online trainings Archives

April Community Call Recap – The impact of short-form professional development training in STEM

At this month’s community call, we were talking about the impact of short-form professional development trainings – focusing not only on how individuals use what they learned during a training in their day to day work, but also considering how such trainings may result in changes at the level of the STEM ecosystem by affecting common practices and connecting learners across projects and organizations.

The call included an overview of the Bicycle Principles, a framework for designing and evaluation inclusive and engaging trainings, as well as presentations about two different methods for gathering and analyzing impact.

In this blog post, you’ll find recordings of the three presentations from the call, as well as a brief summary of what each talk focused on. Do join us for our call next month, Wednesday 29 May at 12pm EDT / 4pm UTC, when we’ll be taking a closer look at the application and utility of community playbooks (a.k.a. Collaboration guides, lab handbooks, and more). Add to calendar.

Three bicycles stand on a set of concrete steps, with long grass on either side. The bicycle in front is pale blue with white wheels, the one behind is white with black wheels, and the one in back is black with yellow wheels. — What do bicycles have to do with short-form training? Read on to find out! Photo by Solé Bicycles on Unsplash

Evaluation project underway to assess the impact of CSCCE’s foundational training, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals

At CSCCE, one of the ways we support scientific community managers is through professional development training courses and workshops. Our 8-week online course Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is our longest-running training option, and has reached more than 250 community managers over the past three years across a total of 15 cohorts (with another currently in session).

Two of these CEF cohorts were private offerings for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), and late last year they asked if we could assess the mid- to long-term impact of CEF training on the individuals that took the course. CZI, like us, were particularly curious about the impacts of the course on the learners – as well as the wider impacts on their organizations and communities, and beyond in the STEM ecosystem more generally. And so, in December 2023 we surveyed graduates from 12 general registration CEF cohorts, 2 CZI cohorts, and a cohort that ran in an Australia-friendly time zone.

In this blog post, we share a little more about what we’re hoping to learn as we start analyzing the data, as well as how we’ll be sharing the outcomes of this study in a couple of months’ time. If you have any questions, or you’re interested in engaging us as consultants on your own evaluation program, please reach out to info@www.cscce.org.

Preparing for large, multi-stakeholder collaborations – a two-part CSCCE workshop

In May 2023, CSCCE’s Director, Lou Woodley, and Director of Learning, Camille Santistevan, ran a two-part workshop as part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)’s Central Science Training Series. The series included training and discussion on topics related to leadership, career development, science communication, and more, with a range of experts sharing their knowledge and experiences.

The workshops Lou and Camille developed, which ran for 2 hours each on 10 and 24 May, focused on preparing for large, multi-stakeholder collaborations, with a particular focus on the beginnings of projects as a crucial time for establishing collaborative relationships, understanding expectations, and defining working norms.

In this blog post, we share a little more about the workshops. If you’d be interested in taking these workshops as an individual, or contracting with us to offer them in your organization, please let us know by emailing training@www.cscce.org.

The POSE Training Program begins: Spring 2023 pilot session

CSCCE is currently partnering with Karthik Ram at UC Berkeley on an NSF grant to provide a training program for awardees of NSF’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems program. The pilot version of the POSE Training Program began in April 2023, with more than 60 POSE awardees joining Training Program staff for a six-week program of workshops and webinars. You can find out more about the pilot syllabus on the pose.training website.

In this blog post, we share more about how we onboarded participants to the pilot program, and how we are gathering their feedback to ensure future iterations of the program are meeting the needs of leaders in open-source ecosystem creation and sustainability.

We’re hiring: Junior Trainer and Curriculum Assistant

The CSCCE team is in a period of growth and transition, and we’re excited to be able to open up this junior role on our training team!

If you are interested in honing your training skills, learning the behind the scenes workings of Canvas LMS, and immersing yourself in the world of community building in STEM, then maybe you are CSCCE’s next Junior Trainer and Curriculum Assistant.

View full job description

New CSCCE mini-workshop series on virtual events launches 20 July 2021

Starting this July, we’re piloting a new 90-minute mini-workshop format as part of our expanding professional development curriculum to support community managers in STEM. Our first series will focus on planning and facilitating virtual events, with five standalone mini-workshops for you to choose from. Take one or take them all!

In this blog post, we answer any questions you might have about the virtual events series, but if we’ve missed something, please email us at: info@www.cscce.org.

Welcome to Jenny East – CSCCE’s newest trainer!

We’re excited that the CSCCE team continues to grow, and this week we welcome Jenny East onboard as CSCCE’s newest trainer. Jenny will join lead trainer Camille Santistevan, along with center director Lou Woodley, in developing and facilitating CSCCE’s modular, online trainings and client-facing support.

About Jenny

Before joining the CSCCE team, Jenny spent over five years as an outreach coordinator for Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University, USA. In this role, she worked to educate recreational boaters about preventing water pollution and how to reduce their impact on the local ecosystem, a mission she undertook through the development of materials and events to engage boating communities within Oregon. Her position also included training staff at local marinas so that they had the skills and resources they needed, as they also had a role in supporting healthy waterways.

CSCCE receives funding from Sloan Foundation to support transition to online collaboration

We’re delighted to announce that CSCCE has received a $125k grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to continue our work supporting the transition to online collaboration that’s been accelerated due to the global pandemic.

In this post, we outline what we plan to deliver thanks to this grant – and we indicate the emerging opportunities to participate or collaborate with CSCCE that will result.

Supporting a rapid shift in norms

The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has forced a sudden transition to online meetings and online work spaces for which many scientific organizations and communities were painfully under-prepared. Although discussions were underway in many organizations to improve access to conferences and events by offering virtual options, few had begun to implement them at scale. As a result, many organizations are now frantically trying to adapt, while lacking the in-house expertise, access to reliable information, and peer support necessary for staff to succeed.

CSCCE online modular trainings: Registration is now open for our Winter courses

This Fall we launched the first in a new series of CSCCE online training modules. In this blog post, we explain the courses and when they’ll be offered again, who we hope will take them, and how they impact our other programming, including a potential CEFP2021 cohort. If you have any questions about anything in this post, please reach out to us: info@www.cscce.org.

What are CSCCE online modular trainings?

Our online modular trainings distill years of experience and expertise in building successful communities in STEM into courses that fit into your busy schedule. Each training runs for six weeks, and involves two live sessions a week (totaling 2.5 hours) along with around 90 minutes of homework to complete each week.