Community engagement: co-constructing knowledge with communities
Participants can enrol on this 10-week online course to enhance their professional learning.
Course overview
Recent years have seen a rise in community engagement strategies across policy and practice. The policy drivers behind participation vary from addressing the failures of democratic structures, to bolstering dwindling resources by involving services users in delivery, to a recognition of the necessity of lived experience in policy and planning.
The frontline staff charged with implementing community engagement strategies are tasked with translating engagement policies on the ground. These people inhabit a messy and difficult terrain between potentially disengaged and disenchanted communities and the formal political and organisational structures who seek their support and engagement.
As both government and non-government organisations (NGOs) across the globe seek new ways to engage communities in ongoing dialogue concerning service policy, provision and development this online course on Community Engagement from the University of Edinburgh seeks to:
- Understand what is meant by community engagement
- Uncover what lies behind this policy trend
- Reveal the importance of engaging communities on their terms
- Consider ways of researching the priorities of communities
- Explore the importance of open forms of communication
- Examine ways of offering expertise in non-authoritarian terms
- Help students, practitioners and their organisations develop strategies and policies for community engagement
Who is this course for?
This course will be of interest to you if:
- You have responsibility for community engagement
- You want to build a community network
- You want to design services to make sure they are relevant
- You need to gather views from people who use your services
- You want to enable students to engage in real world community based learning
- You want to facilitate Community University partnerships
This course is delivered at Masters level (SCQF level 11) and is open to professional learning participants as well as matriculated Masters students.
Please note: Professional learning participants do not receive credits for this course. If they successfully complete two course assignments designed to enhance shared learning and participation, they will receive a certificate of completion which can be used to evidence professional learning.
Course delivery
The course will be delivered online over ten weeks.
Students will access recorded lecture inputs and other online materials and University library materials via visiting student membership status, and to engage in online discussion forums.
Live online sessions will be held on alternate Tuesdays. These will be offered at 1230-1400 and at 1900-2030 GMT.
You will become part of an online community, made up of both professional learning participants and Masters students, which offers structured academic support to engage in and critically reflect on real-world community engagement activities.
Course organiser
The course will be coordinated and taught by Dr Sarah Ward, who has more than twenty years’ experience of implementing community engagement theory and practice.
Dates
The next course is expected to start in Jan 2025.
Course fee
The cost of the course is under review. There is a 20% discount offered to University of Edinburgh employees, and a 10% discount offered to University of Edinburgh alumni.
Register your interest
If you register your interest in the course, we will notify you when bookings open for the course in 2025.
Register your interest in the Community Engagement Course 2025
Booking terms
Course fees are non-refundable. The Professional Learning Office operates a cancellation policy to ensure that delegates are not disadvantaged by the last-minute cancellation of courses due to withdrawals making the course unviable.
We will use your personal data to allow us to process your registration, communicate with you and obtain your feedback about this course. We are processing the information about you for these purposes because by registering for the course you give your consent for us to do so.
We will not share information about you with any other third party.
We will hold the personal data you provided us for 12 months after course completion. If you have agreed to be contacted about future events, we will hold your personal data for as long as you subscribe to these updates. Financial data such as a payment record will be held for 7 years. We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes.
In order to facilitate online bookings for our events, we use Epay - a third party service which is not operated by the University of Edinburgh.
Details of Epay’s privacy policy
Comments from previous participants
I absolutely loved the course and I will definitely use what I've learned going forward in my career. I particularly enjoyed the on line format, and found it to be so flexible. The input from so many varied professionals from all over the world was invaluable, and has really made me think about different approaches.
I valued the nature of the course; it forced me to break down everything I thought I knew about community engagement, and re-learn, consciously understand it, reflect on it and challenge what I thought I knew. This was challenging but very beneficial and I feel it will really help me in my job.
I am incredibly happy with the decision to participate in this course and I feel like the facilitators/professors had a sincere investment in the course as well as the students. I felt like I gained more than just academic knowledge, and I am certain that I will be able to directly apply the lessons towards the present and future communities that I serve.
I think the weekly interactions and the recorded sessions allowed for a high level of students' reflection on the various topics. I think this was an excellent course that was effectively delivered.
More information
For more information, please contact professionallearning@ed.ac.uk.