Engaging Your Community Online

Due to COVID-19, many libraries shut their physical doors and worked in a virtual environment for weeks if not months. During this time, librarians had to quickly adjust their ways of interacting with the public. There was not a great deal of time to consider best practices for online engagement. As the pandemic wanes, many reasons remain to engage your community in online environments.

In this course, participants will discover best practices for building community online. Specifically, participants will explore how to provide workshops through distance learning strategies, how to build attendance for online programs, best practices for fostering relationships online, and virtual communication tactics.

By the end of the course learners will:

• Explain the value of virtual communities to library stakeholders
• Identify technology needs for virtual community engagement
• Identify & implement best practices for engaging virtual communities
• Build and foster community online
• Design virtual spaces for communication
• Support communities in virtual settings
• Create workshops using distance learning strategies

If your library will continue to offer online programming and you are curious how to better communicate with your communities virtually, then you will leave this course with concrete ideas for how to engage your community online.

Course Description: This four-week course will include two interactive online sessions:

• Wed, June 30, 2021 at 10am-11am PT
• Wed, July 14, 2021 at 10am-11am PT

Please make every effort to ensure that you are able to attend these two meetings before enrolling in the course. If this is not possible, archived recordings will be made available.

In addition to the scheduled sessions, the instructor will: provide resources, best practices, and useful tips and techniques that can be applied immediately. Participants can expect to engage in activities they will be able to use in their libraries. It is the instructor’s expectation that learners enthusiastically participate and use the course materials and activities to grow their library virtual communities.

Course Outline: When you log in to the Infopeople online learning site, you will see weekly modules with these topics:

• Week 1: Getting started online
  • Value of virtual communities
  • Technology needs
• Week 2: Engagement
  • Best practices for engaging virtual communities
• Week 3: Building community
  • How to foster communication
  • How to encourage communication between community members
• Week 4: Implementing best practices for online engagement
  • Designing virtual spaces for communication
  • Supporting the community online
  • Creating workshops

Time Required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2 1/2 hours per week, for a total of ten course hours. Each week's module contains various options for assignments, discussions, or online meetings. You can choose the options most relevant to your work and interests. Although you can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, it is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

Who Should Take This Course: This course is for anyone who wants to engage a community of people in a virtual space. The course will be particularly useful for library staff who conduct outreach .

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at: infopeople.org/training/online_learning_details.

Are you a member of ARSL? If so, you may be able to sign up for a free seat in this course. Limit is four free seats per course. Make your request here and if a free seat is available you will be notified.