BioProspects Learning Communities

1. BioProspects Learning Communities It’s about creating a career

2. BioProspects Learning Community Vision – To enrich and broaden the opportunities available to Life-Sciences graduates Mission- Structured around a composite-learning approach, the BioProspects Learning Community will promote early-stage career awareness and planning amongst life science graduates by fostering an interactive, knowledge-exchange community atmosphere supported by students, professors and industry representatives.

3. What does all this mean? Am I outside my comfort zone? YES Is this empirical? NO Is this important for career development? That is for you to decide

14. Analyses of Drosophila Pkc 53E via Novel Gene Targeting

26. A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Medical School Curricula on the United States Medical Licensing Examinations, 1992-1999: A Multi-level, Multivariate Study

27. Results- LVPA Analysis GPAy3 GPA y2 GPAy1 Age 0.69 -0.29 Step1 0.82 0.81 GPAy4 0.85 Academic Achievement 0.71 0.22 0.90 Competence in Medicine Step2 0.28 0.55 Aptitude for Medicine 0.78 BS 0.04 0.83 Step3 0.15 Curricular Structure 0.79 0.45 PS VR Fit Indicies: 2 (49) = 3263.94, p< 0.001; CFI = 0.931; RMSEA = 0.084; SRMR = 0.038

33. John Seely Brown • Visiting scholar at USCChief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) • Focus on organizational learning and research into learning • Calls himself “Chief of Confusion”

34. Social Life of Information • Ch1 – infopunditry • Ch2 – challenges of software agents • Ch3-5 – the social character of work and learning • Ch6 – resources for innovation • Ch7 – unnoticed aspects of the document and their implication for design more generally • Ch8- the future of institutions, namely universities

35. Social Life of Information • Is IT all it is cracked up to be? • information acquires meaning only through social context • place technology into the social context that helps people understand what information means and why it matters

36. Learning Theories Anyone? • Cognitivist, Constructionist, Humanist etc. • Social Learning theory –Vygotsky • Zones of proximal development

37. What are learning communities? • “A variety of approaches that link or cluster classes, during a given term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students.” (Gabelnick et al. 2004)

38. Communities of Practice • “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” E. Wenger • Consists of: • Shared domain of interest • Community where members engage in joint activities and discussions • Practice through sustained time and interaction (shared repositories of resources) • www.ewenger.com/theory

39. What are academic communities? • Ziman- Some Pathologies of the Scientific Life • “By accident of specialized education they (students) are depressingly ignorant of the most elementary facts concerning the most famous figures and episodes even within their chosen discipline.” • “They have no idea of the way in which modern science is organized and financed, nor any notion of the various forms of employment or office that may be open to them.”

40. Ziman cont’d • “What are the guiding principles, the behavioural norms of the scientific community?”

41. What are the similarities/differences? • What are the guiding principles, the behavioural norms of: • Communities of practice • Academic communities • Compare and contrast them, are they similar or contradictory?

42. What is your path?