Learning for Purpose
INFORMATION BOOKLET Easter Term 2020
Table of Contents
WELCOME FROM LFP CO-DIRECTORS
03
ONLINE PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES
04
STAYING UP TO DATE & REGISTERING
07
EVENTS Remote Events: Planning & Facilitating Events From Afar Workshop Life-Skills Tutorials: For Scholars, By Scholars Supervising Undergraduates at Cambridge Panel LfP @ Weekend of Research RMarkdown & Github: Reproducible Research Using R Recurring Meet-Ups
09 10 11 12 13 14
TECHNICAL ADVICE & ACCESSIBILITY
15
GET IN TOUCH WITH LFP!
16
*Please note that we hope to add more workshops to our programming in the coming weeks, contingent upon logistical and budget considerations..
A Few Words from Your LFP Codirectors Dear Scholars, We hope you are all safe and well during these unprecedented times. As you can imagine, LfP has made some significant adjustments to our programming this term, with the aim of best supporting all scholars during Easter Term and beyond. By now most of you will know that Learning for Purpose is a Gates Scholar-led programme with the goal of equipping all members of the community with skills to achieve their unique purpose. This mission takes on added challenges in the current atmosphere, and we want to let each and every scholar know that our foremost aim is to support you during this time. Our plan in doing so for this term is to provide a wide array of personal and professional development training options, including live remote workshops, study groups, and informal scholar-led skills-sharing tutorials. We recognise that the move to social distancing and remote learning will affect all scholars, but will also affect every scholar differently. Some may want to use this time to dive into learning new skills, and may feel motivated to explore other skill sets outside their usual lab, archival, or field-based work. Others may be frustrated by the pressure to be as productive as usual -- or even more productive -- during a time of stress and uncertainty. LfP aims to validate all perspectives and experiences, and support all scholars wherever and however we can. This term will not and cannot be ‘business as usual’. We truly hope that you will enjoy the content we’ve prepared for this term, that LfP will be a positive contribution to your Gates Cambridge journey, and that LfP will help you in your commitment to improving the lives of others, giving back to the societies in which we live in and work. All content is tailored to our scholars based on the yearly surveys, feedback and direct suggestions to the co-directors. Do you have any suggestions to improve our content? Get in touch! Warm wishes, Anna Guasco & Maša Josipović
Online Personal & Professional Development Resources The Learning for Purpose programme has been developed to complement the other resources that are readily available within the University. Below is a curated list of useful resources and places to find more information.
In Cambridge: Personal and Professional Development (PPD) PPD works to support students and in leadership and management development, professional and personal development and career development. PPD’s aim is to create a culture of ongoing learning and to enable people to achieve their potential, collectively and individually, in a respectful and inclusive environment. Some materials are online. University Information Services (UIS) The UIS provides university-wide information services for the University of Cambridge, including a wide variety of trainings and workshops (e.g. LaTeX, Unix, Amazon Web Services, Excel, Adobe). Currently, their only online offerings are for online, self-paced courses. Cambridge Language Centre The Centre provides courses in 15 languages (CULP). Their mission is to increase multilangualism; promoting, encouraging and supporting the learning of languages for personal, academic and professional purposes. The Language Centre is moving all Easter courses online; it will be offering online sessions with its Language Advisors. The Centre also has many remote-learning resources available on its website. University of Cambridge Training This website provides a central point for University training courses. These include among others the UIS, GSLS and PPD programs. To make a booking you use your Raven account. (e.g. analysis of DNA methylation, Data science in Python). Some courses are online. Judge Business School The Entrepreneurship Centre at the Judge Business School encompasses the full entrepreneurial journey starting with the empowerment of aspiring entrepreneurs through the creation and development of early-stage ventures, all the way to small and medium size enterprise growth. Some events are postponed; some are occuring online/remotely.
