PDF conference book - ORPHEUS

Keynote Lectures
L5 BALANCING THE YING/YANG
OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION - EVALUATING
AND EXAMINING INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
Robert A Harris 1
1 Karolinska Institutet, Clinical Neuroscience, Stockholm, Sweden
robert.harris@ki.se
One of the current challenges to research group leaders is how to reconcile the requirement to
produce scientific articles of high quality (Ying), the most usual measure used to merit grant funding
and career advancement, with the requirements for the research education of a doctoral student
(Yang). Current attitudes among many researchers view these as diametrically opposed, competing
interests. Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) provide a link between summative and formative
assessments during a doctoral education, and efficient examination of ILOs necessitates focus on
the learning underlying the scientific prowess.
Productive science by PhD students will be the result of technical and analytical abilities learnt at the
bench, combined with inspiration and both widening and deepening of knowledge gleaned through a
variety of educational activities. I will suggest that an inability to intertwine these activities is a state
of mind rather than reality, and also the result of inappropriate semantics. I propose that adoption
of the term ‘Research Training’ with continual evaluation and specific examination of ILOs defined
at Masters, Doctoral and Postdoctoral levels may provide the means of balancing the shades of grey
more black and white.
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