GOBLET: the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training

In recent years, high-throughput technologies have brought big data to the life sciences. The march of progress has been rapid, leaving in its wake a demand for courses in data analysis, data stewardship, computing fundamentals, etc., a need that universities have not yet been able to satisfy--paradoxically, many are actually closing "niche" bioinformatics courses at a time of critical need. The impact of this is being felt across continents, as many students and early-stage researchers are being left without appropriate skills to manage, analyse, and interpret their data with confidence. This situation has galvanised a group of scientists to address the problems on an international scale. For the first time, bioinformatics educators and trainers across the globe have come together to address common needs, rising above institutional and international boundaries to cooperate in sharing bioinformatics training expertise, experience, and resources, aiming to put ad hoc training practices on a more professional footing for the benefit of all

Improving student language learning in adult education through the use of mobile learning: barriers, challenges and ways to move forward

Students learning languages, particularly English in the Australasian and Asia Pacific regions, have many ways to engage with mobile devices to assist with their language learning. This chapter reports on the latest teaching tools and identifies one mobile application (app) that can be used, Dragon Dictation, to assist with improving pronunciation. This chapter also presents the results of one pilot study that used Dragon Dictation to support English pronunciation. Results of this study indicate that Dragon Dictation is a useful tool to have available in the classroom context as results suggest that it assist students to improve their English pronunciation. Barriers for learners include difficulties in learning to use mobile devices as well as teachers and students knowing the best apps that are available to assist with English language learning. For teachers, barriers include learning to teach using these apps as well as teaching students how to use them. Fortunately, there are several ways to move forward in using mobile apps for learning, with research suggesting that good professional development of teachers in how to use apps is the best way to improve their teaching in this area as well as their comfortability in teaching students to use them as this will increase pedagogical affordances in this area