I unleashed a class of students on Galaxy, with options to do anything from working through tutorials to doing something advanced. I'm passing along some positive feedback.
"Galaxy does not seem to be difficult to use, but since I was not sure what to try to do with a program that was new to me I decided to go though the tutorials. The tutorials are very helpful at explaining what Galaxy can be used to show. I think there are more features within Galaxy than I will ever use, however, one never knows."
"I've never used Galaxy before, I thought doing the tutorial would be most beneficial to me. I thought the tutorial was very informative and done with a great deal of depth. I only wished that this was also available for the UCSC web browser. The tutorial in addition to the required reading was very helpful in understanding the use of Galaxy. As Blankenberg et al., (in press) explains the majority of users of the Galaxy program are biomedical researchers, most of whom are not familiar with basic programming. Hence in my option, such detailed tutorials are very helpful and a great timesaver. In particular, the way in which the screenplays are divided into specific groups a definitely less time consuming."
"In general, I found all of the tools and functions of Galaxy simple to use and the interface easy to navigate. "
"I found this tutorial and exercise very helpful and descriptive for using the program. I also watched screencasts 3A-3M. It was very helpful to have all the different tools in galaxy explained in detail and will come in handy for reference when using the program in the future. I especially found the screencasts on uploading data and encoding data very useful, such as the explanation of the different analysis groups. "
Ross Hardison T. Ming Chu Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The Pennsylvania State University 304 Wartik Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 e-mail: rch8@psu.edu phone: 814-863-0113 FAX: 814-863-7024