Scaffolding for healthy communities: New CSCCE guidebook out today!

Today we released the third part in our series of guidebooks that explore CSCCE’s Community Participation Model. It focuses on scaffolding – the items that complement programming to lower barriers to participation and support multiple modes of member engagement in a community. 

You can download a copy of the guidebook for free here, and read on for an overview of what scaffolding is and why you need it. 

Photo by Reto Simonet on Unsplash
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New CSCCE resource explores the role of champions in building and sustaining communities in STEM

Our latest guidebook explores the importance of supporting and encouraging the work of community champions, emergent leaders who take on additional roles within a community to ensure its success. The guidebook builds on our Community Participation Model, which describes how community members engage with community programming and the ways community managers can design activities and events that meet members where they are. It forms part two in a growing series of foundational resources, with more to come later this year.

What is a community champion? 

We define a community champion as: 

​​​​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.

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July’s Community Call: CSCCE community profiles round two

This month, we’re showcasing a new collection of community profiles on our community call, and have invited four of the community managers who took part in this project to share their experiences. Join us on Wednesday, 21 July 2021 via Zoom, and read on for more details about the call. 

Join us to learn more about research into STEM communities. Image credit: the CSCCE. 

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Building Research Software Communities: Running a workshop on community building and sustainability for the research software community

On Wednesday 17th March 2021, around 50 individuals from a wide range of different countries and time zones came together for the first of two 2-hour sessions that formed the “Building Research Software Communities: How to increase engagement in your community” workshop.

Run as part of the SORSE Series of Online Research Software Events, this workshop brought together an organising team consisting of 3 members of the international research software community and a group of speakers including experts in community engagement and sustainability. In this blog post we provide an overview of the workshop and some of the key messages and outcomes.

This guest blog post, by Michelle Barker, Jeremy Cohen, Daniel Nüst, Toby Hodges, Serah Njambi Rono, and Lou Woodley, first appeared on the Imperial College London’s Research Software Engineering blog.

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CSCCE collaborates on launch of new Carpentries program for community champions

Over the past months, CSCCE Director Lou Woodley has been working with the Carpentries to develop a new community champions program, “The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program.” The first module of the program, which Lou co-authored, aims to empower community members to influence Carpentries programming by channeling community feedback to leadership teams.

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August Community Call Recap: Meeting members where they are to build a successful scientific community

Our August 2020 community call coincided with the release of the CSCCE Community Participation Model, a cornerstone of our Community Engagement Fellowship Program training but until now not publicly available. To celebrate, we invited two CEFP alumni to share their experiences using the model to inform how they think about, and engage, the members of their communities. 

In this blog post, we’ll recap a few takeaways from the call, and we share each of the presentations as standalone videos for you to watch at your convenience. Plus, we share what we’re cooking up for next month’s call! 

The CSCCE Community Participation Model

Lou Woodley introduces the CSCCE Community Participation Model.

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August’s Community Call: Member engagement and the CSCCE Community Participation Model

August’s community call will take place on Wednesday, 26 August at 6pm UTC (2pm US Eastern Time) and will focus on how community managers can describe the different ways in which members engage within a community – and whether those modes align with the overall objectives of the community. 

We’ll unveil a new resource, the CSCCE Community Participation Model, and hear from two CEFP alumnae who, after learning about the model in our Fellowship training, used it to inform their work. Join us to learn more and add your voice to the discussion. 

Join August’s call to learn more about engaging your members in ways that work for them. Image credit: CSCCE
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