CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program Archives

How Canvas LMS supports participation in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program

As we announce a round of updates to our Community Manager Certification Program following the initial two pilot cohorts, we’re also sharing some additional information about how we deliver the program so that it’s consistently a high quality experience for learners.

In a previous post, we pulled back the curtain to describe the stages of going from piloting a training to converting it to a “steady state” offering with all the required internal and documentation and templates, as well as final versions of all learner-facing materials. In this post, we go deeper into one key piece of technical infrastructure that we’ve adopted over the past couple of years: the learning management system, Canvas.

Canvas is a powerful online platform that allows us to curate training materials and share them with our learners in a consistent, recognizable way that looks and feels like all other CSCCE outputs. It also affords the ability for learners to come back later to revisit course materials – something that’s especially useful as we build out a program as interconnected as our certification journey!

So let’s take a look at how we have adopted Canvas – and the ways in which it supports program delivery. If, after reading, you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to training@cscce.org

A behind-the-scenes look at how we take a “pilot” training and consolidate it into its final, “steady state” form

If you’ve been following the growth of CSCCE’s online training program over the past few years, you may have noticed that every time we launch something new, we call it a “pilot.” This is because we know that the “v1” of anything needs feedback and iteration to make it better. But what happens after we pilot something? How do we take a training through to a high-fidelity, steady state version that we can deliver consistently time and again?

In this blog post we pull back the curtain on that process of moving to steady state delivery to make visible some of the less obvious infrastructure work we’ve been engaging in over the past few years. And we explain why we’ve made that investment and how it supports us in continuing to deliver trainings that are engaging, effective – and reproducible!

Updates to the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program including a “pay-as-you-go” option!

The CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program launched around 18 months ago with the goal of being THE in-depth, professional development program for STEM community managers.

Since launch, we’ve welcomed almost 30 STEM community managers into the program, delivered 2 go-arounds of our CODE and PBK courses, 15 Mini-workshops, and 4 Quarterly Skills Share sessions. In that time, we’ve also sought regular feedback to understand any modifications we might make to best support our learners. Today we’re sharing some of the updates we’ve made which together provide a more flexible way to enroll, onboard, and pay for the program!

If you have any questions about anything in this post, please reach out to training@cscce.org, or join us on Wednesday, 26 March at 12pm EDT / 4pm UTC for our monthly community call. We’ll be sharing a brief overview the program, demo-ing CSCCE’s trainings in Canvas, and holding space for questions about the program.

Nurturing Online Communities (NOC)

Building and nurturing a community in an online environment comes with specific needs and challenges. This eight-week course is designed with community managers of scientific communities of practice in mind, and will explore a variety of social science claims about how people behave in online communities to inform actions that you might take to support increased engagement, commitment, and constructive behavior.

In this seminar-style course, participants will engage with instructors and each other in regular discussions, guided by the course textbook, Building Successful Online Communities by Kraut and Resnick. The course will cover 6 topics related to managing online communities and each week we will review the corresponding chapter of the textbook, focusing on key themes identified by staff, and work together on a case study to apply the concepts. Later the same week, learners will spend a 90-minute Co-Lab working in breakouts on a CSCCE-designed activity to apply a translation of the core concepts to their own community, followed by a debrief.

Our fall offering of Nurturing Online Communities (NOC25F) will run on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning Tuesday, 30 September until Friday, 14 November 2025.

The key dates are:

Tuesday lessons: 30 September; 7, 14, 21, 28 October; 4,11 November at 12pm – 1:30pm ET / 4/5pm – 5/6:30pm UTC*
Thursday Co-Labs: 3,10,17, 24, 31 October; 7,14 November at 12pm – 1:30pm ET / 4/5pm – 5/6:30pm UTC*

*Note that daylight savings may affect the timing of live sessions for those outside the US in the final week two weeks of the course)

Registration deadline: Friday, 5 September, 2025

Mini-workshop | An introduction to project management for scientists

This two hour session provides an overview of the concepts and approaches scientists can use in managing their collaborative projects. You will leave the session able to describe what a project is and the relationship between projects and operations. We’ll also discuss the three types of project and their relationship to uncertainty and complexity. Finally, we will explore the competencies of an effective project leader, whatever their job title. Please note that we also offer a two-day Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp that significantly expands on the topics covered in this Mini-workshop, and sets you up to put many of these principles into practice using HBR’s Project Canvas.

Price: $150

Register here: SOLD OUT – Second session added on 20 March 2025

Mini-Workshop | Selecting supplementary tools for virtual meetings and events

Community managers regularly use online tools to support the needs of community members in virtual meetings and events. With so many possible needs to solve for, and so many potential online tools to use – how can you quickly determine which tools to explore and then use? In this Mini-workshop, you will apply CSCCE’s BASICS framework and SCORE method to determine an appropriate tool for a provided use case scenario. You will also test two online tools in a “sandbox” setting to explore functionality and usability, preparing you to select and implement tools for your own virtual meetings and events.

Price: $150

Register: 6 November Mini-Workshop: OnlineTools24

Registration deadline: Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Mini-Workshop | Designing for effective decision-making during virtual meetings

Meetings and virtual events often involve asking attendees to make decisions. Decision-making invokes numerous considerations, including how to negotiate power dynamics, empower everyone to express their opinions, and actually reach the outcome(s) you desire. In this Mini-workshop, you will explore four broad decision-making modes (authority rule, consultation, voting, and consensus) and then use the PACT framework to plan a decision-making process. You will leave prepared to deploy decision-making processes in a way that invites all attendees at your meetings and events to contribute.

Price: $150

Register here: 9 October Mini-Workshop: Decisions24

Registration deadline: Wednesday, 2 October 2024

Mini-workshop | Working with volunteers

Community managers are often trying to create spaces that support group learning and self-expression to build something members of the community couldn’t create alone – and this almost always includes incorporating volunteer contributions. In this Mini-workshop, we’ll explore common community manager concerns related to working with volunteers. We’ll discuss how to flip the narrative from self-doubt and scarcity to center volunteers in a way that empowers and supports them in working together and builds your confidence as a community organizer. We will discuss making contributor pathways visible so that work gets done, while being respectful of members’ different contexts. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking things such as “I feel really self-conscious about asking for contributions from our volunteers – are we being too demanding?” and “I know that different members in our community need different things, but I don’t know where to start,” then this discussion-based workshop is for you.

Registration is now closed.