In June 2021, 18 members of the USM Community volunteered to undertake a course on web content writing based on staff feedback on their collective challenges in terms of managing/maintaining web pages, composing content and writing communications for broad audiences within Schools & Colleges. A primary goal of the group was to learn as a community rather than individually and to work together to resolve issues, provide insights and take learnings back to their teams from the course.
The USM team supported this by setting up a learning group for a temporary period of time, as surfaced from the volunteers from the USM Remote Working Group.
The Benefits of Learning in a Group experienced were:
- The USM supported this group by setting up a Google Room for the Writing for the Web LinkedIn Learning Training combating zoom fatigue and providing alternatives in technology
- Participants provided responses in live time with a record of interactions
- Participants could track their own & each other's progression, which held people's attention.
- UCD HR also supported this development initiative by the community in terms of its badge of recognition upon completion of the course to be added to the individual staff profiles.
- The training offered flexibility with deadlines but structured learning experience for the group that people held themselves accountable for to the group learning process.
- The content was found to be digestible, easy to follow, with good content for users that was easy to implement.
- The course showed more than one way to tackle the tasks, prompted discussions of best practice and tips & suggestion sharing in the group with peer reviews which was very valuable.
For more information on the benefits of the group learning approach & areas of improvement please see the (opens in a new window)Writing for the Web Feedback Mural
Course Breakdown
Course material could be accessed by logging in to LinkedIn Learning and using your UCD login details, once signed up for a LinkedIn account.
A schedule for completion of the course was used as guidance for the course:
Week 1: 14-18 June Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2
Week 2: 21-25 June Chapters 3 & 4
Week 3: 28 June - 2 July Chapters 5 & 6
Week 4: 5-9 July Chapter 7, Conclusion
Course Material consisted of chapters and a short quiz and a longer format question. This assigned material was shared by 12:00 every Friday within a Google Space by uploading documents and used as an area for communication through posting reminders & providing live feedback for the group.
USM Support for this Learning Community
The USM team has applied the captured learning from this pilot for community learning into a Value Proposition Canvas for future community learning explorations to include customer jobs to be done, the pains & gains from this learning experiment, please view here for further information (opens in a new window)VPC WFTW
As part of this process, the USM has also captured their current and further offerings for supporting communities identified for consumers from their learnings have been developed into a Products & Services list to act as Pain Relievers & enabling Gain Creators for the UCD community.
Services we can provide:
- To provide continued support for the community after the course
- Use a mixture of informal & formal communication channels to provide support and encourage peer to peer learning
- To Facilitate group learning sessions
- Connecting customers with that meets a need that the University has identified
- Supporting a digital learning space through services provision of drop in clinics, training videos and documentation
Products we can supply:
- Tailoring learning & content relevant to UCD as a service *free for staff.
- Upskilling of UCD Staff, through enabling learnings are owned by & dispersed across the community.
- Pitches - Assisting in the recognition of value via pitching to your manager by 'articulating the value of the learning'.
- Catalogue creation -Connecting customers with training that meets a need that they have identified.
- Artefacts - Initiating community owned intellectual property per cohort for brainstorming ideas, solutions & findings in one space.
For further information please see USM Our Services for Supporting Learning Communities page