Jessica Lindvall from the Stockholm University (DBB) and SciLifeLab Bioinformatics platform hosted a 2-day educational workshop in October 2017, involving bioinformatics trainers/teachers from across Sweden. The event was facilitated by her research collaborative team, consisting of Prof. Rochelle E. Tractenberg (Georgetown University, USA), Prof. Teresa K. Attwood (University of Manchester, UK) and Dr. Allegra Via (National Research Council, Italy). The outcome of this workshop is the Mastery Rubric for Bioinformatics, the first comprehensive curriculum guidance for bioinformatics, published within an article on 26 November 2019 in the open source journal PLOS ONE. Bioinformatics is a multi-faceted research area, comprising diverse types of expertise, such as computer science, biology and statistics. This multi- and cross-disciplinary field is clearly supportive of team science. The Mastery Rubric for Bioinformatics (MR-Bi) supports and promotes education that prioritizes the development of independent scientific reasoning and practice, both for learners and instructors. The MR-Bi can contribute to the cultivation of a next generation of bioinformaticians by enabling curriculum and training that promotes rigorous, reproducible research, and teaches, encourages, and models critical analysis of their and others’ work. With regards to teachers/trainers, the MR-Bi can be used to strengthen teaching and learning, and to guide both curriculum building and evaluation. For research level education, e.g. PhD programs, the MR-BI can be used for one-on-one supervision and mentoring, course and curriculum design, and self-directed learning. Additionally, any scientist, irrespective of prior experience or disciplinary background, can use the MR-Bi to plan, and document achievement of, their accomplishments and ongoing professional development. Mastery Rubrics have strengths that can be leveraged by institutions, instructors, students, and scientists. They support curriculum development in any education program, making concrete and explicit the roles–and contributions–of learner and instructor to the learning enterprise.

Learn more about the MR-Bi by reading the paper <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225256>