Community scaffolding –
supporting member participation and community health

This month’s newsletter is packed with resources to help you build scaffolding for your community that lowers the barriers to member participation and supports multiple modes of engagement. It’s an essential complement to community programming to create inclusive, healthy communities.

For more about what we mean by scaffolding check out our newest guidebook, the third part in a series exploring CSCCE’s Community Participation Model. We explain what scaffolding is, why it matters, and how you can use it to support your members in becoming more engaged in your community.

We’ve also spent some time over the last few weeks updating our own scaffolding, particularly our onboarding materials and technical guides. We’ve made these documents available under a CC BY license, so you can adapt them for your own needs, with attribution.

And as a final gentle nudge to get that scaffolding made, on our community call today (Wednesday, 16 February at 4pm UTC / 11am EST) we’re hosting a co-working session. We’ll kick the call off with a discussion about the importance of scaffolding in building healthy and inclusive communities, and then spend some time in breakout rooms making the things you need (think welcome tipsheets, onboarding surveys, technical guides, and more) – with Google doc templates provided to help you get started.

In this month’s newsletter:

Download a free copy of our latest guidebook on scaffolding
Adapt our CC BY scaffolding templates for your own use
Join today’s community call
Check out the job opening for a community manager at rOpenSci

Registration now open for Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals

You can now register for the Spring cohort of our foundational community management training. Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals is an 8-week all virtual experience designed with new and experienced community managers in mind. It introduces core frameworks, concepts, and vocabulary in community management tailored to the STEM ecosystem. More information about the course structure and topics covered can be found on our website.

Resources

Scaffolding for healthy communities: New CSCCE guidebook

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.

Read the blog post

CC BY scaffolding templates and other resources

From our newest resource page you can download five core pieces of CSCCE scaffolding and use them as templates for your community. They include our member onboarding survey, our Slack quickstart guide, and our guidelines for special interest group co-chairs. The page also includes related blog posts and guidebooks.

Visit the page

Community calls

February’s community call: Creating scaffolding to support your community

Our February call will focus on scaffolding — onboarding documentation, how-to manuals, and tip sheets that keep everyone within an organization or community on the same page. Join us today, Wednesday, 16 February at 4pm UTC /11am EST to learn more about scaffolding, and spend some time co-working on your own materials with fellow STEM community managers.

Click here to join

January’s community call recap: Project management tools for community managers

Our January call focused on project management tools and how they can streamline collaborations and improve efficiency. On the blog, we share a summary of the call, as well as video clips of presentations from Lou Woodley (CSCCE; describing the tool Trello), Alycia Crall (The Carpentries; describing Asana), Anne Heberger Marino (Lean-To Collaborations, describing Mural), and Ellen Dow (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, describing Todoist).

Read the recap

JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Community Manager at rOpenSci

rOpenSci seeks a Community Manager to support and build their vibrant and inclusive community of researchers and software engineers and help expand the scope and impact of their work in open science. rOpenSci is looking for a new community manager to help consolidate their existing efforts in reproducible research, and ensure they’re supporting an increasingly diverse membership. You will help new and experienced members collaborate with each other and contribute to communal projects such as software peer-review, R infrastructure development, and internationalization. You will also play a key role in implementing rOpenSci’s new project empowering community leaders from historically excluded groups in collaboration with CSCCE.

View the full job description

Content in this section is provided by CSCCE clients and is included at the discretion of CSCCE. If you are interested in sharing employment opportunities, events, or other sponsored content in our monthly newsletter, please contact info@www.cscce.org. We reserve the right to not include content that does not complement the mission of our organization.