What's new on Early Childhood Connector this October?

With the accelerated opening of the initial version of the Early Childhood Connector (ECC) amidst COVID-19 in March 2020, we prioritized opening community space to early childhood systems partners to collaborate for a more coordinated response and recovery to the ongoing crisis. The opening 18 months ahead of schedule meant that less would be ready for our users when they joined, but it gave us a great opportunity to leverage user experiences to inform ECC improvements.

We are excited to announce our first set of community improvements designed to make your Early Childhood Connector experience even better:

• New look and feel: We are excited to bring more life to our space with community theming that matches our ECC personality. You will notice our new branding, including our lively colors, across the community spaces!
• The “Get Started” and “Support Center” experience get an upgrade: These are the first stops for new community members. Users can visit “Get Started” for an interactive checklist to kickstart their ECC experience. Our Support Center has been redesigned to help users easily navigate to our 1) help articles, 2) help forum, and 3) feedback area.
• Updated Registration Experience: Thanks to your feedback, we have worked with our technology partner to add help text to our self-registration page fields and switch to recaptcha user confirmation. This means when you share ECC with your networks, it will be easier for those folks to fill out our registration form and have their account approved, so they can be connected with the community even faster!
• Monthly Community Office Hours: Members have the opportunity to join us every third Thursday of the month from 2-3 pm CT to participate in small group coaching on making the most of this community. We look forward to having you join us for an upcoming community office hour!  

We are excited for these changes and will continue to learn from you as we move ahead towards our next set of community improvements.

• What is coming up: Later in the fall, we plan to open up our Hub, which we imagine will be your interactive newsletter to get caught up with what is happening across ECC. 

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