Tag Archives: training workshops

epetrashen 6:00 pm on June 21, 2016
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Outreachy week 4: WordPress Meetup Organizer Training

The last week I was working with a newly created WordPress MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. Organizer handbook. The training as it is now can be found here. As you can see, the pages were moved to the testing site and small quizzes were added. You are very welcome to try it out, and if you have any feedback regarding the way it works please feel free to let me know.

Some changes we will implement later are:

  • Replace the links to the handbook materials with the links to the equivalent training site materials – after it will be decided where exactly will this site be hosted,
  • Possibly expand the introduction and conclusion a bit.

Another alteration of the initial plan I didn’t mention last time is that we decided to have small quizzes after each lesson as opposed to larger quizzes in the end of each module, that is composed out of several lessons. The reasoning for that is that Sensei is designed in the way that if you want the “composed” quiz, all of the questions have to be linked to the module’s last lesson – which can become a disadvantage if you decide to move one of the lessons to another module or delete one of the lessons — the questions appended to this lessons will get orphaned and end up impeding the learning experience. On the other hand, having all questions based on the lesson’s content linked to exactly this lesson enables a more flexible, chunking and reuse-oriented structure.

Next week I’ll be working on questions for the WordPress deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. handbook-based training. And I will also get to go to WordCamp Europe, which I’m so excited about! I’m really looking forward to seeing community members in person and witnessing all the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. glory and bonanza in real life, not just imagining it while reading the WordCamp organization-related materials. So please expect a full report about this trip next week 🙂 Also, at WordCamp Europe the WordCamp and Meetup organizer courses will be ready for testing on contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/..

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

epetrashen 5:37 am on June 15, 2016
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Outreachy week 3: Down the Questions Path

The last week we continued with WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Organizer Handbook-based questions: the second half of the question pool was composed, reviewed and corrected by @andreamiddleton and moved to the testing site we’re working on for now.

This actually raised a couple of questions on the quiz settings:

  1. What should be the passmark percentage for the quizzes included in the course?
  2. Should a learner be able to see which questions she answered incorrectly?
  3. Should a learner be given any further specific feedback based on the option she chose?

For question #1 it was decided the passing rate for all of the quizzes would be 100% because it’s really important that deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook./WordCamp & meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizers have mastery over program materials. That might force the learner to read the lesson not once, but twice – but that way we will be sure the most important points were all covered and hopefully understood.

If some of the questions from the set are answered incorrectly, we will ask a learner to retake the quiz. Given that, I thought we should really make sure that it is clear for the learner in this case which of the questions are answered incorrectly (then she can read the lesson again paying attention to the details related to this question).  I recently had to pass a quiz myself where only the percentage of correct answers were shown, which made it hard to understand what was correct or not. It even involved some combinatorics. 🙂 The pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party we use, Sensei, unfortunately, does not allow retaking quizzes and displaying the questions answered incorrectly at the same time, so @hlashbrooke helped to add some custom functionality here. At the moment, the answer notes is pretty rough and displays overlapping text, but that’s something that we are going to remedy once we have all the content in place.

Regarding question #3, we toyed with the idea of having specific feedback to the questions options: i.e. when a learner selects a correct option there is something like “This is correct. <A rephrasing of the correct answer>”, and if not “No, this is not correct. <Explanation why not>”. The advantage of having feedback is that learner would get to understand better why they are wrong immediately, and not feel confused. There are also disadvantages: they won’t be likely to go and reread the text to try to understand why they are wrong, which may limit the understanding. And it actually turned out that with Sensei it’s only possible at the moment to have one feedback item shown no matter what the chosen option is. That lead us to leave feedback-related plans for now.

All in all, I think it’s a really nice compromise between keeping the main idea of what was originally planned and adjusting it to the way the e-learning plugin we use actually can do things.

