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Community Engagement and Participation

Build your skills in community assessment and explore how this can inform community engagement.

  • Duration

    2 weeks
  • Weekly study

    8 hours

Explore the meaning of community

Community resilience requires partnerships where community expertise is truly valued. This short course explores what a community is and looks at key community development perspectives and theories.

During the course, you’ll have the opportunity to investigate how ‘community’ is used in policies and guidance.

By the end of the course, you should be able to understand community from a range of theoretical and complementary standpoints and be capable of interpreting this information for effective practice in building resilience.

What topics will you cover?

  • The meaning of community
  • Introduction to social capital
  • Capital development practice
  • Methodology and principles for engaging with communities

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Describe a conceptual, theoretical and practical view of ‘community’
  • Identify factors that contribute to community capital and capacity to act
  • Evaluate appropriate approaches to community engagement

Who is the course for?

This course is aimed at individuals who wish to understand what a community is and how to work with local people to develop resilience projects.

Please note that the individuals detailed in the ‘Who will you learn with?’ section below, are current staff members and may be subject to change.

Who will you learn with?

I'm an Associate Lecturer at Coventry University Online and a current practitioner working in Emergency Planning for a large NHS Trust in the North West.

Who developed the course?

Coventry University

Coventry secured 5 QS Stars for Teaching and Online Learning in the QS World University Ranking 2020 and has received No. 1 in the world for Massive Open Online Courses in MoocLab’s World University Ranking 2021.

  • Established

    1992
  • Location

    Coventry

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control

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