CPD: Skills and Strategies for Community Engagement

Learn more about the training. 

This three-part short course provides an introduction to community engagement. It will help you develop skills and strategies for effectively working with community groups and users in your research and/or professional practice.

Community engagement promotes collaboration between different stakeholders. This improves the chances of understanding and addressing the right problems and designing the right solutions for local contexts.

The course consists of three parts. You will need to commit to all three parts.

In part 1 you'll learn practical skills and strategies to improve how you engage with community groups and users as part of your research and visit examples of community engagement around London. Part 1 will take place on 17th and 18th July 2018.

In part 2 you'll learn case studies of community engagement and interact with community groups and users as part of the Engineering Exchange showcase event. You will also have an opportunity to join the brainstorming sessions to develop a project that is relevant to your interest, allowing you to apply what you learned into practice. Part 2 will take place on 7th September 2018.

In part 3 you will work on a project developed in part 2 and apply your skills and strategies of community engagement into practice. This part will spread over a period of two months. You will take part in a project briefing session in September to finalise the project you will work on. Part 3 will be delivered over two months.

You'll learn through a combination of lectures, real-life case studies, group discussion and exercises. 
You’ll also have the opportunity to network with potential project partners, build professional networks and work with a diverse group of backgrounds.

After completing this course, you'll be able to:

• identify the benefits of community engagement and involving users in your professional practice
• work with community groups to define their needs and objectives for effective engagement
• describe the value of your work and explain technical concepts to local communities and users
• identify opportunities for improving community engagement within a specific project or discipline
• learn community-based research methods through case studies
• identify the benefits of community-based research from research, community and industrial perspectives
• apply the skills and strategies of community engagement to a project that is relevant to your interest

**Privacy notice: Please note that by registering for this training, you are consenting to the EngEx retaining some of your personal data (your email address and your name) in order to notify you about the training. We will also retain this data to inform you infrequently about relevant news and events in future. We will never share this data with third parties. If you do not wish for us to retain this information after the training has finished, please inform us at engex (at) ucl.ac.uk, or visit our webpage for more information about data protection: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering-exchange/about

**We will also be taking photos during the event, for use on our website and other promotional materials. If you do not wish to be in the photos, you will need to let the photographer know at the start of the event.