Next week I’ll be working with @chanthaboune based on the new content added to the Meetup organizer handbook. The flow will be similar to the way the other two were/are being handled:

  • Create an outline based on the way materials will be organized
  • Move the handbook content to Sensei
  • Start creating questions

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

Jenny Wong 10:57 am on June 8, 2016
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WordCamp Europe Contributor Day – Community Team Plans

With WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe quickly coming up, I would like to do a call out for anyone coming to the Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. and can lead one of the following groups/ sub groups to please comment below.

We have had p2 call out, a chat on Slack where we reviewed the p2 results and have grouped the following things as items for the Community team to concentrate on.

  1. Community Documentation

    This would include, but not limited to:

    • Internationalising the handbook as required to give better support for non North American events and/ or organisers whose primary language is not English.
    • Translating the WordCamp Organising Handbook into different languages (and to find at least 2 contributors per translation to subscribe them to the make/comm blog for updating changes)
    • Work on the Contributor Day handbook
    • Work on the Meet Up Handbook
    • Set up a single location for community team documentation such as flyers, wappus and any other material

    Call for community help:

    We need as many people as possible. People with any of the following will be great:

    • Anyone who likes reading
    • Experience in organising a WordCamp
    • Experience in organising a local meet up as part of the chapter program or as a independent
    • People who enjoy writing/ checking spelling mistakes/ grammar etc.

    Please have your own laptop for this.

  2. Organiser Orientations

    Note for WordCamp and Meet Up organisers:

    If you are thinking or have already submitted a meet up or WordCamp application, please let us know. We will try and do as many orientations as possible during the Contributor Day.

    Call for deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. help:

    We’ll need a minimum of 2 deputies :

    • Group orientations for people interested in moving their meet up group to the WordPress chapter account.
    • Group orientations for people interested in organizing a WordCamp, to give folks an idea of the process and what’s expected.

  3. Community Support Desk

    Note for WordCamp, Meet Up organisers and everyone in our Community:

    Have a question about organising a WordCamp, meet up, about the Chapter program or the community team?  Got an issue you would like help on? Have a issue or pain point when you are organising community events for your local community? We’re here to listen and help!

    This is where we invite every one from the community regardless of your background to find the help you need.

    Call for deputies help

    We did this last year and it was really beneficial. It also enabled local community organisers to share their pain points of working with the guidelines which you rarely hear them talk about otherwise.

    It would be good to have a minimum of two deputies on this roll at any given time.

  4. Community DeputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. Training

    For those interested in becoming a community deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. and are mentoring WordCamp organisers.

    Call for new deputies:

    Please comment that you would like to be mentored at the WordCamp Europe Contributor Day.

If you do have any other ideas of things that you would like the Community to team to do during WordCamp Europe Contributor Day and it doesn’t fit into one of these groups, please let us know in the comments below.

#community-management, #events-2, #meetups-2, #training-workshops, #wceu-contributorday, #wordcamps

epetrashen 3:00 pm on June 7, 2016
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Outreachy week 2: Questions and questions

Which of the following was my main activity during the week 2 of Outreachy program?
A. Composing the outlines for the trainings for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Organizers and WordPress DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook.
B. Creating quiz questions for WordCamp Organizers training
C. Chilling at the beach and eating strawberries

And the correct answer is B! (You could probably tell. And we don’t even have a beach where I live.)

You may remember in my last post I mentioned I like writing questions for quizzes quite a lot. Here are some of the rules I use when composing them. But first, let’s mention the anatomy of the question.

When does it make sense to book an unusual venue for your WordCamp, such as a public aquarium? (question stem)
A. You want your WordCamp’s “underwater” theme to be truly memorable for the participants. (distractor)
B. Your connections through the meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. allow you to get the venue for free. (correct answer)
C. No other WordCamp has been held in an aquarium — you’ll make history! (distractor)
D. It is the only one that is available for the date you have in mind. (distractor)

Starting with the rules relating to the question stem:

  • Focus the questions solely on the material covered in the course. The goal here is to help the learners retain key material and assess how well they master it, not to make them feel stupid or trick them.
  • Try to keep the wording clean and simple. It’s annoying to have to read the question several times only to understand what’s being asked.
  • Follow the learning objective with your questions. It’s important to ask that people remember the exact answer only for the questions they absolutely need to know it according to the goal we have in the corresponding lesson. Otherwise, it’s better when they are encouraged to think.

