Strategic Plan: Building a Library of Alexandria Scientific Supercourse

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Strategic PlanBuilding a Library of Alexandria
Scientific Supercourse

• Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
• Gilbert Omenn, M.D.
• Ismail Serageldin, Ph.D.
• Vint Cerf, Ph.D.
• Faina Linkov, Ph.D.

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Saving Knowledge
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Need for a Scientific Supercourse

• Science has become enormous, and
  compartmentalized making interdisciplinary
  research and training difficult
• It is a very large task to keep current for 2
  areas of science, let alone 30 topics for a
  review course
• Many Scientific findings take gt5 year to appear
  in classrooms
• A large number of developing countries have not
  received scientific journals and books for
  greater than a decade
• Scientists have always shared, why not share our
  best lectures?
• The Library of Alexandria saved scientific works
  for gt700 years, we should archive our lectures

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Supercourse Model

• 45,000 faculty from 174 countries in the field of
  prevention networked
• Collection of 3383 lectures
• 800 lectures translated into Spanish, all
  lectures to be translated into Chinese
• Top rated global health lectures, one of the top
  sites for health
• Scientists can use slides and lectures outside
  their disciplines to teach
• Empower teachers in developed and developing
  countries by providing state of the art content

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Education is the most powerful weapon which you
can use to change the world. Nelson Mandela
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Question
How can we improve science higher education
worldwide?
Answer
Get more and better lectures
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But how do we get more and better lectures?
Why dont we share our most exciting PowerPoint
lectures for free?
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Supercourse

• Global Network of Scientists Sharing PowerPoint
  Lectures

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Global Health Network
44,000 Faculty 175 Countries
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Lectures
3383
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• Developed under grants from NASA and NLM/NIH
• Global Expert Network of 45,000 including 20
  Noble Prize Winners, Director NIH, US Surgeon
  General, Vint Cerf
• 3,383 PowerPoint lectures on prevention
• 80 million hits a year
• Highest Google Percentile Ranked Site for
  Global Health lectures
• 170 publications in Science, Nature, PNAS
• Top 100 PC magazine site
• Taught gt1 million in the past 12 months

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Starting from ScratchorRecycling Content?
Content is King
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Creating a Lecture for a College Class on Diabetes
Epidemiology, Immunology, Complications
and Pathogenesis of Type 1 Diabetes Lecture 5
Diabetes Research Ronald E. LaPorte,
Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh
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Craftsman/Artisan
Epidemiology, Immunology, Complications and
Pathogenesis of Type 1 Diabetes Lecture 5
Diabetes Research Ronald E. LaPorte,
Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh
Craftsman Model New lecture created from
scratch by Scientist educators. It requires 15
to 25 hours of preparation, using Journals, and
Books
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Ronald LaPorte
Epidemiology, Immunology, Complications and
Pathogenesis of Type 1 Diabetes Lecture 5
Diabetes Research Ronald E. LaPorte,
Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh
Supercourse/Recycle Model Reusing and
customizing using existing slides and lectures
collected from world experts requires only 1 to
3 hours development time per lecture
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Why?
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• 95 of Classroom Lectures use PowerPoint
• 75 of Distance Learning use PowerPoint

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What wiped out the lectures?
Dust to Dust
Linus Pauling Lecture
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What wiped out the lectures?
Dust to Dust
Linus Pauling Lecture
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Pauling Lectures saved by PowerPoint on the web
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Joshua Lederberg(1958)
Baruch S. Blumberg(1976)
Ferid Murad(1998)
Gunter Blobel(1999)
Nobel Prize Laureates in the Supercourse
(Medicine)
Eric R. Kandel (2000)
Paul C Lauterbur (2003)
Paul Greengard (2000)
Leland H Hartwell (2001)
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Building a Scientific Supercourse

• Vetted content
• Network
• Distribution System
• Funding

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Discipline Vetted Lectures Of Science Keynote
Speakers
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Networking Scientists

• Scientists in 1-20 of each other
• 45,000 Prevention network contacting Scientific
  Friends
• Flier in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese
• Viral Marketing
• All Scientists in world knowing about this in 3
  weeks

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Distribution Scheme

• Library of Alexandria Supercourse
• Mirrored servers in all national libraries
• DVDs
• Mirrored servers for each scientific Disciplines

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Funding

• Before anything begins a secure funding source
  needs to be identified
• One possibility is that the societies pay to put
  lectures into the Supercourse as this would
  provide cross-disciplinary exposure
• Donations
• Ad Revenues in the same manner as many societies
  obtain add revenues
• Aligning with major journals such as Science,
  Nature, Lancet, etc.
• National Library subscriptions
• NSF

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Time Frame

• Year 1 200 Keynote lectures from Major
  Scientific Disciplines
• Year 2 600
• Year 3 1000
• Year 4 5000

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Prometheus statue At the Library of Alexandria
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