In addition to offering a great selection of courses, the Bioinformatics Training Facility also provides unique teaching opportunities for students and staff at the University.
These opportunities include assisting with courses, lecturing or delivering courses, and even developing materials. As a facility we pride ourselves in supporting and developing our trainers, as well as our students - our trainers don’t need any prior teaching experience in order to get involved, only enthusiasm for passing on their skills and knowledge.
What could I teach?
As a facility, we have four main themes in which we offer courses:
- Programming and data science foundations
- Statistics
- Bioinformatics
- Machine learning
Depending on interest, background, strengths and prior experience, we’re very happy for new trainers to tell us which types of courses they would prefer to get involved in. Training is also a great way to learn about new topics, and we encourage trainers to follow their interests!
There are three main roles for trainers:
- Training Lead: delivering/leading courses (£26.13/hr*)
- Trainer: assisting/demonstrating (£20.76/hr*)
- Developing course materials (paid per hour of material developed)
Typically, new trainers will start by assisting on courses while they become familiar with the materials - essentially, training on the job - and will be supported by more experienced trainers throughout this process. Most of our trainers then progress on to presenting some of the course sessions once they feel confident enough to do so, and/or to teaching new, different or more advanced courses as their own knowledge improves.
*Payment rates are aligned with the University pay scale and will increase annually in line with any changes/reviews to the pay scale.
What is the time commitment?
One of the major advantages to being a trainer is that the time commitment is flexible and determined by you. We ask our trainers to choose which courses they’d like to help out with (and in which role).
Most of our training programme is already scheduled by the start of the academic year, so it’s easy for trainers to plan ahead. This means that you can commit to courses that fit around your degree/research and other commitments. Note that for postgraduate students, a 10 hr/week training limit applies as per University guidelines.
The training role involves the scheduled teaching hours and some initial time commitment to become familiar with the training materials. This means that there is a predictable time commitment, in contrast to, for example, undergraduate supervisions, where the dedicated hours can vary considerably.
Get in touch!
If you’re interested in getting involved, or just would like a bit more info, please get in touch with us at bioinfotraining@bio.cam.ac.uk.