Online Personal & Professional Development Resources Outside Cambridge: Alison Free online courses in: Technology, Language, Science, Health, Humanities, Business, Math, Marketing, and Lifestyle. Code Academy With a free basic membership, Code Academy provides online training in various types of coding. Coursera Free online courses (as well as certificates, for a fee) in a wide range of topics. Dash Free online courses in coding (HTML, CSS, Javascript). Duolingo Duolingo has recently updated much of its language learning materials, offering more immersive options, podcasts, and more. FutureLearn Free online university-developed courses averaging 6-10 weeks, but shorter ones are available too (especially personal/professional development ones). There is an option to pay for upgrades. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from Edx Free online training courses in a range of subjects; developed by leading universities. MIT OpenCourseware Web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. Open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Online Personal & Professional Development Resources
The Programming Historian Publishes novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching. The lessons are open access and the site uses open source programming. Reproducibility Trainings Google Spreadsheet This is a list of reproducibility trainings and resources (mostly STEM and quantitative skills) compiled by Reproducible Research Oxford. All are freely available online. Skype a Scientist An option for STEM-related researchers to enjoy public engagement while social distancing is to sign up for Skype a Scientist! You can sign up to share your research and experiences live with students around the world who are cooped up outside of the classroom. They normally work with classrooms, but are now offering sessions for families due to schools being closed/moved to remote learning. Although their focus is on ‘scientists’, this is broadly-defined!
If you would like to recommend other online and/or remote professional and personal development opportunities, please get in touch at learningforpurpose@gatescouncil.org
Staying Up to Date & Registering This booklet provides you with all the information for the events of the upcoming term. Depending on the workshop, you will either have to book your place via Eventbrite, or you may simply show up (virtually). Our event booking procedure will be different this term. We will only be requiring tickets for events with a specific, limited capacity or a certificate component. Announcements about events and registration (if required) will be shared via the E-bulletin and our Facebook page. As the events of Learning for Purpose are specifically developed for Gates Scholars, you will need to provide a password to be able to register for the events. This password can be found in the Gates Scholars E-bulletin that will be shared via email. In addition, we are updating our website, and hope that you will find it a helpful and informative resource! If you have any suggestions for additions, changes, or improvements, please let us know. In light of the need to be physically distant for the foreseeable future, we also have launched a new Slack channel! In this app, you can join our channel and participate in sub-groups to replicate the in-person networking, socialising, and peer-to-peer learning that is essential to LfP programming. Lastly, as Learning for Purpose we believe in constant personal development and growth. That means we also believe in the growth and improvement of the Learning for Purpose programme. After most events, we therefore share feedback surveys to allow you to provide us with your insights and ideas on the events we provide. In addition, we welcome feedback at any time, and you can reach us by email. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LfPGates/ Website: http://learningforpurpose.com/ Calendar: http://gatescouncil.org/calendar/ Email: learningforpurpose@gatescouncil.org Slack: (See term email & Scholars Facebook group) Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/gates-cambridge-learning-for-purpose-18058289320
workshops, courses, & other events
Remote Events: Planning & Faciltating Events from Afar
April 28, 8 pm (Zoom link in Term email, ebulletin, & FB group)
Join other current Gates Scholars and alumni in a round-table discussion about remote events! Planning and facilitating remote/distance/online events suddenly has become an essential skill. The pivot to remote events is necessary and important due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but this change may present novel challenges to those unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this type of planning and facilitation. In this workshop, we will cover some of the basic logistics skills for planning and running remote events (including troubleshooting and platform options), guidance from the Gates Scholars Council, and broader challenges and potentials of planning and implementing events to bring people together from afar. In this event, we will not have one trainer, but will instead have a facilitated open, round-tablestyle discussion in which participants may share ideas, questions, advice, and experience. If any questions are not answered during the discussion, we will follow-up on these afterwards. The conversation will feature current scholars and alumni, speaking on topics ranging from technical and logistical advice for various remote platforms, challenges for equitable technological solutions amidst socioeconomic inequality, experiences from online hack-athons, questions about alumni event planning, and insights on remote event planning from accessibility and sustainability perspectives. Please come with your questions, concerns, advice, insights, and/or comments! If you cannot participate in the live event but have questions or comments, please feel free to email ahead any questions to learningforpurpose@gatescouncil.org .
