Scaffolding

The supportive information, activities, and processes that address barriers to member participation and ensure that all members can access and engage in community programming.

Citation: Center  for  Scientific  Collaboration  and  Community  Engagement.  (2022)  The  CSCCE Community Participation Model – Scaffolding to lower barriers to participation in STEM communities. Woodley, Pratt, and Santistevan doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6078934

Multi-modal programming

Different members of your community have different participation preferences, which may also vary over time and depend on current  topics. These preferences  might relate to the ways they wish to engage with information (e.g., written vs. spoken), the amount of time they have to spend on community activities, or the skills they bring to the community. Multi-modal programming, as described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model, recognizes these factors, offering multiple different ways for members to engage at varying levels.

CO-CREATE mode

Most common within established communities, this mode describes how members work together WITHIN the community to CO-CREATE something that they couldn’t do before. For example, community members might organize an event together, form working groups to push the work of the community forward, or establish new communication channels such as a podcast.

This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802

COLLABORATE mode

In this mode members of a community COLLABORATE with one another, often with the community manager providing scaffolding for success but taking a less visible coordinating role. Such collaborations might include co-authoring a white paper or blog post and may involve infrastructure created or maintained by the community manager, but used more independently by community members. For example, there may be general guidelines for writing a guest blog post that the community manager has created, but co-authors work together without the community manager to write the post.

This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802

CONTRIBUTE mode

In this mode, members are empowered to CONTRIBUTE in some way. Often these contributions are invited or facilitated by a community manager, especially in the early stages of a community, and might include presenting on a webinar, writing a guest blog post, or sharing resources on a community platform. One function of the contribute mode is to enable members to discover the skills and interests of others in the group by making knowledge more visible.

This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802

CONVEY/CONSUME mode

Groups usually begin in this phase, with a community manager or communications professional CONVEYing information for members to CONSUME independently of one another. This might look like a regular newsletter to an email list, social media posts to followers, or other broadcast communications. 

This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802

Community champion

An emergent leadership role within a community in which a community member takes on more responsibility for the success, sustainability, and/or running of the community.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2021) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – Exploring the Champion mode. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5275270

See related links for additional information.