Michelle Harrison, instructional designer at Thompson Rivers University and a member of SCETUG, reports on the current work being done to find out what ETUG members are interested in and what future activities we could explore doing together:
At our annual SCETUG brainstorming session in November we reflected on the history of ETUG in order to chart a more informed path to the future. The following questions were addressed: what types of activities and communication worked well, what were the things people loved about ETUG, and what could we do to get more people engaged? One notable highlight was the grassroots nature of the group: ETUG members have always been the ones to provide the energy and drive to keep the group moving. As a group, SCETUG wanted to get a better sense of what types of activities members were interested in and also how we might better use the newly launched website.
A small community stewardship group was tasked with emailing members who had attended the fall workshop. Over 100 emails were sent, and we greatly thank those members who responded!
We had asked for feedback on two themes:

• What types of activities, other than the F2F workshops, are members interested in?
• How are people using the ETUG website, and how could we improve it?

Further activities
Of those who responded, many were interested in online seminars that they could attend between workshops. Specifically people were interested in sharing about classroom technologies and techniques, and we were glad to respond with the monthly, “T.E.L.L. Tuesdays” sessions that kicked off in January.
Other ideas that were shared were and will be further explored were an online reading group, sharing stories about career development in EdTech (we are such a diverse group…how did you get where you are?), and more use of Twitter.
A few highlights of responses:

“Discussions or an online reading group (article based) might be good for in between conferences.”

“Ongoing communication between members; start up a twitter feed; so much competition for our attention in this space that it needs to stand out before people will engage. The unique thing about ETUG has always been its grassroots base – practitioners sharing with practitioners. If a focus remains on that aspect – on what people are really doing and sharing that with the rest of the group – that should help move things along.”

“What if once a month there was an absolutely awesome collaboration activity that actually built (or outline or stated or finished) a resource we could all use…or maybe a workshop agenda and materials”

The community stewardship group will be getting together in the next month or so to explore additional activities and ways to engage the ETUG members. If you have any ideas, are interested in facilitating an online reading group or have a collaborative project you would like to start, please share them on this post, on twitter (@etug), or email [see etug.ca for contact info]/.
Stay tuned for a post on the work being done on the ETUG community site!