Now, let’s discuss writing distractors:

  • Try to keep the options about the same length, or at least do not let the correct answer to be the only “long” option
  • Avoid ‘all of the above’ and ‘none of the above’. That can be really confusing, especially if the system you use will shuffle the options. If a question that has multiple correct answers is required, a multiple-response question is a better option.
  • The distractors must be plausible. If a learner can choose the correct answer right away just because none of the other options make any sense, that will not help the learning process much.

Some of these rules are harder to follow than others, but it’s important to try 🙂 You can take a look at the questions I have written so far here.

Next week I’ll be finalizing quiz questions for WordCamp Organizers training and transferring all of the content to the testing site we’re working on for now.

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

epetrashen 4:21 pm on May 31, 2016
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Outreachy week 1: Getting to know the domain

Hi, Community Team! So as @andreamiddleton mentioned in one of her previous posts, this summer I got a chance to participate in a learning-related project for the WordPress Community team within the Outreachy internship. I’m really excited about being chosen and this is a tremendous opportunity for me to make an actual contribution to the open-source software world which we all benefit so much from. A little bit about myself: I’m located in St.Petersburg, Russia, I’ve got a M.Sc. degree in Information Systems from NYU (via Fulbright Program), and in my down time I enjoy yoga and hiking, but also being a couch potato with my husband & friends. I will be posting weekly updates every Tuesday to let you know what was the last week about and what was accomplished, and what are my plans for the week to come, so here is my first post.

The goal of the first month of my internship is to create three training solutions based on the existing handbooks: one for community deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook., one for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers, and one for meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizers. Basically, this is going to be the same material as the handbooks are currently featuring, but reorganized and with quizzes inserted. The idea behind these changes is to increase the efficiency of the material by:

  • Enhancing retention by making the learners practice effortful retrieval of the material they just read when answering the quiz questions
  • Accenting the points we consider being the most important by asking questions based on them
  • Providing the learners with an opportunity to self-check their comprehension of the material

(If you’re interested to learn more about quizzes and tests being great for learning you can check out this and this)

Given that, the first step was to analyze the material and the first deliverable was composing outlines. Organizing the materials and creating a course backbone out of them is a crucial step in a training delivery – we have to make sure course content is organised logically, the chunks of information are easily digestible and a learner is able to get a solid comprehension of the subject matter when linearly going through the material as suggested. So I was reading and re-reading the handbooks for a while, and after that attempting various ways to organize them in a way that would make the most sense for someone who will get to see the course for the first time. You can view both of them (we haven’t started with the Meetup organizer handbook materials yet): Community Deputy Handbook-based outline and one for WordCamp Organizers.

The second part of the week I was ready to move the materials to the e-learning solution we are using – the WordPress pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party Sensei, while shaping it according to the outlines. With Sensei I’ve been able to figure out how to do most of the things I needed without the manual, so it probably says quite a lot about its usability 🙂 and with the issues I got stuck on, I got help from Andrea and @hlashbrooke who actually has been a lead developer of Sensei for quite a while! Hehe lucky me. However, there were also some caveats. I have planned the outline to be three levels (Module -> Unit -> Lesson) but then it turned out Sensei only supports 2 levels. Which is definitely something I should have checked beforehand (mea culpa). However @hlashbrooke suggested a great workaround we agreed to use – “Course CategoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.” will be used as the top level of the course entity, and what I planned to be “modules” will be “courses” in terms of Sensei terminology. Course categories work similarly to the standard blog categories, but for courses, and I’m really happy with the way this feature saved the day.

Next steps will be writing questions – and this is something I’m actually looking forward to! I really like figuring out how to ask a question on the learning objective we want to reach, and how to create distractors for the questions that would be plausible but wrong. Creating multiple choice questions is actually quite an art.

