Registration is now open for two of CSCCE’s multi-week training courses: Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26W) and Content Design (CODE26Sp).
In this blog post you can find out more about each training (but please reach out to training@cscce.org if you have any questions), including various resources to support your participation.
In service of our ongoing commitment to “shining a light on the less visible,” we’ve also included some information about what it means for us to run live, cohort-based online trainings like these, and why it’s so important that we fill each cohort we offer.
Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF)
“The content and facilitation was excellent, the activities to think about my community [were] directly useful to my work, and honestly feeling validated in what felt right to me was hugely helpful at rebuilding my confidence in this approach.” – CEF alum
CEF is an eight-week course, designed to offer new and existing community managers a core set of actionable skills and strategies. Participants meet twice a week in live, 90-minute Zoom sessions, during which instructors describe core concepts and facilitate activities on how to put them into practice. This approach ensures that participants leave each session with actionable strategies, and develop a new network of peers – something we’ve heard over and again helps community professionals who might otherwise feel quite lonely in their work.
The impact of CEF to date
Since 2020, we’ve trained almost 400 STEM community managers in CEF. In 2023, we received funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to evaluate the impact of CEF on individual learners, their community or organization, and on the STEM ecosystem more broadly. We found that:
- 95% of respondents have applied multiple CEF concepts, frameworks, and activities in their roles to improve overall community strategy, improve existing content and/or programming, develop new content and/or programming, and build alignment with team members
- On an individual level, the vast majority of respondents reported positive socioemotional outcomes such as increased confidence and connection to peers
- On a community / organizational level, 74% of respondents reported at least one improvement in member participation within their communities
- On an ecosystem-level, 38% of respondents reported multiple improvements in their organizations’ and communities’ relationship to the broader STEM ecosystem
We published our findings as a free-to-download report, as well as a summary infographic that pulls out some highlights.
Content Design (CODE)
“This was really a great course! I feel empowered to create more effective content that is tailored and actionable for our community members. The skills I gained will increase my value to our community in my role.” – CODE alum
CODE is a six-week course that introduces a strategic approach to designing and creating community-engaged content. As for CEF, we host two live sessions per week, with lecture-style content complementing structured activities that layer the social and informational roles of community content, and develop an understanding of comms as more than just “telling people what’s going on” – it’s also about building a sense of belonging among your members and ensuring they are empowered to access and engage with various community resources (whether you or your members created them).
A first step towards certification
CODE is one of two required courses in CSCCE’s Community Manager Certification Program. Alongside Creating Community Playbooks (PBK), it completes a foundation of community strategy (developed in CEF, a prerequisite for certification), effective communications and content, and supportive community documentation.
If you’re interested in enrolling in our Certification Program, please email training@cscce.org – and if you haven’t taken CEF yet, consider signing up today to complete your prerequisite (some exceptions may be possible, e.g., for CEFP graduates).
Behind the scenes of CSCCE’s online training courses
Learning and sharing together is one of CSCCE’s core values, and we believe that in an emerging, dynamic profession such as scientific community engagement there are two complementary learning needs.
- The first is the creation of a shared vocabulary and set of frameworks to guide the way we talk about the work that we do – materials that we develop at CSCCE.
- The second is the need for trusted learning spaces where we can discuss our own challenges and successes and learn from one another’s experiences.
Together, these learning outcomes are best served by running live, online training sessions for cohorts of 20-25 participants.
Coordinating live sessions, offering personalized onboarding pathways, and curating learning materials for each cohort in Canvas and Google workspace, however, means that CSCCE staff put a lot more time and effort into each cohort than might meet the eye: It’s not just the three hours a week we’re with you on Zoom.
To make our trainings as affordable as we can, but still support our operations, we need to make sure that we fill (or almost fill) each cohort we run. This (combined with the fact that we’re a small team and training is not the only thing we do) is why our course scheduling is season by season, and we don’t consistently offer courses repeatedly throughout the year.
Perhaps most importantly, this means that if you’re interested in taking a course with us, we strongly recommend that you sign up when it’s offered, rather than postponing your enrollment indefinitely – we can’t guarantee when a course will run again.
Private cohorts
Over the years, as well as hosting general registration courses, we’ve partnered with various organizations to offer private cohorts – usually scheduled to suit individuals in a certain time zone or to bring together people with shared interests, funding sources, or goals.
Private cohorts can be booked several months in advance, and assume a cohort of at least 20 participants. If you’re interested in talking to us about a private cohort, but you’re unsure about that 20-person minimum, please do still send us an email. Sometimes we can work with you to find a partner, or, for certain timezones, work with you to fill a cohort with individual registrants.
If you’re interested in learning more about a private cohort, or you have any questions at all about CSCCE’s work supporting scientific community engagement, please send us an email: training@cscce.org.