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Back to Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners by University of California San Diego

4.2
stars
1,485 ratings

About the Course

Are you interested in learning how to program (in Python) within a scientific setting? This course will cover algorithms for solving various biological problems along with a handful of programming challenges helping you implement these algorithms in Python. It offers a gently-paced introduction to our Bioinformatics Specialization (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics), preparing learners to take the first course in the Specialization, "Finding Hidden Messages in DNA" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/dna-analysis). Each of the four weeks in the course will consist of two required components. First, an interactive textbook provides Python programming challenges that arise from real biological problems. If you haven't programmed in Python before, not to worry! We provide "Just-in-Time" exercises from the Codecademy Python track (https://www.codecademy.com/learn/python). And each page in our interactive textbook has its own discussion forum, where you can interact with other learners. Second, each week will culminate in a summary quiz. Lecture videos are also provided that accompany the material, but these videos are optional....

Top reviews

HD

Apr 17, 2016

I give this course 5 star because I did Bioinformatics I and I totally enjoy it.

This is where programming can be fun, and practical, and you'll learn some basic biology too.

What's not to love?

HL

Aug 15, 2017

I learned a lot from this difficult and time-consuming course! It covers biological concepts using Python. It made learning Python more interesting for me, since I have always loved biology.

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326 - 350 of 445 Reviews for Biology Meets Programming: Bioinformatics for Beginners

By Abderrazak I

Dec 27, 2016

I really enjoyed this course, thanks to coursera

By Xue, L

Oct 22, 2019

lecture video will be better than words

By Nitika B

Jun 30, 2020

nice course but need litle more detail

By 高文强

Aug 15, 2019

循循善诱,解释较为清楚,但感觉对于编程初学者并没有特别友好。

By nanzhen

Jun 10, 2022

too difficult for beginners

By Fikrat T

Jan 1, 2017

The course was amazing!

By david h

Oct 9, 2016

very challenging course

By Michelle B V

Jul 27, 2019

It was a great course!

By Mario E S

Jun 23, 2016

VERY GOOD. CONGRATS!

By Nabisubi P

Oct 24, 2019

tasky

By Miles D R

Jul 31, 2019

Fun!

By Marko M

May 7, 2021

Decent course, explaining the topics relatively well and the python exercises are decent too, even though sometimes it's just copy-pasting presented code. But then again this is more an introduction to bioinformatics and coding skills really come from exercise, exercise, exercise.

If you plan to take this course, I'd really recommend getting some python skills first as it will make it much easier than doing it parallel (thankfully I already had them). Also I'd really recommend always watching the videos first, much easier to follow the rest!

So why only 3 stars? The figures are (mostly) not loading in the exercises which makes them quite unusable and I decided to drop the course. It's also not due to my browser or anything similar but the server where the figures are hosted doesn't load them when directly accessing with the link. Not sure if this could be fixed by hosting the figures on stepik or somehow else. Otherwise I'd give it 4 stars, maybe more if I did the whole course (I passed week 1 and 2).

By Helena M

Dec 19, 2019

This course is pretty interesting, but I wouldn't say it's a course for beginners. It gets into some quite complex algorithms without a huge amount of explanation and expects you to do a lot of extra work in CodeAcademy (though if you have programming experience, you can obviously skip this). With the work in CodeAcademy, I'd say this course takes 2-3 times longer than it recommends. I'm not a computer scientist so did find some sections quite hard to follow, and the explanation isn't always great (I couldn't figure out one of the answers in the final quiz, even after going through all the explanation and FAQ again). However, the content is very interesting and I found the videos really useful.

By Roger T

May 1, 2016

This is not a beginner's course unless you already have previous programming experience. The Python lessons are just samples taken from a completely different curriculum on Codecademy and poorly integrated into the bio-centric course content. The lessons are disjointed, taken out of context, and some of the examples are using the wrong version of Python and missing parentheses. It would be a lot better if they took the time to actually craft custom Python lessons designed specifically for this course instead of using ill-fitting lessons from other classes.

By Carla M C

Jul 20, 2020

Es un curso que está bien para iniciarse en la Bioinformática con Python. Sin embargo, hacia la mitad del curso los contenidos son demasiado complejos para quienes no han trabajado anteriormente en este campo. Debería ser un poco más básico para que pueda seguirse hasta el final y aprender de verdad.

Además, creo que los problemas biológicos que se plantean son demasiado concretos. Estaría bien conocer, a un nivel básico, la utilidad de estas herramientas en Biología-Biomedicina.

By Keona B

Jan 6, 2021

I have taken programming courses and a genetics course for my degree. This course has been good practice for me, putting my previous knowledge together. Unfortunately, the course includes terminology/concepts a true beginner would need much longer to grasp than the estimated time. Students need to be prepared to participate in discussions and search online if they want a deeper understanding. Code academy is also a necessary part of the process for true beginners.

By Ahmad M

Jan 8, 2021

The course was really amazing, but one point is that it was really really difficult. In my opinion, it did not take into consideration the student completely new to Python. It should've been easier or it should have a lot of hints and ways to support and tell the student what to do if they get stuck.

However, in general, I learnt a lot and for the first time in my life about this area of science.

Thank you very much!

By Putri A A

Jan 13, 2021

This course is really great and eye-opening! However, this course is for people with computer science/programming background that are new to molecular biology. I struggled a lot trying to understand the programming part since I have plant genetic & breeding background. I recommend to learn and understand programming language first before going to this course. Thumbs up to everyone who survived!

By Varad B

Aug 11, 2020

It's not a beginner's level course. You need to know python really well to do this. I had to take 3 courses on python before I could come back here and complete the course. Also their teaching method of leaving the page in the middle of one topic to learn another topic which you need to understand the first topic is a bit distracting and makes you lose your train of thought.

By Joseph B

Oct 23, 2019

This is billed as a course for beginners, but it leans heavily on one's prior skill in programming. If you're not familiar with Python syntax or you are a coding neophyte, a lot of the concepts will likely go over your head. The biology is fairly cursory and easy to pick up along the way, or simply ignore if you don't have a strong background in molecular biology/genetics.

By Johannes K

Feb 18, 2021

the course is ok, but there were technical problems, It was very annoying that the graphics on the stepik pages were not displayed. I tried several browsers but it was only possible to open the hidden/not loaded images in another tab window. Another problem was sometimes, that the "run code" in stepik worked find, but some errors were shown for "send"

By Renee F

Jun 15, 2020

If you have no experience with programming, I definitely recommend completing the Learn Python course on Codecademy first. I think Biologists will find the concepts introduced later in this course difficult to grasp, and I still don't fully understand them. Nonetheless this course is a good introduction into programming for bioinformatics.

By Nethraa K

Jun 14, 2017

It's a great course for people who know Python or have some sort of a background in coding. However, for starters, it is not only tedious to learn both Python as well as this but is quite challenging and time consuming as well. Please mention Python as a prerequisite for this course-- it would definitely get 5 stars then.

By Laura B

Jul 7, 2020

I'd give it a 2.5, but I managed to learn something in the end, even though it was through the other students rather than through the course lecture itself. The professors should really consider renaming the course to be a more accurate representation of the content. We learned more about DNA that coding in this course.

By Marta M U

Apr 27, 2022

Very interesting course, although not suitable for non-coding Biologists. You will learn about python in parallel to this couse, but the materials given are not enough to comprehend the coding you are required to come up with. You will definately spend more than 4 hours/assignment.