Trainings

Training is a major challenge to enable biologists to acquire the skills essential to the use of modern bioinformatics tools for the analysis of their data, and to enable bioinformaticians to improve their knowledge and follow the evolution of the field.

The IFB-core and the platforms work together to provide IFB users (biologists, biomedical specialists, bioinformaticians) with a training offer that takes into account the wide diversity of needs and expectations:

• diversity of computer skills (no command line experience, occasional use, familiar, some programming)
• specific courses on new technologies or biological applications (eg NGS, long reads, metabolomics, etc.)
• generic methodological skills (statistics, good programming practices, etc.)
• advanced use of IT technologies (HPC, virtualization, cloud computing, interoperability, FAIR practices, integrative bioinformatics, etc.)
• good training practices (teaching approaches, reuse of materials, etc.)

To this end, the IFB develops a perfectly integrated technical infrastructure to support training, depending on the following components:

• a network of trainers identified in the resource catalog (link to the catalog page to check if info in catalog)
• training events in various formats (short and medium term)
• various media and training resources (static training material, notebooks, videos, etc.)
• various training environments: web servers, stand-alone applications with user-friendly interfaces, command lines, specific packages (e.g. R for statistics), virtual machines, Jupyter notebooks, containers with training software (e.g. Galaxy training container)
• a powerful and flexible infrastructure allowing practical training sometimes relying on significant storage and computing capacities (e.g. NGS analysis, structural bioinformatics, etc.)
• feedback mechanisms (satisfaction surveys, questionnaires at the end of each training course and 6-12 months later to assess the impact of the training on professional practice)

The impact and quality of IFB training are systematically monitored and evaluated so as to regularly adapt training programs to user expectations and developments in the field.

The French Institute of Bioinformatics (IFB) provides an infrastructure for deploying learning environments and courses in bioinformatics curricula. In response to the growing need for basic Unix, R, and Python programming skills, and evolving training modalities, we explore what e-learning has to offer for teaching bioinformatics.

All organized training courses can be found on the Moodle site.