Reproducible Computational Environments with Binder

About the event: The East African Network for Bioinformatics training (EANBiT), seeks to upskill students in Bioinformatics using the model: coursework, 5-week residential training and finally research project placement at partner institutions. EANBiT works with universities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, to offer MSc in Bioinformatics. It supports curriculum development, offers MSc fellowships to students, and support placement for research. The residential training (gone online this year), has four tracks: technical, Soft skills, Seminars, and Mini projects. The seminars involve talks from leaders in various areas of genomics, including open science.

About the workshop: 

A short workshop was delivered as a hand-on guided training on building a Binder resource using the following agenda:

- 15 minutes: presentation (attached slides) to introduce The Turing Way project, the importance of reproducibility in research and the Binder tool for creating executable codes and script through a browser

- 30 minutes: hands-on development of a binder ready GitHub repository using Zero-to-Binder tutorial.

- 15 minutes: Troubleshooting

- 10 minutes: Wrap-up and final Q&A

This training took place online and a shared HackMD was used for facilitating collaboration and discussion among the participants.