survey Archives

Understanding the Advocacy and Ambassador Program Landscape

In the latest post by out Community Engagement Fellows, CEFP2017 fellows Melanie Binder and Rosanna Volchok catch us up on what their project team has been doing to better understand … Continue reading “Understanding the Advocacy and Ambassador Program Landscape”

In the latest post by out Community Engagement Fellows, CEFP2017 fellows Melanie Binder and Rosanna Volchok catch us up on what their project team has been doing to better understand the current landscape of community advocate programs in science and technology.

Posted by Melanie Binder, Community Engagement Manager and Social Media Coordinator for the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), and Rosanna Volchok, Network Engagement Manager at the New York Academy of Sciences

Two men holding cameras walk through a field. One points ahead — “Explorers” by Darren Flinders under CC BY 2.0

The goal of our CEFP project team is to gain a stronger understanding of what makes a successful advocacy/ambassador program for scientific communities. As a follow up on Allen’s blog post describing who we, the Advocacy Ninjas, are this post provides an update on what we have been working on since then.

One of the initial challenges we faced as a team was deciding on the final output and format of our research findings. For example, did we want to publish a paper, produce a report, or present at a conference? Once we chose the final format–a detailed report with a scorecard and case studies–then it was time to get to work on a survey that, ideally, would address our two main research questions:

What do community advocacy/ambassador programs in science and tech look like?
What makes these programs successful?

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Survey snapshot: Communications practices of small scale collaborations

Last week AAAS and Trellis hosted a three-day NSF-sponsored INCLUDES conference entitled: “The Technical and Human Infrastructure to Support Collective Impact of the INCLUDES Program at the Alliance and Network Levels”. … Continue reading “Survey snapshot: Communications practices of small scale collaborations”

Last week AAAS and Trellis hosted a three-day NSF-sponsored INCLUDES conference entitled: “The Technical and Human Infrastructure to Support Collective Impact of the INCLUDES Program at the Alliance and Network Levels”. The goal of the conference was to explore how small-scale pilot projects funded at the initial stage of the program might scale to larger collaborations.

To provide context for the discussions of collaboration infrastructure at the conference, we conducted a survey of tools and communication practices of the INCLUDES pilots. Here are three key takeaways based on 33 responses, covering 27 of the 37 total pilot projects.

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Scientific community managers’ top challenges and training needs

In our series of posts about results of the State of Scientific Community Management survey we’ve looked into what types of organizations are home to scientific communities, examined their communication … Continue reading “Scientific community managers’ top challenges and training needs”

In our series of posts about results of the State of Scientific Community Management survey we’ve looked into what types of organizations are home to scientific communities, examined their communication channels and ways of planning activities, and analyzed scientific community managers’ backgrounds, skill sets, and how their positions are funded.

In our final blog post about survey results, we return to the topic of community managers’ skill sets, focusing on their top challenges and the areas where they want more training.

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How scientific community managers shape activity planning

We’re back with more insight from the State of Scientific Community Management survey. Previous posts have explored aspects of the community management position, the nature of the organizations where communities … Continue reading “How scientific community managers shape activity planning”

We’re back with more insight from the State of Scientific Community Management survey. Previous posts have explored aspects of the community management position, the nature of the organizations where communities are found, and features of the communities themselves such as their communication channels.

In this post we look at three findings about program and activity planning in communities. Read on to see how having a community manager leads to activities that are more frequent, strategically planned, and participatory.

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Online platforms are still making inroads in scientific communities

In previous posts about our State of Scientific Community Management survey, we’ve explored what types of scientific organizations have communities and we’ve described features of scientific community managers’ training and … Continue reading “Online platforms are still making inroads in scientific communities”

Today, we’re looking at some properties of the actual communities: their communication channels and platforms. Read on to find out about online versus offline communication channels and the adoption of online community platforms.

