In an age of interdisciplinary science, researchers are expected to stay on top of new technologies that have become increasingly standard to their work. Much of this incorporates high level data analyses that are difficult to retain when learned in intensive workshops and are not communicated well through static materials. Learning methods presently available are also often not updated enough to meet new standards as they are discovered. Bioinformatics in particular moves so quickly that traditional neuroscientists are finding it difficult to keep up with best practices. Developed at the Hackseq 2019 hackathon, BiocSwirl[1] makes learning bioinformatics concepts hands-on through the development of course material that takes you through common workflows within the R console. Our first two courses are in scRNA-seq and snRNA-seq analyses, and we plan to add more neuroinformatics courses as development continues. The GUI use and application switching is minimal but the content is rich and informative. Bioconductor, Radian, bioSyntax are examples of some packages we use to teach workflow steps, file types, and concepts in R.

[1] "BiocSwirl()". [Online]. Available: https://github.com/biocswirl-dev-team/BiocSwirl [Accessed: 31-Jan-2020]