Jupyter Notebooks as Computational Thinking Tools for Teaching and Lifelong Learning in Biotechnology
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-036-7_16How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Literate programming; Computational thinking; Lifelong learning; Online teaching; Biotechnology
- Abstract
To remain operational during the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions had to rapidly migrate to online learning, affecting 1.6 billion students worldwide. This unexpected scenario required extra effort for teachers and students, but it also provided an opportunity to encourage students to develop new skills, such as computational thinking, and to foster lifelong and autonomous learning. Computational thinking is not only one of the cornerstones of programming, but scientists from all disciplines use it to solve problems even when they are not programming. Literate programming is a paradigm that facilitates the acquisition of these skills by combining explanatory texts in natural language with executable code snippets and their output to familiarize a broad public with how code works and the reasoning behind it. These tools are known as interactive notebooks, with the Jupyter Notebook platform standing out for its simplicity, support for multiple programming languages, and ability to be used online. In this paper, we share our experience with Jupyter notebooks for teaching biotechnology, highlighting the pedagogical patterns we have found most useful to foster computational thinking among students with no prior programming background and providing tips to help extend the use of these tools in teaching.
Research Contribution: In fast-paced, ever-changing research and industries, the ability to face new challenges is essential. To assist biotechnology students in becoming problem solvers and critical thinkers, we propose an approach based on the development of computational thinking skills using interactive notebooks as training materials.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - R. Lebrón AU - A. Ortiz-Atienza AU - S. Bretones AU - C. Capel AU - F. J. Yuste-Lisbona AU - A. Cámara-Artigas PY - 2023 DA - 2023/05/16 TI - Jupyter Notebooks as Computational Thinking Tools for Teaching and Lifelong Learning in Biotechnology BT - Proceedings of the Erasmus Scientific Days 2022 (ESD 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 167 EP - 175 SN - 2667-128X UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-036-7_16 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-036-7_16 ID - Lebrón2023 ER -