CSCCE Blog Editor, Author at CSCCE

Infrastructure update: CSCCE now self-hosting Canvas LMS

This blog post marks the third update in a series of technology infrastructure changes at CSCCE. At the turn of the year, we moved to using Zeffy for our course sales and registrations. Then in June we introduced you to Credible, our new homegrown digital badging platform. Now, it’s time to tell you about the biggest update yet – we’ve established a self-hosted instance of the open-source learning management system, Canvas.

Canvas, a product of Instructure, is one of several similar platforms that exist to organize materials for organizations who deliver educational training courses. In the US especially, Canvas LMS is a common choice for K-12 and higher education institutions. More often than not, institutions access Canvas through Instructure-hosted instances, an arrangement that offers a lot of technical support….for a fee.

Canvas LMS is also available as an open-source platform; one you can self-host and customize for yourself (if, and this is a big if, you have in-house coding expertise). After several years of contracting with Instructure, we decided it was time to give the open-source route a try. And, thanks to some expert support, we’re happy to share that all CSCCE training courses will now run through our own Canvas instance!

This blog post curates a collection of FAQs about CSCCE’s Canvas transition for our learners. If you are interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes process of standing up a self-hosted instance of Canvas, please contact info@cscce.org and we’d be happy to discuss!

The rationale behind the design of our modular curriculum for STEM community managers – and the opportunities that it affords

Back in 2016, we started work on the first ever curriculum for STEM community managers – initially delivered via our Community Engagement Fellows Program while CSCCE was getting started at AAAS. Right from the outset, we were using the words “modular curriculum”.

In this post, CSCCE’s Director, Lou Woodley unpacks i) what we mean by a modular curriculum, ii) how different modules can create different “flavors” of learner experience to retain engagement across the overall curriculum, and iii) what benefits and opportunities come by designing in a modular way.

We’ve updated our consultancy pages – now’s the time to get in touch about H1 2027!

For many STEM organizations and projects, the funding landscape has shifted dramatically over the past couple of years. Collectively, we’re grappling with changes in the stability and longevity of grants and funding organizations, as well as the widespread adoption of AI and what that means for how research and community engagement are carried out, and more broadly the impacts this has on the STEM workforce.

A photos of a group of people working through a challenge using colored sticky notes stuck to a table. — Image credit: CSCCE

Congratulations to our newest CSCCE-Certified community managers (Q3 2026)!

Each quarter, we celebrate the participants who recently completed the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. As a modular program, individuals graduate on their own timelines, and this quarter we’re celebrating one of our earliest registrants, Kevin Gott (Computer Systems Engineer at NERSC) alongside longtime CSCCE collaborator Maria Doyle (Community Manager for Bioconductor).

In this blog post, you can read more about Kevin and Maria’s journey through the program. If learning more about their training path inspires you to consider pursuing certification with us, please send an email to training@cscce.org (please note: completing Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is a prerequisite for the program, and registration is currently open for our next cohort!).

MEET ALL CSCCE-CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGERS

CSCCE Canvas user survey update 1: An update to our offboarding policy

Since 2023, CSCCE has used Canvas LMS as a way of streamlining course delivery for trainers and providing a consistent learner experience in terms of accessing materials and assignments. This year, we’ve been taking some time to assess the sustainability of our technology stack (see earlier posts about our new Credible digital badging platform and our switch to Zeffy for training registrations), and Canvas is next on our list!

When we first introduced Canvas, we did not have an offboarding policy, which over time has resulted in an ever-growing roster of past learners with access to the platform. This has created administrative and financial costs for us, but before we made any move to restrict access, we wanted to learn more about how our course participants actually use the platform.

So, in early August 2026, we distributed a user survey to just over 200 of our past learners, focusing on participants in our multi-week, general registration courses as well as those learners who went on to join the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program.

We were interested both in how they used Canvas while a course was in session (to navigate to course materials and homework assignments), and whether they then continued to access materials via Canvas after the course ended. We also asked some additional questions about community programming and ongoing opportunities to get involved at CSCCE.

