Table 2. Key themes identified in student responses.
Comments provided in response to the survey ( Underlying data: Table S9 46 ) were combined to identify key themes. Meaning units are extracted phrases from the survey responses. These meaning units were coded to themes identified through initial text analysis of all qualitative responses. The number of respondents whose comments were coded to each theme is shown in brackets.
| Theme | Number of meaning units (individual respondents) | Example statements |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant new skills | 31 (12) | A bioinformatics project would teach me skills that I would be able to apply more readily, regardless of any specialism in a particular area |
| Appreciation of bioinformatics | 19 (12) | I realised the potential of bioinformatics, before I knew that this was a relevant and current area of research but now I fully understand why it is so important and I am interested in looking into bioinformatics in the future as well |
| Critical analysis and literature review | 9 (8) | Improving my ability to critically evaluate papers was crucial in my personal development as it allowed me to widen my understanding of different topics |
| Excellent support and supervision | 9 (8) | Learning new things with excellent supervisors and support |
| Satisfaction | 9 (7) | It was really satisfying to see my annotations get uploaded onto the database |
| Effective use of databases | 7 (5) | Learning how to use the databases and tools with a specific goal in mind makes it much easier to understand and get to grips with and presents a great opportunity to learn from leaders |
| Enjoyment | 7 (6) | I thoroughly enjoyed my bioinformatic dissertation |
| Accessibility | 6 (6) | Data entry can be boring but the thought that it would be made available and the information could be valuable to researchers was nice and makes it worthwhile |
| Project focus | 6 (5) | The project was on Alzheimer’s disease, which I was interested in learning about more |