Supporting Member L&D Through Community

One of the amazing things that community enables in associations is the ability to support member learning and development. In fact, if that’s not built into your community design and strategy, you could be missing a huge part of what communities do to support members and their growth.And this doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. Much of what is already a part of learning and development within your association for your members can be coupled with community initiatives to extend the value. As community builders within associations, I firmly believe that we should not be building content strategies in a bubble. Yes, there will be community-specific content and programming; however, the planning of that content and programming should incorporate opportunities outside of what we traditionally think of when putting together those content strategies for community.So how do you go about supporting community member learning and development? It’s not that hard to figure out. Especially when you have a wealth of knowledge already living in your online community. It’s simply of matter of tapping into what’s already enabled and maximizing the value of it.Learning and development doesn’t have to be carefully curated online courses that cost members money in order for them to benefit from it. You can (and should) also lean on the experience and expertise of your community members to foster that learning and development. This can show up in a number of different ways. Webinars are an easy way to provide practical knowledge and learning to your community members from sources they already trust and are building relationships with – each other. At the end of the day, they are in the trenches doing the work that your community members need help solving for. Not leveraging that knowledge is doing your community a huge disservice.Additionally, as community builders we spend a good amount of time ensuring that we are able to show the full engagement of our community members over the life of their journey. From the time they register and begin contributing to what happens next all lends to the story community tells around value. And in that quest, we may look over some pretty obvious connections that we hadn’t thought of before.Connections like LMS or other formal online learning integrations offered by your association.How many of you have a connection to your LMS built into your community strategy in order to enhance community programming or help drive organizational value? If you don’t, this is low-hanging fruit (relatively speaking) if you are struggling with how to provide different learning and development offerings to your community members. This is coursework that your association has focused a lot of attention on for the specific purpose of providing L&D offerings  that provide value to your overall membership. And oftentimes these are the sort of opportunities that your community members are looking for in order to take their learning to the next level. Build LMS integration, in some manner, into your community programming in order to heighten the learning experience within for your members. This could be a full integration to simply embedding specific courses in your community for consumption by your members. Think through what makes for your community and then act.But what about live events (when we’re able to physically gather again)? Association annual events are chock full of amazing sessions that community members can get value out of. For those who are fortunate enough to attend in person, the value that they get out of these sessions is worth the few days away from the office. However, not everyone who wants to attend the live event can do so, for any number of reasons. If possible, work with your events team to stream some of the general sessions from your live events to your community members and facilitate conversations or learning labs around that content to help them process what they’ve learned and share with one another.Learning and development within community spaces doesn’t have to be complicated and shouldn’t be myopic. Much of what we need is already available, so why make it more difficult than it needs to be? If you’re ever feeling stuck on how to cultivate and nurture learning in your online communities, remember these three points:

• Tap into existing member expertise and knowledge to provide practical learning to your community members
• Integrate with existing L&D programs within your association, such as formal online learning content or exam prep available through your association’s professional development/learning team
• Leverage live event sessions to allow your community the opportunity to tap into thought leadership when they can’t attend in person

What are some other ways that you have provided learning and development opportunities to your online community outside of your normal community programming? I’d love to hear how you’re working through this. Leave a comment below!