ePoster on Design for CHERIL conference 2018

1. Educating a Community of Practice
in Clinical Bioinformatics
Dr Ang Davies Programme Director
MSc Clinical Sciences (Bioinformatics)

2. Questions I hope to answer
1. What is a Clinical Bioinformatician?
2. What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?
3. What is flipped teaching and how do we
apply it in the course?
4. Do CoPs exist within our cohorts?
5. Has the pedagogic methodology helped
to create and nuture this community?

3. Genomics is transforming healthcare
Leading to personalised medicine

4. Clinical Scientist:
Bioinformatician
ClinicalScientist:
Geneticist
Clinician
Genome
Technologist
Patient
Journey
Genetic
Counsellor
Treatment?

5. Clinical Bioinformatician
Clinical Bioinformaticians convert
sequencing data into clinically meaningful
information that makes a real difference to patients

6. What is a Community of
Practice?
• 3 themes defined by Wenger, 1998:
1. Mutual engagement
I. Interaction, sense of belonging/contribution,
build relationships
2. Joint enterprise
I. Collective response by members to their common
situation
3. Shared repertoire
I. Joint development of approaches,
Procedures and activities

7. Flipped Teaching
• A form of blended learning: Access to content in
advance of teaching allowing f-2-f time to be
focussed on application of knowledge
Advantages Disadvantages
Flexibility, learn in own time and own pace Lack of home internet access
Class time for application of knowledge Requires more facilitators
Opportunity for discussion, formative
feedback
Time for educators to adapt material
Student centred learning & collaborative Struggle to adapt to self-directed approach
Cost effective, increase student numbers Increased cost of production
Utilise a suite of learning technologies (21st
century learning)
Skills of educators to engage with learning
technologies
Increase engagement
• http://www.iier.org.au/iier26/mccarthy-j.pdf
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.02.002

8. Flipped Teaching Model
Before: Reading,
recorded
tutorials, MOOC
After: Practice
through assignments
& mini-projects
During: Short lectures,
clinical case studies,
small group working
Flipped
Teaching
Community of
Practice:
Expertise, knowledge,
support

9. Eg: Design a new
diagnostic service
Before:
background
reading and
appropriate
lectures
After: Individual
assignment write up
proposal as business
case
During: Design sample
prep, choose technology,
Bioinformatic workflow
Design a
new cancer
diagnostic
test
Community of
Practice:
Expertise, knowledge,
support

10. CHERIL Project
• CHERIL:Centre for Higher Education Research,
Innovation and Learning
• http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/cheril/reso
urces/cheril-grant-award-directory/completed-
projects/
• Research questions:
1. To what extent do CoPs exist within the clinical
bioinformatics cohort of students?
2. To what extent has the pedagogic methodology
helped to create and nuture this community?

11. • Qualitative research study with colleagues
from Manchester Institute for Education
• Double blind design ensured responses
and analysis were unbiased
• 8 interviews: semi-structured approach
• Thematic analysis on transcripts
Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nantaism/10813736316 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

12. Emergent Themes
• Communities of Practice – shared repertoire of
new practice
• New career – the specialism has no history and
depends on negotiation with employers
• Isolation in practice – students talk about being
‘the only one’ in the hospital
• Accountability – the practice is not established

13. Emergent Themes
• Teaching/Learning
• Ownership of the course – student feedback
has influenced course direction
• Joint enterprise – nothing decided by a
professional body
• Talk about group and dynamics – not during
studies but social aspects and holidays.

14. Flipped Teaching & Group Work
Comments
• Ryan: Erm, I think like [the programme leaders] are very
good at remembering that we are like kind of learning what the
demands of clinical setting are; I think they're very aware of that the
demands can be very, very different to other settings… Whenever
they ask us to do things, they ask us to do things with that in mind
which is very, erm, relevant to our programme and to our jobs long-
term so without that I think the sort of stuff we would be doing
would be far less or, you know, we’d end up kind of using things
that would not be relevant and waste, not wasting time but, er, you
water down the important bits.
• Heather: Erm, it was actually quite good, erm, because we were
immediately kind of introduced to each other and put into teams to work
in so we got to know a few of them very well very quickly and then after
that, in the weeks that followed the first day that we did that, we were
put into different teams. I think I ended up getting to know most of the
people in my group very well.
•

15. Teaching Style & CoP Comments
• Ryan “Erm (pause) I doubt we’d be as close definitely, so the fact
that we all have to come to uni for like couple weeks at a time will,
you know, erm, and we’ll all go and we’re going through sort of a
very confusing training programme as well that's kind of that's
drawn us to, you know, that that would have drawn us together and
looked for the support that I think that, yeah actually doing the
group work has been the biggest sort of gel I think”.
• Chloé: “You learn a lot more from each other and we have this
situation where people have no problem expressing when they don’t
understand something which is a very good thing because that is
something that when I was a teacher I used to find people really
struggled with is admitting that they didn't know but because of the way
it works and because everybody’s getting a different amount of training
we are all very happy to go ‘I have no idea what you're talking about’ ‘oh
right we do this in our Trust’ you have different things that you do or
you've been studying in your Trust etc. so in that respect you learn a lot
more I think than I would have done if it was just lectures which I could do
at home by myself”.

16. Key Findings
•Pedagogical approach allowed students to:
• Share ideas
• Learn from one another, helpful for students
with a wide variety of educational
backgrounds
• Engage in the social aspects of learning
• Form a CoP
•Future work:
• Investigate mechanisms to encourage cross-
cohort development of CoPs

17. Project Team
University of Manchester
• Andy Brass – Programme Co-Director of Clinical Bioinformatics
• Ang Davies – Programme Co-Director of Clinical Bioinformatics
• Amanda Banks-Gatenby Lecturer Manchester Institute of
Education
• Diane Harris Researcher Manchester Institute of Education
Funding
• CHERIL
• Contact:angela.davies@manchester.ac.uk
• @MSCclinbioinf