A community-building framework for collaborative research coordination across the education and biology research disciplines

08-28-2018

Drs. Nancy Pelaez, Stephanie Gardner, and collaborators published “A community-building framework for collaborative research coordination across the biology and education research disciplines” in the top peer-reviewed biology education research journal, CBE Life Sciences Education. The report presents a guiding framework for professional network practice that is informed by both relevant literature and empirical evidence from community-building experience within their NSF-funded ACE-Bio Network project (National Science Foundation grant #1346567). The Five C’s of Collaboration: Commitment, Collegiality, Communication, Consensus, and Continuity, are presented with practical examples to illustrate how their framework was used to enhance collaboration between new and existing participants in the ACE-Bio Network to foster linkages between research scientists and education experts such as the work that has been focused on teaching about experimentation in biology. This publication extends previous work published on interdisciplinary collaborations to improve undergraduate biology education. The article provides new insight to the conversations regarding qualities of successful projects done by groups of investigators who communicate and coordinate their research and educational activities across disciplinary boundaries. It will be of interest to anyone who is putting together or considering measurements for evaluating a Research Coordination Network. The article, which is Open Access and available at https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.17-04-0060,  is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the authors. It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).