Instructor Notes

This workshop is based on the OSCA tutorial that Davide Risso, Dario Righelli, Marcel Ramos, and myself gave at the ISMB conference last year. The tutorial is a light version of the OSCA book that concentrates on essential aspects for getting started with the book (“The OSCA book in a day”). The tutorial is in large parts a faithful copy of the OSCA book, but also adds contents that are not (yet) covered in the OSCA book such as interoperability with other popular single-cell analysis ecosystems and accessing data from the Human Cell Atlas.

The learner profiles page covers the pre-requisites including the basics of statistics, R, and molecular biology. Point this out to students in order to help direct those missing large pieces of the foundation toward where they need to go.

The exercises in the middle of episodes should be worked through as students progress through the lesson unless you’re really trying to fly through everything at lightning speed.

Some episodes feature additional exercises labelled “Extension challenges” at the end. These are generally more difficult exercises that are less about repetition of the concepts presented in the lesson and more about critically examining issues related to the lesson’s topic. They can safely be skipped if pressed for time, but may be useful for driving post-lesson discussion or to provide additional learning material for more advanced students that reach the end of the lesson faster than others.