Jiang, S., & Gansemer-Topf, A. M., & Reuel, N. F., & Kremer, G. E., & Li, Q., & Mort, R. (2020, October), A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference, Ames, Iowa. 10.18260/1-2--44665

\bibitem{asee_peer_44665}
  Jiang, S., \& Gansemer-Topf, A. M., \& Reuel, N. F., \& Kremer, G. E., \& Li, Q., \& Mort, R. (2020, October), \emph{A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research}
  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference, Ames, Iowa.
  10.18260/1-2--44665

Shan Jiang, Ann M Gansemer-Topf, Nigel Forest Reuel, Gül E. Kremer, Qing Li, and Rebecca Mort.  "A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research".  2020 ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference, Ames, Iowa, 2020, October.  ASEE Conferences, 2020.  https://peer.asee.org/44665 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_44665}
  Shan Jiang, Ann M Gansemer-Topf, Nigel Forest Reuel, Gül E. Kremer, Qing Li, and Rebecca Mort.
  "A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research".
  \emph{2020 ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference, Ames, Iowa, 2020, October}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2020.
  https://peer.asee.org/44665 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_44665
author = "Shan Jiang, Ann M Gansemer-Topf, Nigel Forest Reuel, Gül E. Kremer, Qing Li, and Rebecca Mort"
title = "A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research"
booktitle = "2020 ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference"
year = "2020"
month = "October"
address = "Ames, Iowa"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/44665}
number = {10.18260/1-2--44665}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - A new program is being developed to train graduate students with professional skills and help students improve their thesis research simultaneously. The approach is to establish learning communities of Graduates for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS) to incorporate project management skill training from industry into academic research. The GAPS program seeks to address two fundamental education research questions: How can project management skill training be integrated with thesis research in graduate education? What is the role/value of learning communities in enhancing the training and retention of professional skills and the effectiveness of thesis research? Limited resources and lack of faculty support often prevent graduate students from committing to skill training, resulting in unpreparedness for future work in industry (Denecke, Feaster and Stone 2017). To address these challenges, the GAPS program aims to establish Communities of Practice (COP) to engage students with self-directed learning activities as they learn from the curated online modules, and practice professional skills within their thesis research (Gray 2004, Hildreth and Kimble 2004, Johnson 2001, Wenger 1998). This new learning model has the potential to fundamentally change the culture of graduate education, efficiently utilize the current resources, and obtain faculty buy-in.
The purpose of this session is to discuss the beginning progress of the GAPS program towards disrupting the status quo of graduate education and professional skill development. The following progress is being made to establish the GAPS learning communities. A website has been developed to introduce the program (https:www.GAPS.iastate.edu), recruit participants, provide information on the online modules, and survey results of participants’ current levels of knowledge and skills related to project management. A new course, “Introduction of Project Management for Thesis Research”, has been added to the course catalog and open to enrollment for students from different majors. In addition, online modules including project charter, scheduling, communication, teamwork, critical path method, and lean concept are developed (Meredith et al. 2010). Preliminary data from the first cohort are being collected and analyzed to identify students’ needs, benefits of the program, and areas of improvement for future cohort iterations. During this session, we will present this data and discuss how the GAPS program plans to meet the goal of improving professional skills training for graduate students.

References
Denecke, D., Feaster, K., & Stone, K. (2017). Professional development: Shaping effective programs for STEM graduate students. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools. 
Gray, B. (2004). Informal learning in an online community of practice. Journal of Distance Education, 19(1), 20–35.
Hildreth, P., and Kimble, C. (2004). Knowledge Networks: Innovation through Communities of Practice. London / Hershey: Idea Group Inc.
Iowa State University. (2020). Graduates for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS). https://www.GAPS.iastate.edu
Johnson, C. M. (2001). A survey of current research on online communities of practice. The internet and higher education, 4(1), 45-60.
Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. S., Sutton, M. M., Mantel, S. J. Jr. (2010) Project management in practice (4th ed.). Wiley. 
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 318.


AU  - Shan Jiang
AU  - Ann M Gansemer-Topf
AU  - Nigel Forest Reuel
AU  - Gül E. Kremer
AU  - Qing Li
AU  - Rebecca Mort
CY  - Ames, Iowa
DA  - 2020/10/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Community of Practice Approach to Integrating Professional Skills Training with Graduate Thesis Research
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/44665
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--44665
ER  -