Overall, I’m really enjoying my experience so far. It’s nice to be learning something, and it’s absolutely awesome to have support from my mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. when I’m feeling a bit stuck or unsure how to proceed. So stay tuned, and I’ll be back next Tuesday, telling you more about how my journey will be unfolding.

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

Andrea Middleton 10:25 pm on May 27, 2016
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Outreachy update

The summer term of Outreachy has begun, and I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be working with Elena Petrashen (@epetrashen) through August 23, 2016! Elena will bring her professional experience with instructional design to a learning-related project for the Community team that I’m pretty excited about.

The Project: Community Organizer Self-Training

Participation in WordPress community organizing efforts continues to grow, which is amazing and wonderful and everything we want. That said, helping new volunteer organizers learn our methods is incredibly time-consuming. We can just keep telling people “read the handbook” over and over, but just because someone reads some documentation doesn’t ensure they 1) understood everything, and 2) know the parts that are really important to the program.

So Elena’s going to work with me on designing three self-training courses based on our handbooks: one for deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook., one for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers, and one for meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizers (I promise we’ll have some material in that meetup organizer handbook in a week or so)! The courses will be self-serve and will include quizzes, so people can test their understanding of the materials. There won’t be a certificate at the end — just the confidence that you’ve attained mastery over our team’s community organizing knowledge base. I’m kind of incredibly excited about this; it might be the key to helping a bunch more people feel confident in their organizing work. 🙂

Elena will be posting weekly updates on Tuesdays. Please join me in giving her a warm WordPress welcome!

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

Josepha 3:33 pm on July 29, 2015
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Deputy Training | Vetting Applications

Calling all deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook.! Feeling like you’ve really gotten the hang of triage and tagging in SupportPress? Not yet ready for interviewing, but want to do more?

Sounds like application vetting might be just right for you. We’re going to have two trainings next week for deputies who are ready to learn about vetting those MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. applications. The first will be at 1400 UTC on Tuesday, Aug 4 and the second will be at 0200 UTC Wednesday, Aug 5. Both will use Google Hangouts unless we run into technical difficulties!

Please RSVP in the comments below so we can tell if we should split one group into two!

#deputies, #meetups-2, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

Courtney O'Callaghan 5:35 pm on October 1, 2013
Tags: , training workshops   

I have added pages to our Training blog…

I have added pages to our Training blog. FYI, for those of you who suggested changes to the original topics/curriculum, i have not yet made them, BUT I WILL!! Also if you are interested in volunteering, now is the time! For those of you that volunteered already, you should hear from me soon if you haven’t already.

#training, #training-workshops

Courtney O'Callaghan 7:08 pm on September 17, 2013
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Training Curriculums: Theme School

Hey all – I am finally getting around to introducing myself. I am Courtney OCallaghan and as Jen mentioned, I was a TA in the first troubleshooting training in DC (where i currently reside). I LOVE WordPress, LOVE teaching & training, and LOVE that the hideous summer weather in DC is almost over.

At Contribute Day WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. San Francisco a few months ago, Jen put together a group of people to begin creating modules for teaching others how to create/modify/hack/submit/etc. themes and named it Theme School. For those of you who participated, if you are interested in continuing on the module you began (or working on something else related) now is the time!! For those of you who did not participate in the first round of Theme School curriculum creation, there is no time like the present! In other words We Need Volunteers!

I have created a large (and I am sure not entirely thorough) list of the modules I would want to see in the theme school curriculum as a whole. I will be posting the list Wednesday for you all to look at and add to so that it is more complete. More to come!

#themes, #training, #training-workshops

Jen 5:17 pm on February 6, 2013
Tags: , training workshops   

Happy to announce that a venue has been…

Happy to announce that a venue has been secured for the first training pilot workshop in DC for weekend of March 1. Thanks, Aaron Jorbin!

#training, #training-workshops