Recap of Training Team meetings, April 5 and 7, 2022

Slack Log for EMEA/Americas Meeting (Tuesday, April 5, 2022)
Slack Log for APAC Meeting (Thursday, April 7, 2022)

(Logs require a SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account.)

The agenda for both meetings can be found here.

Introductions and Welcome

Attendance EMEA/Americas Meeting: @courane01, @caraya, @frankopazo, @azhiyadev, @arasae, @ndiego, @artdecotech, @peteringersoll, @webcommsat, and @tanjoymor

Attendance APAC Meeting: @courane01, @ndiego, @mitchblue006, @west7, and @webcommsat

Welcoming the newcomers joining the Training team in the last week (Slack usernames): @Tanya Thibodeau@Daniel Ekpo@Ola Przytula@Vinny@Andrea Cuevas@Aslam Doctor, and @Nikolay Krastev

Meeting Note Takers

News

Brand Guidelines – Linking to External Training Resources

Last week @Taco Verdo (Yoast) asked a great question about linking out to other training resources. We’d like the team to weigh in with comments on that post. This is the best way for us to organize the feedback.

Questions to consider:

  • Should we link out to other resources?
    • If the resources are completely free and publicly available?
    • If the resources require an email to access?
    • If the resources are a paid service?
  • Do we suggest continued learning additional resources? (Such as, for more information visit…. )
  • What additional thoughts or considerations should we have?

The #docs team has done some work with this since external linking impacts HelpHub & DevHub. However, the issue isn’t settled for them either. A good reference is available here.

GitHub Migration

The team has been updating issues on GitHub, which is very exciting as it will allow us to better track contributions. You can find Site Development, Content Development, and Team Administration tasks within that repo’s projects.

All labels have been reviewed. Up next is a sweep through “You can help” to make sure we have the links from HelpHub, DevHub, devnotes, etc. and objective statements. Then @courane01 will do a pass ensuring every lesson plan, workshop, and course on LearnWP has an issue attached and closed if published. Finally, we’ll start using GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Actions. 

We are looking for people especially skilled in GitHub actions and would like to help set up the triggers. If you are interested, please reach out via the #training team Slack channel.

@azhiyadev has visually mapped out our processes: Content Development Workflow in GitHub (draft). The map has been divided into the following frames to mimic a streamlined version of our current workflow:

  • Submit Content Ideas
  • Monthly Sprint Review – Next Up Can You Help
  • Drafts in Progress
  • Review and Publish (this is the biggest workflow, and we may break it down)

Faculty Program

The Faculty Program is largely ready thanks to @hlashbrooke. We anticipate setting up the application process soon. The process will be similar to the Community and Central deputy teams, but also provide a way for others to advise on the content and processes the team uses.

Quarterly Goals Review

The Quarterly Goals Review was based upon the collaborative annual goal-setting meeting that the team conducted.

March 1, 2022

  • Use GitHub Projects in LearnWP repository for managing team activity – Complete
  • Implement a Faculty program (like Community Deputies, name to be determined) – Complete
  • Brainstorm and discovery for the creation of a Needs Analysis
  • Plan promotions with the Marketing Team
  • Create Instructor/Facilitator resources portion on LearnWP

Needs Analysis

A rough draft has been started. Folks skilled in creating needs analyses are encouraged to reach out for help drafting further. We hope to have it ready to use in June.

Think of this as a survey. We ask various types of users, companies, and more what training they want, and how they want that delivered. Also, some representation from extenders who may not use WordPress for their livelihoods would be ideal.

Remaining quarterly goals from March:

  • Plan promotions with the Marketing Team
  • Create Instructor/Facilitator resources portion on LearnWP

These have remained as they were previously. We continue to share new content with Marketing, as well as Community for the monthly MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizer newsletter, and Support forums for sharing with forum comments.

Instructor/facilitator resources would be extra details outside of lesson plans. Things like: bring your own laptop, have a local dev environment available, etc.

Coming up in June 2022

  • Conduct Needs Analysis
  • Create content useful 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. Europe
  • Release roadmap of new content (that isn’t tied to WP releases/features)
  • Assess content that has the largest impact
  • Overhaul the “Submit an Idea” form. Build out conditional logic for workshops, lesson plans, and courses.
  • Ongoing promotions collaborations with other Make teams such as Marketing, Polyglots, Docs, AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), Community

We will get these moved on to the team’s GitHub repo after finishing our pass over the content development project.

Sprint

Proposed April 2022 Sprint

The Make post has now been broken down into the following three sections, which mimic our project boards on GitHub.

  1. Learn Content
  2. Website Development
  3. Training Team Administration

Learn Content

When you access this project board, you will find items have been labeled as:

  • High Priority
  • Medium Priority
  • Quick Fixes

We will be updating the project board to include items that came out of the 6.0 Walkthrough. If you would like to contribute, follow these steps:

  1. Pick a topic, any topic from the You Can Help column
  2. Please assign yourself to the issue. If you are unable to do this, please comment on the issue and a Team Admin will assign you to the issue.
  3. If you need access to Learn, comment on the GitHub issue with your .org ID.
  4. If you need help creating content, we’ve got some great workshops videos ready for you to learn how to do this:
    1. Lesson plan about lesson plans and workshops about lesson plans
    2. Workshop about workshops
  5. Then follow the checklist or workflow.
  6. If any changes are needed or you have any questions, please make comments on the issue.

Once you’ve selected your issue (card) please move it to the Drafts in Progress column. For every column in our Content Development board, we have a “How to use this column” issue to help you navigate the project board.

Website Development Project Board

If you want to contribute to the site functionality of Learn then please have a look at our Website development project board. Items on this board also have a priority label (high, medium and low) as well as good first issues.

Training Team Administration Board

We will use this board for our general admin like meeting notes recap. We have created templates that you can use.

Open Discussions

@artdecotech asked for some help setting up a testing environment to test the latest GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ features. This prompted a discussion about creating LearnWP content on how to do this. @courane01 plans to schedule an SLS on the topic.

@arasae shared that this week she will be updating a few of Learn’s courses and weaving in some existing workshops into them, as well as improving accessibility.

@courane01 shared an idea about how we might change the way workshops and social learning spaces for proposed and vetted. Currently, to create a workshop or facilitate a social learning space (Meetup event from Learn), we have an application process that goes to an email inbox with HelpScout. Since having GitHub issues available with templates, we’ve been considering decoupling the topic from the presenter application.

In the spirit of open-source, having the topics in GitHub issues makes sense.  Approving individuals for presenting might still need some amount of privacy, which is where the application for a person to go to a shared HelpScout email inbox seems more appropriate.

@courane01 started a discussion about how building courses is a major undertaking, especially for a single contributor. It might be better to break up a course into several “chunks” that multiple contributors could work on. A full overview of the discussion is available here.


Upcoming Meetings

You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.


Training Team Mission

The WordPress training team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through synchronous and asynchronous learning as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors to use in live environments, via learn.wordpress.org.

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Workshops
    3. Courses
    4. Social Learning Spaces
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

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