and none was available in my area, and very few in Europe.
I say let people be informed about these courses, and decided by themselves whether to go or not. If it becomes spam let's deal with it has spam.
Based on the website linked it appears that this is a core facility that serves local needs at Univ of Leicester. They are asking Biostars users to take a survey (ref to @Michael's security concern below about opening random google doc links on web) without specifying clear information about what medium (online/in-class) is being planned for these courses (perhaps that is an open question and has been asked in the survey) or if the courses would be open to non-members of Univ of Leicester. Without this information neither the facility nor the potential users are going to benefit from the survey. Perhaps I was presumptuous to assume that the courses would be local but it would be useful to clarify this in the original post.
We are indeed a core facility, training local researchers as well as external attendees. Current courses have attracted people all over Europe so far, so we understand there is a need for this to be "opened". Why people chose to travel to the heart of UK from the far corners of Europe, I can only guess. The courses are run locally, but if the survey shows significant interest to other forms of delivery we can consider that as well. Those who are not interested in filling in a survey from a UK provider will ignore it, but we appreciate anyone who takes the time to tell us what is needed "out there". We'd like to deliver courses that are useful for those who need training.
I think such courses are a timely offer. If you look at other course adds on biostars, such hands-on courses seem to be very attractive to a broadening audience, even if fees are now mostly beyond 1000 Euro, e.g. FINAL CALL: NGS Workshop - A Beginner's Guide to NGS Data Analysis (2 last seats) There seems to be an increasingly demand for such offers that possibly exceeds the available seats by far, that is most likely what makes people travel.
I am always thinking there should be a trusted way to make surveys available than on google docs, especially when surveys ask for email addresses. E.g. post the survey on the institutes's web site. I will try to validate the post. In general I would recommend that institutes that want to post such surveys first work up a trusted user account with some reputation.
Got it confirmed by email.
We have the link to the survey on our website as well. Would you like me to change the link to that instead? (it will add an extra click for people, and will lead to the same survey link after all.)
You could just add them both, one for those who don't care and one for those who are a little bit more careful when clicking around.
I've just changed the link to lead to our website's link to the survey, hope this makes people more comfortable with it. Thanks to all for the suggestions!
I think this is a good solution for now. I was indeed most concerned about the authenticity of such forms. I think, to know who is behind such questionnaires is of prime importance. Having the possibility to host such surveys under their own domain, using their institutional certificate might be the best way to establish trust. I have heard good things about LimeSurvey (but not much tried myself) to generate and host surveys.
Please add the information in this post to the original at top: C: [survey] Have your say on Bioinformatics and NGS training