The best aspect of this course was the integration of the professor’s lectures with actual hands-on computer simulation. The worst aspects of this course were the daunting labs and concepts. The class would be improved if the professor spent a little more time on programing so that students would properly grasp the material. Prospective students should have an open-mind and be wil ing to learn the biological concepts attached to the course. It is very laid back and fun, but if students don’t study hard, they will have difficulty with the labs and exams.

The best aspects of this course included the professor’s very effective way of teaching, including well organized and detailed lectures that clearly explained key concepts. Students found the labs to be interesting and felt comfortable in the programs by the end of the semester. However, many students found the tests to be unforgiving and difficult, and that the material itself was difficult to grasp at first. Suggestions for improvement included adding in quizzes to help boost grades and teaching students how to create their own programs. Prospective students should be comfortable with coding and programming or the material will be difficult to understand. Students should be prepared for an interesting course with a moderate amount of work.

Students complimented this course for having an approachable instructor and for giving them useful computational knowledge. Students had few complaints with this course although one student felt that, while he was able to get the correct answer for problems, he didn’t understand the context or reasoning for the solution. Suggestions for improvement included a desire by a couple students that more work be done at the start of the course to give students a better understanding of how the various computations work so that they can better understand the logic of the work they’d be doing. Prospective students should know that the course, while challenging, doesn’t expect students to have any prior experience and is a “solid” introduction to computation methods in biology.