Do you use the Communities on the NCETM website? Are you a Community coordinator? Do you access documents that are saved in a Community?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, please read the vital information below about the Communities closing. You will need to take action, especially if you are Community coordinator, to avoid losing documents currently saved in the Communities.

Summary

Online communication, interaction, collaboration and document storage such as that in the Communities on the NCETM website has changed significantly in recent years, and usage of the public Communities has dropped dramatically. As a result, we have decided to close all the Communities on the NCETM website from 31 July 2020.

Moving forward, for ongoing professional collaboration, we have decided that a platform called Basecamp will be the main suggested place for the interaction which previously happened in Communities. Basecamp is an online communication tool which allows similar functionality to the Communities – discussion, document sharing, interaction – in a user-friendly way.

Implications

The Communities will close for good on 31 July 2020. After this point, all the data (documents, discussions) will be removed and will no longer be accessible.

If you are a Community coordinator and want to maintain your ongoing professional collaboration within an NCETM environment, you will need to move all active Communities to our Basecamp platform. Any documentation in existing Communities will need to be manually saved by you and then uploaded to your new Project in Basecamp. Unfortunately there is no mechanism for transferring discussion threads.

Actions

If you coordinate a Community, to prepare for its closure, by 31 July 2020 at the latest, please:

• Save to your own computer any documents that you currently access via Communities
• Once you have decided what needs to happen to your Community, post a message in the Community to let all members know
• Set up a new Project in Basecamp (if you are already using it) and transfer the Community documents and membership there if the Community needs to remain active
• If the Community is no longer required after 31 July, post a message in the Community to state this, then no further action is required
• If you are not yet on Basecamp and want to transfer Community documents and membership there, email info@ncetm.org.uk with details of the Community you coordinate and the email address you want to use in Basecamp.

If you are a member of a Community, to prepare for its closure, by 31 July 2020 at the latest, please:

• Contact the coordinator of the Community if you haven’t seen a post in the Community about what is happening to it within the next few weeks (in the Members list they have ‘Coordinator’ after their username)
• Save any documents you want to keep on your own computer if the Community and its documents are not moving to Basecamp, or if you are not sure whether it is moving.

If you have any questions about the closure of Communities on the NCETM website, please contact the Community coordinator or email info@ncetm.org.uk.

If you plan to move a Community to Basecamp, these links may be useful

• Introduction to using Basecamp
• How to create a Project in Basecamp
• How to add documents and files to Basecamp.