Training resources for genomic epidemiology
Training is one of the most important topics in applied genomic epidemiology. Everyone is coming at the field from very different backgrounds of education and experience. This means that there needs to be training resources across the board - epidemiology resources to teach things like sampling design, biology resources to teach the basics of molecular biology and laboratory processes, bioinformatics to teach sequence data processing, quality control and analysis methods, informatics and digital epidemiology to tie together all the data pieces, and data visualization and reporting training to help communicate the data out to end users.
Modes of training
I’ve been fortunate to be able to participate both as a trainee and a trainer in many different bioinformatics and genomic epidemiology trainings and observe some of the benefits and challenges associated with different modalities.
Webinars are a great way to either cover high-level overviews of topics, drill down into one really specific sub-topic, or provide a story-based example of how to apply concepts. They’re also easy to record and broadcast to a wide audience, greatly expanding the reach of the training.
Live-learning series are similar to webinars and useful for many of the same things, but they are built to allow more audience interaction. One example is the “Whole Genome Sequencing for Laboratorians and Epidemiologists Live Learning Series.” This format can really help build engagement and foster relationships between attendees and instructors.
In-person courses while logistically challenging because of the in-person nature, can be highly effective. Courses that include hands on components where attendees not just hear lectures but are actively participating the entire time are especially helpful. I had done a lot of short webinars on bioinformatics, but it wasn’t until I took a week long hands on class where I was running tools and examining outputs that the concepts I had learned previously made a lot more sense.
Online structured courses provide a mix of the benefits of the ease of access of a webinar combined with the networking and interaction from in-person courses. Examples of these types of courses include the Wellcome Connecting Science courses that allow learners to interact, but still have the freedom to complete the lessons asynchronously.
Tabletop-style exercises are one of my absolute favorite! These are best held in-person, and bringing together attendees across the spectrum of disciplines. This allows the curriculum to really bring out the teamwork aspects, as well as encourage group discussion at tables as you have different disciplines working together through an exercise. For genomic epidemiology, you can have attendees examine what they can piece together based on the epidemiologic data, then from the genomic data, and then combine the data to see how the combined dataset can give insights that neither type of data could provide on its own.
Office hours is another method of training where instead of coming with a prepared curriculum, staff with expertise in certain areas are made available to answer questions. This option allows users to have access to experts in an interactive session and also allows attendees to learn from each other. One challenge you may come up against is many people show up hoping to learn from the questions that others ask…and nobody brings a question! I found it helpful to keep demos and topics in my back pocket to get discussion started, and that can sometimes stimulate people to bring their own questions.
Resource list
Importantly, the best training is the one that you can access! Classroom and other intensive courses are wonderful, but not always available where and when you need. In that spirit, I’ve started collecting a list of publicly available recorded webinars and trainings on topics related to genomic epidemiology. So far, I have 124 different entries! You can browse through them all here. You can download the full listing from the site, as well as open a larger version where you can group, sort and filter on the full table at Airtable.
Though I’m pretty happy to have over 100 hours of trainings tracked down so far, I’m confident that there are a whole lot of amazing resources that I am missing. If you know of any, please share them with me! You can comment on this post in Substack, share with me on LinkedIn, email me, or visit genomicepi.com and submit a training directly though the training page. If you know others who would have contributions, or benefit from the list of trainings, please share with them!
Hope these resources are helpful, and happy learning!
Hello! I was about to link this page to a colleague asking for training resources, but the link to the list is down. Any chance you still have it?