research Archives

July’s community call: Adding to the collection of CSCCE community profiles

Our July community call focused on one of CSCCE’s ongoing research projects: Creating scientific community profiles. We heard from Lou Woodley and Katie Pratt, who led the project, as well as three of the scientific community managers who took part in the project. In this blog post we briefly recap why we’re doing this work, what’s coming in the next few months, and share videos of the three community manager presentations.

If you are interested in creating a profile for your community, please let us know by filling out this short form.

A selection of some of our newest community profiles. Image credit: CSCCE

Announcing a second collection of scientific community profiles! A year in the life of 14 STEM communities

This week we published 14 new community profiles in our growing collection that describes different STEM communities. Each profile is a free-to-download infographic that provides a snapshot of the community’s structure and programming, as well as a look at its outputs, challenges, and plans for the future.

These profiles are part of a research project we began last year, to provide a resource to describe and discuss STEM communities – and inspire community managers, senior managers and funders alike about the possibilities of community-based projects. In addition to 13 profiles created in 2020, we are conducting a meta-analysis to investigate trends observed across the dataset, as well as building out additional resources to complement the collection.

Some of the profiles included in our newest collection. Image credit: CSCCE

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.

First Birthday Series: The future of CSCCE’s community of practice

For our “First Birthday Series” of blog posts, we took some time to reflect on CSCCE’s community of practice, which turned one year old on 21 October 2020. In this final post in the series, jointly authored by Communications Director, Katie Pratt and Center Director, Lou Woodley, we look back on CSCCE’s seed funding, how the Center is supported now, and our plans for a financially sustainable future.

Previous posts in this series outlined the community “by the numbers,” delved a little deeper into our programming offerings, discussed our resources and the importance of co-creating together, and summarized how our working groups and special interest groups operate and further our mission. Together, these five blog posts celebrate year one of CSCCE’s community of practice, and look ahead to the future of the Center.

CSCCE’s Community Profiles Project: How did we do it?

In out last blog post, we announced the release of 13 new “Community Profiles,” created by CSCCE staff in collaboration with independent contractor, Sara Kobilka. In this post, which was co-authored with Sara, we delve a little deeper into our methodology.

Survey Design

As we began the survey design process we worked to balance multiple considerations. First, we wanted something as complete as possible. Lou created the first version of the survey with the goal of collecting information about communities that scientific community managers had previously expressed interest in learning about – such as funding models, staffing, and online collaboration tools. At the same time, we didn’t want to make the survey too onerous for community managers to complete.

CSCCE’s Community Profiles Project: First round of profiles now out!

Today we’re launching the first outputs from a project that we’ve been working on this year to better characterize communities in science – and to support scientific community managers, their leadership, and funders to meaningfully compare some of the current activities taking place across the broad landscape of STEM community projects.

The CSCCE community profiles project has resulted in the creation of an initial collection of 13 community profiles – two page PDFs capturing core features of each community from staffing to programming and funding sources. We collected the data using a custom, detailed survey and then translated what we found to a standardized profile template, which was specifically created for this project. The resulting profiles, which incorporate CSCCE’s own frameworks for describing communities and community member engagement, allow easy comparison between different scientific communities.

In this post we introduce the rationale for the project and highlight the first 13 profiles. In Thursday’s post, we outline how the project was carried out.

Research

CSCCE is primarily concerned with the role of community engagement management within scientific teams, groups and communities – the human infrastructure for collaboration. Our research work focuses on better characterizing this role and its impacts.

We explore these topics via grant-funded research, as well as through the project teams of our Community Engagement Fellowship Program and via our Visiting Scholars Program.

The intention of our research work is to provide practically applicable knowledge that can assist community managers, their organizations, funders, evaluators and others interested in this emerging role.

If you would like to discuss our ongoing research, please email info@cscce.org.

Research projects

A study of online scientific and scholarly communities for broadening participation in STEM
STEM netweaver dialogues – exploring transformative STEM learning networks
State of Scientific Community Management – 2016 landscape survey
Scientific community engagement manager skill sets
Ambassadors and Advocates in scientific community programs
- What do ambassador programs look like?
- What motivates ambassadors to contribute to their communities?

Current research

A study of online scientific and scholarly communities for broadening participation in STEM

In collaboration with Dr Lisa Elliot at Rochester Institute of Technology, CSCCE’s director Lou Woodley is working to answer three research questions about online communities for broadening participation in STEM.

Grant Abstract

NSF INCLUDES EAGER – award number #1834978
This project is conducting exploratory research about two currently existing online scientific and scholarly communities (OSSCs), each of which was established to broaden participation in STEM in identified target communities: (a) the NSF INCLUDES Open Forum (NSF-1748345); and (b) the Deaf STEM Community Alliance’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Virtual Academic Community (NSF-1127955).

The goals of the proposed study are:
1) to apply the information systems theory of the life cycle of online communities and the theory of social capital to understand the dynamics of two NSF-sponsored OSSCs that are focused on broadening participation in STEM;
2) to strengthen NSF INCLUDES Network activities with best practices and lessons learned from the project.

The project is conducting comparative analyses of the OSSCs:
1) to determine life-cycle stages of the OSSCs;
2) to examine leadership and engagement activities of community engagement managers in each community and how they evolve over time; and
3) to explore the perceptions of community members.

WhY IS this OF INTEREST to SCIENTIFIC Community managers?

Communities often progress along a lifecycle from inception to maturity and possibly then decline or fragment into new communities. Little has been done to look at how the lifecycle maps to online communities of practice in science and specifically with communities focused on broadening participation – which is what the first part of this study is looking at.

Community managers help to steward their communities through the different stages of the lifecycle and their roles and activities change as a result. Part two of the study is looking at how the four community managers involved in the study use their skills over time.

Finally, online communities can be thought of as places where social capital is distributed and accumulated. This study seeks to explore what social capital looks like in the context of the two communities of practice and what role community managers may be playing in its distribution.

Dissemination OF RESULTS SO FAR

Dr Lisa Elliot and Lou Woodley presented a poster at the NSF INCLUDES National Network convening in May 2019.
Dr Elliot was an invited panelist in a panel discussion facilitated by Lou Woodley at the AAAS Annual Meeting in February 2019 focused on “Culturally responsive online communities of practice”

STEM netweaver dialogues – exploring transformative STEM learning networks

Netweaving is a term used in STEM education for the brokering of relationships between stakeholders and has many similarities to community management. Lou Woodley participated in a research study led by the Netweaver Network in 2019. Here’s a description of the study from their website:

“During the last half of 2019, Network of STEM Education Centers (NSEC) convened three 90-min network learning dialogues with four leading experts in network facilitation, systems change, and STEM education reform (Julie Risien, Lou Woodley, Ann Austin and Emily Miller). Our focus was how to design, create, facilitate, and manage transformative STEM learning networks. The topics were:

– Maintaining Connection for Transformation
– Transformative Assessment
– Transformative Capacity Building

These dialogues are being analyzed in conjunction with a parallel set of discussions among social-ecological netweavers to advance netweaving practice and identify next steps…We are analyzing the results of these dialogues in order to identify the insights and identify possible next steps to support a STEM netweaving community of practice.”