Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) terms Archives

Onboarding pathways

The series of actions usually taken by a community manager or community champions to welcome new members to a community. These can include sharing information about community programming and the community platform as well as a welcome call and/or welcome survey to learn more about the new member’s needs and interests. Onboarding typically consists of several phases as discussed in CSCCE’s Nurturing Online Communities (NOC) course (see scaffolding).

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2025) CSCCE Glossary: Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals. Woodley, Pratt, and Santistevan doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15359413

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a shared environment in which multiple communities may be working on related projects and activities to advance a particular agenda, such as the adoption of open science practices. These communities may have funders, members, clients and/or users in common, and may seek to intentionally align their missions and identify opportunities for collaboration rather than competition.

Note that this is distinct from a software E/ecosystem which is not discussed in the CEF course.

Community of communities

Some communities are in fact a gathering of representatives from other communities who are coming together at a meta-level to advance a particular agenda in their shared ecosystem. Characteristics of these communities might include monthly meetings with limited engagement between those synchronizing sessions, defined and limited membership, and members who belong to more than one community and may be able to act as a bridge between them, sharing news and resources in both directions.

Power

One of four elements that CSCCE emphasizes when considering a community. The relative influence and agency an individual may have in a group, which may be based on a combination of implicit and explicit factors. CSCCE emphasizes the importance of recognizing, naming and, wherever possible, counteracting power imbalances. While communities may be places where power imbalances can be temporarily equalized, e.g., as community members work together in CO-CREATE mode, members should recognize that this may or may not be true in other contexts in which they work (see culture).

Purpose

One of four elements that CSCCE emphasizes when considering a community. Community members may have a single, shared purpose that the community is aiming to address together, or there may be multiple, related shared purposes within a community. As a community manager, identifying the shared purpose and related activities to support achieving it is crucial. A purpose should be specific rather than too general and precise but not so narrow that it stifles a sense of belonging or member agency e.g., “Advance STEM education” is too broad a purpose, and “Advocate for methodology X at Y institution” may be too narrow. “Sharing resources and knowledge for educators around open education approaches to undergraduate biochemistry education” might be appropriate in this example.

Culture

One of four elements that CSCCE emphasizes when considering a community. The shared values, behaviors, rituals, and artifacts of a group. A community can be thought of as a vessel or container for culture and can enable new behaviors to be established and practiced outside of members’ day-to-day contexts. This may then support extension of the new behaviors to those contexts, something Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder refer to in an organizational setting as a “double-knit knowledge organization.”

Belonging

One of four elements that CSCCE emphasizes when considering a community. The feeling a community member has that they are somewhere where their presence, identity, and contributions are valued.

Content strategy

The why (desired outcomes), how (platforms, content types, and communications channels), when (timeline), and who (defined audiences) of your communications plan. Your strategy should also include a plan for measuring success, and how you will gather the data for these metrics.

See also: Platform, Content type, Communications plan

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2025) CSCCE Glossary: Designing community-engaged content. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10277480

Content calendar / editorial calendar

A day-by-day, week-by-week, or month-by-month plan of when you are going to share content with your community and via what channel. It can also be used to decide who will create and who will share the content. You can create a content calendar in a spreadsheet, or task management tool such as Trello or Asana.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2025) CSCCE Glossary: Designing community-engaged content. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10277480

Content planning

A strategy and accompanying processes to establish themes, templates, and timelines for effectively sharing content with community members and external audiences. This may involve collaboration with colleagues and/or community members, and may form part of a larger campaign.

See also: Audience, (Communications) campaign

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2025) CSCCE Glossary: Designing community-engaged content. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10277480