Teaching Bioinformatics By Social Networking: The Pokémon Factor

I have been teaching Bioinformatics for 15 years to almost a thousand students. We use the book by Jonathon Pevsner. It is both online every semester and face to face once a year. The book has really good quizzes and problem sets for every chapter. The students are allowed to network. All I ask is they identify their network group. Every student will struggle with some questions and problems. But together they overcome that. So less work for me. Some links in the text are broken or changed. I give extra credit for reporting those to me and the author. At the end of the course I give a jargon exam based on the acronyms we all use. The Pokemon factor is can most people can remember 150-250 acronyms. That test is taken as an individual. It allows me to rank the class. Just occasionally a student can get all of them. It is a special kind of intelligence. My Starbucks barrista can remember a thousand names and faces. Me, about 50…