More than just content: building community in the graduate classroom - Nature Biotechnology

Learning communities are not just about accumulating knowledge, they are about transforming that knowledge into actionable insights and leadership skills. By engaging in a structured environment where ideas and experiences are exchanged, individuals can develop a deeper understanding of their roles, enhance their leadership qualities, and contribut... See more

Focus on building with the community, not just for the community. Building programs that reward participation, provide a sense of ownership and establish participation as a requirement to membership will instill a feeling of reciprocity and value within the community.

Community means a lot of things to a lot of people. Whether it’s your local running group, a book club, your gym squad, family, or membership in an exclusive club, belonging to something is meaningful. Our identities, while obviously unique to us, are so shaped by the influence and power of community that it remains a biologically human need to hav... See more

Belonging gives us the confidence to take care of ourselves, others, our planet, and all the members of our ecosystem. Knowing this, it becomes clear that building a community is one of the most important, generous, and creative acts a human can aspire to.

The best way to create & capture value within a community is by helping members find companions/teams/groups and work on something together. Everybody wants to belong and the only way you can retain community members for a healthy period is by facilitating meaningful connections and helping them build something together. This could mean multipl... See more

There seem to be two main lessons to learn here: if you want to build educational content, turn it into a community; if you want to build an online community, start with educational content.

Communities play a valuable role not just in delivering value for your organization but in providing a way for a broader set of people to do meaningful work.

The best feature of the four-year research university isn’t career or education or personal development per se, but the ultimate community: a lifelong identity tied to a physical place, with thousands of other people, harboring hundreds of distinct self-sustaining tribes mired in decades and centuries of tradition and stories and identities. The un... See more