TABLE 3.
Representative comments from interviewsa
| Comment category | Comment content |
|---|---|
| Positive overall | “EDAMAME was an inspiring introduction into microbiology. I thought the kind of analyses you could do with microbiology was really interesting. I really got pulled in on the data science part.” (2014); “It was definitely one of the most effective workshops I’ve been to.” (2016); “Very comprehensive, reached a lot of people from different backgrounds who were interested in analyzing microbial communities. I thought it provided a good survey of the tools that were available and it brought in some experts.” (2014) |
| Content overwhelming |
“I loved it, I had a blast. It was exhausting. It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot. I kind of felt overwhelmed.” (2016); “I appreciated the workshop for its usefulness, it’s a lot to take in. We need time to process. It’s nice to have a bit of a breather. For someone who was new to the field like me. I needed a bit of time to digest.” (2014); “It was pretty intense for me. I had never done any kind of code work before. This was really my first introduction…” (2015) |
| Career impact | “I can say that the course inspired me and put me on my path and inspired me to think about different ways to do analysis. They talked a lot about the different tools that were available.” (2014); “It was a great workshop. It really helped me in my career path. It’s opened a door for me to get into bioinformatics.” (2015); “It really propelled my graduate school career and has pushed me… I took away the basic tools and I’ve been able to grow from that… I know how to make a pipeline. I know the basic structure and they gave that to me.” (2015); “I’m one of the few people at [my workplace] who can analyze sequence data.” (2016) |
a
The sample was small at nine attendees, but each interviewee spent somewhere between 25 and 40 min discussing their experience at the workshop and its impact on their professional life and walking through the agenda for their year’s workshop to give detailed feedback. While it is a small sample, each person contributed a lot of information. There were two respondents for 2014, four for 2015, and three for 2016. Each quote is labeled with the year in which the respondent participated in the workshop.