Recap of August 2, 2017 Meeting

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@aimeegc is working on the content flow audit process and is working to have something by the end of September.

@conradhallauthor has completed the first stage of content inventory and will now begin to identify the state of each piece with the help of @coachwp and incorporate testing feedback

@bethsoderberg and @melindahelt will take a look at SupportFlow and see what needs to happen there.

@coachwp reminded us about https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PPb9Y9eXhdZXS7QJYCcWXzyMZRVVoVDLXrEbYyTHfnY/edit#gid=0 which will be helpful to the inventory that @conradhallauthor is working on

@aimeegc mentioned in regards to processing lesson plan testing feedback (Google Spreadsheet) “This may or may not be helpful, but the name for what we’re starting to veer into is actually a whole thing called Program Evaluation (taking feedback, results, questions, etc, and making sense of it to determine whether something is working well or not, as well as turning all that data and results into actionable next steps) so it was smart to have a person working on this only, and we may want to come back to that once we have a content flow to discuss. Just stating it for the record at this point. There are people who devote their career solely to this part of what we’re endeavoring to do”

@bethsoderberg brought up a topic from our last video call that we determined that folks are not actually using our lesson plans as a script when delivering the lessons. People are not reading them word for word (which we agreed is a good thing!)

We will not be ditching the current lesson plans, but would like to brainstorm, over the long run, what format we want our lessons to have.

Once we determine a format, we will reformulate one or two plans and test those, in order to confirm the new format. THEN we may work on refactoring existing plans to fit the new, tested format.

We discussed an outline format, similar to something that could be converted to slides by the instructor.

We also discussed the original assumption that instructors didn’t already know everything (and didn’t need to) in order to pick up a lesson plan and teach it.

@aaimeeg shared a sample lesson plan format: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JDgl8BJ9c7Q2moaUkyG075RD5wlX0Yb0xsEZlME4aYI/edit

@aimeegc shared the following from 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. for Publishers:

A lot of what I heard was about the frustration that WordPress developers aren’t ramped up enough for the kinds of developer positions open (in Publishing, but I bet this is true elsewhere), and it would be great to channel people’s desire to learn and get good at WordPress specific to goals and industry. WordPress developing is context-specific, so it would be great to see more support or direction being applied to what people want to do with what they’re learning about WordPress.

I’m not entirely sure how that should fit into our scope as it currently exists, but if our goal is to provide official training and skill building to become professional wordpress developers, through helping teachers of WordPress teach others, then it might be worthwhile to entertain how we might consider this need from our wider WordPress community

@bethsoderberg mentioned that this could potentially be addressed in the future workshop plans rather than individual lesson plans themselves.

estes.chris 2:20 pm on August 23, 2017

The part about ramping up developers hit very close to home. Using the bits and pieces of WP that I could find and that were up-to-date, and eventually just spending a lot of money for courses, helped me. Many don’t have that option, and I regret some of the money I’ve spent. Places like Sitepoint and Drupalize.me have tracks with a linear flow of getting from zero to the desired endpoint, broken down into major topics which each have several lessons. While we can’t do that to the extent of a for-profit organization we can take that model to a lesser degree. If we could do that, maybe — or maybe I’m a pollyanna — we could help people develop more meaningful learning sessions for a day or weekend.

I came to this team as much as a learner as anything else. I haven’t found the current breakdown of lesson plans helpful. It was hard to say “Enqueueing Scripts and Styles” encompassed too much, because while that was true for our way of making lesson plans it hewed closer to what someone learning WordPress might need. I don’t know if the idea of curriculum is the right answer, but right now we don’t have one. Not having one seems to leave our LPs scattershot and random. Being scattershot and random, we haven’t been able to keep up with maintenance, which is just as important as writing them.

Having a few curricula would be easier for someone trying to put together half-day, day-long, or weekend plans, or for a group leader to teach a team of developers switching from a different CMS.

Sorry to be missing so many meetings in a row, and hope to be back soon.

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