GENERAL APPROACH
An introduction to dual use issues should be part of the education of every life scientist.
• Except in specialized cases (particular research or policy interests), this education should be incorporated within broader coursework and training rather than via stand-alone courses. Appropriate channels include biosafety, bioethics and research ethics, and professional standards (i.e., RCR), as well as inclusion of examples of research with dual use potential in general life sciences courses.
• Insights from research on learning and effective teaching should inform development of materials, and approaches to teaching students and preparing faculty.
SPECIFIC ACTIONS
Achieving the broad goal of making dual use issues part of broader education will require a number of specific actions. They may be undertaken separately by different organizations but there will be substantial benefit if there is an effort to coordinate across the initiatives and share successful practices and lessons learned. Resources will be needed to ensure that the initiatives are carried out at an appropriate scale and scope.
The workshop participants and the committee did not explore the implementation of any specific recommendations in sufficient depth to prescribe a particular mechanism or path forward. Instead, reflecting the diversity and variety of situations in which education about dual use issues will be carried out, the final chapter lays out a number of options that could be used to implement each of the recommendations below.
• Develop an international open access repository of materials that can be tailored to and adapted for the local context, perhaps as a network of national or regional repositories.
The repository should be under the auspices of the scientific community rather than governments, although support and resources from governments will be needed to implement the education locally.
Materials should be available in a range of languages.
Materials should interface with existing databases and repositories of educational materials dedicated to science education.
Additional case studies to address broader segments of the life sciences community should be developed, with a focus on making the case studies relevant to the student/researcher.
• Design methods for commenting and vetting of materials by the community (such as an appropriately monitored Wikipedia model) so they can be improved by faculty, instructors and experts in science education.
• Build networks of faculty and instructors through train-the-trainer programs, undertaking this effort if possible in cooperation with scientific unions and professional societies and associations.
• Develop a range of methods to assess outcomes and, where possible, impact. These should include qualitative approaches as well as quantitative measures, for example, of learning outcomes.
