Capacity development and skills sharing have always been central in the work of the Dgroups Foundation. Under its ‘capacity’ work area, the Foundation convenes and delivers experience-based and peer-to-peer learning, training, and other support for effective online collaboration and dialogue.
In 2021 we facilitated three learning sessions to improve online collaboration capacities of groups, communities and networks.
The heart of our online communities are the individual people signed up to our groups. To help Partners get more from their groups, in April and August 2021 we ran two short briefings for IFAD and KM4Dev group members. In these sessions, we covered some of the basic and advanced features of the groups.io software, which underpins the dgroups.io communities. We looked at how to best use the group email, and how to get the most out of the groups by logging in online – to manage the profile; set email subscription preferences; and control the volume of email messages received from a group.
Similarly, in July 2021 we run a session for dgroups.io group moderators and administrators. In this session, we looked at the key features of the groups.io software. We then presented 4 things each group admin should know (profile; feed, topics, and calendar homepages; bouncing and bounced members; group guidelines). Further, we reviewed the key group settings. Finally, we discussed some of the group web features (calendar; database; polls; wiki) and presented how some communities are using these features.
More capacity briefing and training sessions will be organised in 2022. If you are interested in planning a session with us, or want to know more about how the Dgroups Foundation can support the design, set up and run effective online groups, communities, dialogues or events, please get in touch with us!