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Learning Community

Creating a positive learning community for inclusive innovation.

What is a learning community? We believe that the complicated challenges emerging for scientists and society in the 21st century require us to go beyond traditional educational structures, and that fostering a welcoming learning community is one way we can address these challenges. For the purpose of our hackweeks, we define a learning community as a group of individuals who, motivated by an inherent curiosity and commitment to seeking the truth, freely choose to work together on something they care about.

Our shared values

What can each of us do to contribute to a healthy and thriving learning community? We intend to adhere to these core values, drawn from the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement:

We continuously strive to be inclusive

Members of this community recognize that we can all contribute in making our shared spaces welcoming, accessible, and inclusive, and will not discriminate against others based on their social or cultural backgrounds or identities. We will work towards minimizing the effects of power imbalances and offering diverse ways to participate as the default, rather than the exception. We will do this by listening deeply, and by staying engaged and curious in other’s perspectives, even during challenging conversations.

We empower one another

We believe in a culture of fluid collaboration and participation through which we empower one another to explore and exchange knowledge, resources, and opportunities as a community.

We learn and share

We will cultivate a space where we can learn from and grow with each other, and we make room for not knowing. We recognize that we are all students and teachers at the same time and we all bring skills and resources that we can share.

We trust – and hold space for – one another

We make an individual and shared commitment to cultivating hospitable community spaces founded on trust, open communication, and personal accountability. This commitment will support the expression of a range of emotional states including joy, vulnerability, and uncertainty, without fear of incurring harm.

We express gratitude and recognition

Giving thanks and acknowledgement for contributions, whether they be knowledge, experience, or other forms of support, is an important part of how we interact with each other. In tutorials, projects, group presentations and code repositories, we will set up a mutually-agreed upon system for attribution of ideas and effort. When in doubt, we will ask each other if they approve of the ways in which we plan to use and build on each other’s ideas and content.