Activating Leadership in a Virtual Community

Activating leaders from a virtual community to impact others.
Made by Center for Teaching Quality

About this Micro-credential

Key Method

The educator activates a member of a virtual community to demonstrate leadership through a product or presentation.

Method Components

Educators are encouraged, but not required, to complete the other micro-credentials in this series first: Establishing a Virtual Community, Engaging a Virtual Community through Facilitation, and Identifying Leaders in Virtual Communities. Mining, synthesizing, and communicating the ideas from a virtual community can provide meaningful information to numerous stakeholders inside and outside of the community.

Activating leaders of virtual communities

  1. Support the activated leader in identifying a target audience (virtual or face to face) and goal for the product or presentation. Support the leader in developing a product or presentation to share with others in order to extend the virtual community. Approaches may include, but are not limited to, blogging, writing an article, creating an interactive graphic or infographic, creating a video or video-blog (vlog), recording a podcast, facilitating a social media chat or event to spread a message, or delivering a speech or presentation.
  2. Share the product/presentation with the specified audience.
  3. Reflect on the process of activating the leader and the impact of his or her product or presentation.

Research & Resources

Supporting Research


Products and presentations


Submission Requirements

Submission Guidelines & Evaluation Criteria

To earn this micro-credential, you must receive a Proficient or Exemplary evaluation in all three categories for Part 2 and Passing scores for each of the questions in Parts 1, 3, and 4.

Part 1. Overview questions

(300-word limit)

  • Activity Description: Please provide a short, contextual description of how you activated this member of your virtual community. How did you support him or her? Consider the following questions: What information served as the source for the product or presentation and why? Who was the targeted audience? What was the purpose of the product or presentation?

Part 2. Evidence/artifacts

Submit documentation (for instance, a video of a presentation, a blog post, article, infographic, or other product) of the product or presentation given by the individual you activated as a leader. Explain the results of your opinion analysis in identifying potential leaders within the virtual community (250–400 words).

Your artifact submission will be assessed based on the following rubric. You must earn a score of Exemplary or Proficient for each component in this portion to earn the micro-credential.

Rubric adapted from Karen Franker’s A Rubric For Evaluating Student Blogs,

Part 3. Participant reflection

Ask one identified leader for a reflection on the following question (200-word limit):

  • How did the questions and the conversation allow you and others to think more deeply about your role as a leader?

Part 4. Facilitator reflection

Provide a reflection on what you learned, using the following questions as guidance (250–400 words for each response):

  • How might your approach to identification of leaders inform future work?
  • How effective were your questions at discovering trends or ideas for discussion? Cite evidence from screenshots or archive to support your claim.

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