Life-Skills Tutorials: For Scholars, By Scholars
Starting April 30 (Recurring)
Do you have a talent to help scholars get through quarantine? Know someone with a skill you've always wanted to learn? You can nominate yourself or another scholar to teach a Tutorial! Your Learning for Purpose Co-Directors and Social Officers are collaborating to host a new informal workshop series: 'Life-Skills Tutorials: For Scholars, By Scholars'. This will be a series of informal workshops on life-skills relevant to personal, professional, and/or academic development. We're looking for any scholars who have fun talents or skills that they would like to share with other scholars. Examples of tutorial possibilities include: gluten-free baking, using Nvivo or Zotero, prepping for professional interviews, blogging, HTML coding, nature writing, knitting, and much more! For our first round of tutorials, we will have tutorials between Thursday 30 April, Friday 1 May, and Saturday 2 May. We will have more slots available later on in the term, and we will issue new calls for submissions/nominations before each round! Anyone can lead an informal, casual tutorial on any skill or talent you would like to share. You can also nominate another scholar if you think someone you know has a fun skill to share! Please note that you do not need to have professional experience teaching these skills, and if you are interested in running a tutorial, but you're not sure how to do so, we will provide all necessary information, training, and resources! Calls for nominations will occur multiple times throughout the term and potentially into the summer. All tutorials will take place in Virtual GSCR, unless otherwise notified.
Supervising Undergraduates At Cambridge
May 13, 10 am (Zoom link in Term email, ebulletin, & FB group)
What is a tripos? What does it mean to supervise undergraduates? What is the difference between supervising, lecturing, and demonstrating? What is the role of the college in undergraduate education at Cambridge? What is a DOS? How do you find out about supervising opportunities? If you find the landscape of undergraduate teaching at Cambridge confusing, you are not alone! Pursuing teaching opportunities is an important part of planning for a career within or outside of academia, but it can be very difficult to navigate the Cambridge undergraduate teaching system -- especially if you did not complete your own undergraduate studies at Oxbridge. In this panel, current Gates Cambridge PhD Scholars will discuss the complexities, intricacies, and challenges of teaching undergraduate students as graduate students. From strategies for running a great supervision, to questions about training and logistical challenges, these scholars will begin to illuminate the often-confusing world of Cambridge undergraduate education. Panelists: Lily Bentley: Lily is a third year PhD student in Zoology, and currently teaches first and third year Cambridge students in evolution, ecology and animal behaviour. She has also taught on field ecology study programs in Australia and the UK, and developed workshops on R coding for undergraduates and postgraduates. Parker Lawson: Parker is a third year PhD student in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture. He supervises first through fourth year undergraduates, lectures in the department, and has supervised optional dissertations. He is currently completing the Teaching Associates' Programme through the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning. Kerry Mackereth: Kerry is a third-year PhD student in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies, who studied Human, Social, and Political Sciences (HSPS) at Cambridge as an undergraduate. She teaches and has taught a variety of papers and topics on feminism, gender theory, history of political thought, and critical race theory. William McCorckindale: William is a 1st year PhD student in Physics and is a survivor of the Natural Sciences tripos. He currently supervises 1st year undergrads in mathematics and has previously tutored high school students in physics/chemistry to prepare for Oxbridge interviews.
LfP @ Weekend of Research
May 8 -18
Learning for Purpose is participating in the first Gates Cambridge Weekend of Research! Training Opportunities Participants in the Weekend of Research are asked to attend free, professional speaker training in advance of the weekend. Both sessions will be run by a professional trainer, and will be followed by a brief, jargon-free research communication session with Emma Soneson (External Officer). Instagram Event Your LfP co-directors, Internal Officer, External Officer, and Outreach Outreach are putting on a collaborative Instagram Event. Inspired by the upgoer five challenge, scholars can use an online generator to write a one sentence description of their research -- using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. Share your sentence and a photo that represents your work, tagging the Gates Cambridge Instagram (@gatescambridge.scholars) before May 15th to be featured! Jargon-Free Lightning Talks LfP is sponsored sessions of jargon-free lightning talks. In these talks, speakers are asked to present their research in a way that is accessible, whilst maintaining depth and complexity -and only over the course of a couple minutes! This is a great way to practice your ‘elevator pitch’ and work on your research communication skills.