This blog post shares a brief summary of what we learned about Canvas use from the survey, and how we’re using that information to update our offboarding policy. We’ll share more about what we learned from the additional sections of the survey in a future blog post.

Before we go any further, we want to stress upfront that all past CSCCE learners have ongoing access to course materials via CSCCE’s Google Drive – access that will NOT be going away as we institute our new Canvas access policy.

If you have any questions about the contents of this post, especially if you are a past learner uncertain about how to access your course materials, please contact training@cscce.org.

Infrastructure update: CSCCE launches Credible, a new digital badging platform

We’re continuing to make some updates to our technical infrastructure as existing tools change their features and pricing plans. We wrote recently about how we’ve moved to Zeffy for training registration and now we’re excited to share that we’ve moved our digital badging to a new homegrown platform, Credible.

Congratulations to our newest CSCCE certified community manager!

Each quarter, we celebrate the participants who recently completed the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. As a modular program, individuals graduate on their own timelines, and this quarter we said “congratulations” to Tajuddeen Gwadabe, who joined the program while supporting the Catalyst Project through OLS, and since moved to a new position at the Masakhane Research Foundation.

In this blog post, you can read more about Taj’s journey through the program, which learners can personalize to meet their needs and interests, and learn about Quarterly Skills Share sessions (one of the components of the Certification Program). If you’re interested in learning more about the program, or enrolling in it yourself, please send an email to info@cscce.org.

MEET ALL CSCCE-CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGERS

How did the pilot Birdaro training program go? Feedback from participants – and our learning program design

For 12 weeks at the end of 2025, CSCCE hosted a pilot cohort of a new online training program for leaders in scientific open source projects. The Birdaro training program, funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, set out to address some of the human challenges related to the sustainability of OS projects and how they scale; interpersonal dynamics, documentation debt, governance, and more.

VISIT THE BIRDARO WEBSITE

As we worked to recruit an initial cohort of OS leaders, we asked them what their most pressing needs were, and responsively designed a pilot training module that focused on governance and documentation.

We received applications to participate from twice as many projects than we could accept in just a short period of time. We take this as a sign that there is a large appetite for this kind of training in the STEM OS ecosystem – and in a future blog post we plan on sharing more about our vision for Birdaro as a series of related training modules and collaborations that result in new resources to benefit the community at large.

But, for now, we wanted to share how the pilot cohort went, and in what ways participants found value in the program. If you would like to talk to us about Birdaro, including suggestions for future sponsors of the program, please reach out to info@birdaro.org.

“This training helps build an understanding of the important social aspects to technical work. The specific regard to distributed team work and coordination in open source technical projects is unique.” – Birdaro 2025 participant

The Birdaro training program: Working with OS projects to reduce their documentation debt (Part 2)

This post originally appeared on the Birdaro blog. Birdaro, which is powered by CSCCE, offers leadership development for open source projects. In 2025, we ran a pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program that focused on governance and documentation in open source. This post is one of several reflecting on the outcomes of the pilot cohort.

From September-December 2025, we worked with 24 scientific open source projects through the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program. This multi-week training module, funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, focused on governance and documentation in open source (OS), and included training sessions facilitated by CSCCE staff and discussion forums for participants to learn from each other.

This post is the second in a 2-part series (read part 1) focusing on how the Birdaro training program supported participants in creating community playbooks – a proactive formula for curating documentation and making it available (and usable!) to the audiences who need it. If you haven’t read the first post already, we suggest you take a read to gain some more context about Birdaro, playbooks, and the different ways they can positively impact OS projects.

*Projects highlighted in this blog post: CIB Mango Tree, The R Project, RSpace, and The Dataverse Project.*

The Birdaro training program: Working with OS projects to reduce their documentation debt (Part 1)

Addressing documentation debt through playbook creation

The choice to focus on governance and documentation for this pilot cohort was informed by our understanding of participant needs (60% of applicants identified creating contributor guides and team playbooks as a priority training area), as well as a broader appreciation of the challenges facing the scientific open-source ecosystem.