Talk 03: Weaving Reproducibility Education into a PhD Life Sciences Curriculum
Channel: Librarians Building Momentum for Reproducibility
Date: 03/02/2020

Title: Weaving Reproducibility Education into a PhD Life Sciences Curriculum
Speakers: Fred LaPolla, Alisa Surkis
Abstract:  Background: Since 2016, our academic health sciences library has had a teaching role in our institution's PhD program in biomedical sciences, offering a required 1-credit research skills class. Following changes to the NIH's policy on rigor and reproducibility training, we have changed our curriculum from a general research skills class to a focused curriculum on Rigor and Reproducibility. The NIH's rigor and reproducibility policy requires training in topics like experimental replicability, scientific premise, authentication of biological resources, sex as a biological variable, and computational reproducibility, so we have built class materials around these concepts. Through our extended relationship with the department, the library has received additional opportunities to weave computational reproducibility into the PhD curriculum. Methods: We used expanded on some educational topics of our old class on research skills, removed certain topics, and reframed others around rigor and reproducibility. For example, experimental replicability was expanded into two sessions from a one-class topic, and literature searching was reframed around rigorous scientific premise. We focused new lessons on topics in experimental replication, rigor of a research question's scientific premise, computational reproducibility, and critical appraisal of the replicability of published literature, as well as providing a guest lecture on authentication of key resources. We administered both formative and summative knowledge assessments, as well as an evaluation of student attitudes. Results: Our experiences have highlighted that on average, students perceived the new, unified curriculum as consistently more useful, and generally had more positive things to say about the class as compared with students in past semesters. In particular, sessions on replicable research, research data management and computational reproducibility were all rated as more useful than similar topics in past years. Moreover, the experience for instructors felt more holistic and purposive towards improving student outcomes when teaching a unified class rather than general skills.

For the 2020 conference, "Librarians Building Momentum for Reproducibility"