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Exploring scientific community managers’ skill sets

So far, our analysis of the State of Scientific Community Management survey has addressed scientific community managers’ education and training, the types of organizations that hire them, and the funding … Continue reading “Exploring scientific community managers’ skill sets”

In this post we explore the skillsets that scientific community managers rely on in their current roles. We asked our survey respondents to rate the importance of 5 key skill sets, originally delineated by The Community Roundtable for the broader field of community management outside science. Read on to learn about which skill set ranks highest, and how the rankings change depending on seniority.

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A closer look at the funding landscape for scientific community managers

Through the State of Scientific Community Management survey we’ve collected data on all facets of the field. So far we’ve looked at scientific community managers’ education and training and identified … Continue reading “A closer look at the funding landscape for scientific community managers”

Through the State of Scientific Community Management survey we’ve collected data on all facets of the field. So far we’ve looked at scientific community managers’ education and training and identified which types of organizations are hiring them. We’ve also learned that insufficient funding is the number one reason why organizations lack community managers.

Today, we’re following up on this finding by digging a little deeper into the picture of funding for community managers. Read on for 3 key findings.

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Many organizations have communities. Why don’t they all have community managers?

Posted by Dan Richman, Program Assistant for the Community Engagement Fellows Program In our first post about results from the State of Scientific Community Management Survey, we reported that while … Continue reading “Many organizations have communities. Why don’t they all have community managers?”

Posted by Dan Richman, Program Assistant for the Community Engagement Fellows Program

In our first post about results from the State of Scientific Community Management Survey, we reported that while over half of community managers in science organizations have PhDs, their community management skills are usually self-taught or garnered through reading, networking, or mentorship.

In this post we report an overview of the types of organizations that were sampled by our survey, and why some organizations don’t have community managers. This is important for the Community Engagement Fellows Program because we intend to support scientific community managers in two broad variations of the role – either within professional societies and organizations or within research collaborations. We want to understand more about what those workplaces look like and how they differ.

Continue reading “Many organizations have communities. Why don’t they all have community managers?”

Scientific community managers: often self-taught with a science PhD

Having received over 100 responses, we’ve begun analyzing the State of Scientific Community Management Survey. Read on for more details of some of the trends we’ve seen so far. If … Continue reading “Scientific community managers: often self-taught with a science PhD”

Having received over 100 responses, we’ve begun analyzing the State of Scientific Community Management Survey. Read on for more details of some of the trends we’ve seen so far.

If you’re working to build communities within science and haven’t yet taken the survey, we’re leaving it open a little longer, so please do add your data points to the overall picture.

Continue reading “Scientific community managers: often self-taught with a science PhD”

Update on the AAAS State of Scientific Community Management Survey: Your response needed!

Thanks to all the scientific community builders who have taken our State of Scientific Community Management survey so far! We hope you’ve been inspired by our recent Q&A series to … Continue reading “Update on the AAAS State of Scientific Community Management Survey: Your response needed!”

Thanks to all the scientific community builders who have taken our State of Scientific Community Management survey so far! We hope you’ve been inspired by our recent Q&A series to think creatively about what a scientific community manager can be. Our intention with this survey is to gain a better understanding of the field and lay the foundation for the upcoming AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program.

So far we have received survey responses from a variety of scientific community engagement professionals around the world, including the UK, Germany, and the US. Wherever you’re located, you can participate in the survey – so please help us include scientific community management practices from your region in our overall picture of the field.

We’re particularly interested in hearing from community professionals working with large research collaborations, either within one institution or around the globe! We know that some of the language used in the survey may not be familiar to community builders in academic science, but we hope you’ll give it a try anyway. Research communities are key to the future of scientific community management and we want our data to reflect that.

The survey takes less than 12 minutes to complete – that’s less than the time it takes your coffee to cool! So please fill it out and then share the link with your networks (https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2642025/AAAS-State-of-Scientific-Community-Management-Survey). If you have any questions about the survey, you can get in touch by emailing us at info@trelliscience.com.

Thank you for joining our effort to understand the current state of scientific community management! We look forward to reporting back with our findings.