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This descriptive study examines the experiences of virtually-trained new members in a hybrid distributed community of practice (CoP) focused on undergraduate genomics education. We utilized a sequential explanatory mixed methods research design consisting of an engagement survey for all community members (n=124), followed by interviews with new members (n=15). Survey analysis identifies several areas in which new members do not differ from members with longer involvement, including in motivations for involvement, levels of engagement, satisfaction, and perceived benefits of community involvement. These findings indicate ways in which virtual training and integration was able to facilitate important community outcomes within a new, online context. Our interviews reveal important elements of training new CoP members, including onboarding, implementation, and community engagement opportunities, that successfully facilitated new members’ integration into the community and contributed to their meeting the aforementioned outcomes. The findings of this study provide useful lessons and structures for growing communities through virtual means. 

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP; https://thegep.org) began as a consortium of 16 faculty in 2006 with a goal of providing students with Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) in genomics. Today, GEP has over 200 faculty from more than 180 institutions and engages more than 3,900 undergraduates in authentic genomics research annually. These faculty joined and continued to participate in the GEP for many reasons, including the collaborative nature of the research, the well-established infrastructure, and the supportive network of like-minded colleagues. Faculty implement GEP materials in diverse settings ? ranging from short modules (2-8 weeks) within a course, to a standalone full-semester course, to independent student research. GEP students show significant gains in scientific knowledge and attitudes toward science. In addition to improving their understanding of the research process and how new knowledge is created in the field, GEP students acquire desirable and transferable skills essential for future participation in the workforce, such as problem solving, independence, application of knowledge, team-work, and collaboration. Students also gain competence in the use of computational algorithms to analyze large biological datasets ? thereby preparing students for a growing need of a workforce trained at applying statistics and computational tools to analyze large datasets. In addition, GEP students and their faculty mentors are eligible to be co-authors on the scientific publications that are based on their work. In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the GEP community, a hands-on guided tour of our introductory curriculum aimed to teach gene structure, transcription, translation, and processing, and a step-by-step walkthrough that illustrates the protocol for annotating a protein-coding gene in Drosophila. Participants will receive information on how to join the GEP community and receive training and resources to enable their implementations.