Abstract: Objective To investigate the postgraduates’ professional background and the purpose of the course choice, for improving teachers’ concepts and methods of teaching． Methods We designed the anonymous questionnaire, including the postgraduate’s professional background, the purpose of the course choice, the mastery of the experimental technology before the class, and the expectation of the student for teaching about theoretical knowledge, the methods and techniques of the experimental operation, the precautions and so on. The questionnaires were collected and analyzed the after the investigation. Results The students are mainly masters and research postgraduates. Most of the students have studied the theoretical knowledge of molecular biology, but they lack the training of experimental techniques. Cell transfection, quantitative PCR, luciferase reporter gene detection, and cell apoptosis detection, are the four experimental techniques that students most want to learn. Conclusions Through the investigation, we have known the professional background of the students and the purpose and practical needs of students.The results of the investigation can be a good reference for teachers to controlling the teaching time of the theoretical knowledge, the experimental operation, the matters needing attention, and so on.

Key words: the purpose of the course choice, experiment of molecular biology, postgraduate teaching