RMarkdown & Starting final week Github: of May (exact dates/times TBA) Reproducible Research Using R Join us for a recurring workshop series on RMarkdown and Github in the context of reproducible research, with limited spaces! The reproducibility crisis in academic research has led to an increased demand for open, transparent research. A key part in achieving this is to ensure that analyses are clear and reproducible. In this series of workshops we will cover several topics that will enable you to improve the reproducibility of your research. We will explore ways to organise your research so that they are easily accessed by yourself and other researchers. We will learn how to integrate analyses using notebooks in R, producing reports with the use of RMarkdown to communicate findings. Finally, we will cover the concepts of version control. We will learn how to create a repository on GitHub and how to use this repository to keep track of file changes. Combined, these tools will give you a solid basis for organising your research, communicating relevant results and enabling other researchers to reproduce and expand on your analyses. The workshop series will take place via Zoom over the course of four, two hour-long sessions. Registering for this series will be required.
Trainer Dr Martin van Rongen is a Research Associate at the Sainsbury Laboratory currently studying complex regulation of plant development, genes and hormones. In addition to his research, Dr van Rongen has experience teaching fellow researchers about using RMarkdown to document and share analyses, and about reproducible research more broadly.
Recurring Meet-Ups
Throughout Term
Quiet Study Hour We are piloting a quiet group study hour weekly session, starting with two sessions (27 April at 8 pm and 4 May at 5 pm). This is a space to come together with other scholars in companionable silence to try to get some work done. An additional 15-30 minutes at the end of the session will be allotted for chatting and catching up. These group study sessions will be co-hosted by two council members. If interest is high enough, we will announce additional dates for these sessions.
Language Meet-Ups From the results of our Languages Learning survey, French Conversational skills were most requested area of language training. Whilst we are not able to provide professional instruction at this time, we will be hosting informal sessions facilitated by scholar-volunteers. Dates and times to be announced. We also hope to host a Spanish Conversational skills group in a similar fashion; details to be confirmed.
Research Interruption Discussion Groups (During Virtual Tea Breaks) We will have a few sessions of the 'Virtual Tea Breaks' that are designated as spaces to discuss research interruptions and challenges during the pandemic. Topics may include conducting archival research/fieldwork without being in the archive/field, preparing for remote vivas, and more. If you have any theme requests, please get in touch.
All recurring meet-up sessions will occur in the Virtual GSCR unless otherwise notified.
Technical Advice & Accessibility Most LfP workshops this term will take place via Zoom, using the Gates Cambridge Scholars Council account. As Council has a professional account, these workshops do not have a participant cap or time limit. (So don’t worry about being kicked out after 40 minutes!) You can join a Zoom workshop by clicking on the link and entering the password. Zoom does require an account; creating one is free. We also are taking proactive steps to avoid inappropriate interruptions of Zoom workshops. One such step is our decision not to share the Zoom link or password in this booklet or other public channels. Instead, you can find the link and password in the Gates Scholars Facebook group, in our start-of-term email, and in the weekly ebulletin email. We also will be operating a waiting room, so please ensure that your username is recognisable. All workshop times are listed in British Summer Time (BST). We have chosen times based on survey feedback and by attempting to maximise the number of time zones for which the timing would be reasonable. Unfortunately, it is not possible to accommodate every time zone for one event, so we have tried to vary event timings. In addition, if you are not able to attend a live workshop, we plan to record these workshops and hope to be able to provide a link to stream the recorded workshops after the workshop date. We also plan to produce a textual transcript and/or notes for the sessions. Please email us if you would like to watch the recorded workshops or would like copies of the transcripts. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide live captioning or BSL. For privacy reasons, we will ask participants to confirm that they consent to recording. All event information will be available on Facebook, Slack, our website, and the ebulletin. Please email us for plain-text versions of any materials, and for dial-in telephone codes for Zoom. We will be facilitating opportunities to connect with other scholars via our Slack channel and our Facebook page; please feel free to post any questions, resources, discussion topics, or comments in these spaces!
Get in Touch with LfP! LEARNINGFORPURPOSE@GATESCOUNCIL.ORG