This page describes the structure of the DIYtranscriptomcis course, and how you can interact with the content on this website depending on whether you are a 100% virtual learner, or whether you have offically registered for the course at the University of Pennsylvania.
100% virtual learner
How to watch lectures
Anyone, anywhere in the world is welcome to self-navigate the course by working their way through the lectures. Clicking on a lecture will take you to a lecture page, complete with learning objectives, reading material, a link to lecture slides, and…most importantly…lecture videos. Each lecture topic should take ~2hrs or less to complete. Reading materials are not required, but rather are provided as useful starting points if you wish to learn more about the topics covered in each lecture.
lectures are updated every year during the Spring semester (January-April). If you happen to be visiting the site during this time, don’t be surprised if some of the content is changing. Take note of the dates listed on each lecture card, since this will give you a good sense for when the material for a given lecture will be finalized.
How to participate in labs
Labs are focused on gaining hands-on experience working with transriptomic datasets in R/bioconductor and are offered in-person at the University of Pennsylvania. We are currently experimenting with live streaming labs through our course discord page, which you can learn more about here. As with the lectures, take note of the date listed on each lab card. Although general descriptions are always visible for each lab, specific materials and questions are only displayed beginning on the date shown on each card.
Join our Discord community
You can join our Discord community by clicking here. The video below explains how we’ll use this community page during the course.
In-person learners
How to watch lectures
Lectures are only available virtually, so everything stated above for virtual learners also applies to you.
How to participate in labs
Labs will take place every week from 3:30-5:30 PM EST. See here for more details.
Join our Discord community
You can join our Discord community by clicking here. The video below explains how we’ll use this community page during the course.
The ‘perks’ of in-person learning.
If you officially registered for this course, not only will have access to the weekly in-person lab, but you’ll be able to interact 1:1 with the course TAs and will also receive priority support for all questions and troubleshooting through our community page on Discord…yay! You will also be given unrestricted access to DataCamp for homework and extended learning, and you will join our GitHub classroom, which gives you access to Copilot for AI accelerated coding…how cool is that!
Other useful info that applies to everyone
The course website is meant to be the go-to place for all content related to the course, including lecture slides, recordings, reading material, code and more. Below are some additional resources that I will refer to throughout class.
Protocols website - This is where my lab posts all protocols/SOPs for RNAseq library preparation, as well as bioinformatics workflows.
Welcome video
Please watch the video below for a introduction to the course, and an overview of how you will interact with the course materials on this website.