July 2022 Faculty Meeting Recap

On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 19:00UTC (AMER) and Wednesday, July 27, 2022 05:00UTC (APAC), the Training Team Reps and Faculty Program Members held two calls to discuss the progress of the training team goals and our strategy for meeting them.

Thank you @arasae and @bsanevans for facilitating and taking notes! Outlined below are the notes taken from these two calls.

Attendees

AMER call: @annezazu @courtneypk @azhiyadev @colorful-tones @courane01 @ndiego @chrisbadgett @onealtr @richtabor @arasae

APAC call: @bsanevans @west7 @webtechpooja @onealtr

Notes

• Proposal: Merging Lesson Plans, Video Tutorials, and Slides
  • Do we have a consensus on how to move forward with this?
    • At Learn’s Creation: Community team made many materials; though as not a lot of collaboration with the #training team. Vision was to have topic parity, unit single topics together. 
      • A needs analysis may help us to shed light on this.
      • Need some more stats about our user journeys; we have Jetpack, but we need more data to make informed decision
      • Vision of uniting these ideas: 
        • Consolidate the buckets for updating things
        • Keep all of the assets for the same topics together
        • Tuck “teacher” things behind the menu behind a tab
    • Lots of comments about many things moving toward tutorials; it’s important to be mindful that not everyone learns using video. We also have the 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) side of things – within developing countries, we need to be mindful of bandwidth and what we need to think about this in terms of accessibility. 
      • Barriers to entry 
      • Text-based format may be better for some
        • From APAC meeting: The line between text-based materials and the docs created by the Docs team gets blurry here. We’ll want to consider how to best join forces so that we’re not duplicating efforts.
      • Video element may be better for other content creators
      • Do we still need every section in lesson plans?
        • What should be re-used? (For example, the “example lesson” is that someone could take and create a video out of it; likewise, you can take the transcript that someone generate at the videos and use that to create some form of lesson plans) – how is it best to present this content in a way that works best for everyone?
    • One Approach: Needs analysis to decide what is needed across things.
      • Another approach: Try something new, see if it’s viable, see if that model works. Could we pick an area and see what happens if we morph it into a more standardized, unifying approach? Does it make it easier, or are there too many edge cases? 
      • Could we pick four or five things to chunk and pull from it to create a model of this ahead of time to see what works and doesn’t? 
    • Could we create a few versions? One where things are for learners, one for teachers, and one hybrid? 
    • There does not seem to be a consensus at the moment; we should continue to gather feedback. There are two audiences; do we need to look at a needs analysis to decide which way to go, either merging everything or separating it out entirely?
      • Who is using the site? Educators/ facilitators / teachers? Or is it people who just want to learn how to use WordPress? We need to discover our audience.
      • From APAC meeting: We want to clearly categorize our content for the two audiences – learners and teachers.
        • The learner audience is going to be substantially larger than the teacher audience.
        • Content should be clearly defined as to who they are for.
        • Cross-linking content aimed at different audiences could cause confusion. 
    • Content Type: Video tutorials, lesson plans, courses. All specific content type; if we have really strong templates that people can build off of, that makes it easier for the creator; using the topic categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. for a mixed search is a good idea. There are certain things that could become components within other things. We also may be able to use this example.
      • We should create a taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. that separates teaching content from learning content.
    • From APAC meeting: In the past, Training looked after content for facilitators (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. organizers), and Community looked after content for learners. Both are now responsibilities of the Training team.
      • So we want to keep in mind, we are building content for two distinctly different audiences.
      • Could we keep content separate on the front end, but link things by topic behind the scenes? (Such as in 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/?)
    • Conclusion: This conversation is still ongoing; continue to leave comments on the actual project thread and continue the conversation going publicly on the thread.
    • Conclusion from APAC meeting: We are serving two audiences – learners and teachers. Where we can link resources or combine efforts, great! But our decisions around designing the site and creating/managing content should always keep these two audiences in mind.
  • Explore how this relates to Rethinking Lesson Plan Creation Process – Let’s discuss both of these threads to come to a consensus on a way to move forward. Discussion Frame:
  • Existing Lesson Plan Goals (as Sarah sees them)
    • To make the process bite-sized so people can contribute what they can with the time that they have.
      • Are we succeeding in this endeavor? If so, why? If not, what could we change?
    • To entrench the process in instructional design best practices so that the quality is A++ from start to finish (with an eye on eventual certifications)
      • How can we make this process more accessible to lower the bar of entry for quality contributions?
    • To be able to track what people are doing so everything is public, we can market it, and we can celebrate!
    • Is there a way to do this where it’s a reversible decision quickly? Could we iterate upon this later? What is reversible? What is irreversible?
  • What’s working to make the bar entry lower in other places? What can we change?
    • Online Workshops
      • Live workshops haven’t touched much on lesson plans; we have two directions: creating content for an educator, and creating content for learners. There are two different kinds of content.
      • The reception we are getting from online workshops is really encouraging. People are excited to explore and engage more.
      • The original intention of learn is excellent and creating content for educators is important, but it is also equally important to create content for learners as well. We are moving to a place where lots of people are scared about different things and want to learn.
    • Video Tutorials
      • Missing workshop template; if there were a template specifically for video tutorial. All that may be needed is a frame.
      • There are frames for lesson plans, but not for workshops; is there a way to embed strong instructional design foundations without locking it 100% into a lesson plan to speed up the process without sacrificing content.
      • We don’t have a template for video tutorials; we do have a process flow in the handbook. We may need to take that and change it into a template, similar to what we have for lesson plans.
      • Having a video first that they can base a lesson plan around and running with it may be a good thing for other contributors.
    • Note Taking
    • Review Process
    • Faculty Program
  • How can we make contribution easier for beginners, and make onboarding newcomers smoother?
    • Make templates for each content type (tutorials, live workshops, courses) that are easy to follow – where? Github then to Learn? Flesh out templates (workshop, video tutorial, courses) – maybe having one place where we update things rather than multiples? Maybe it could stay in Github.
      • The idea of putting this in Github is a good one. Almost ready for publication, then access to the Make site. Putting in Github and maintaining it there until it’s ready to be published may be a good direction.
    • Allow for more flexibility in what can come first, second, third. 
    • Make Design Elements more Accessible: Video thumbnails – where are new contributors getting hung up? “Where do I find X thing?” Can this be built into the templates?
    • Github can be really daunting for someone who is new. Where should templates live? 
    • Could we create a separate repo in Github? What are the things you should post in your workshop?
• Enabling and empowering new contributors to put on Online Workshops
  • How can we make space to allow new contributors to be vulnerable and make mistakes?
    • Having a buddy to help you is immensely helpful
    • Consistency in templates: provide all resources (Google slide with the featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. templates)
  • Suggestion: Change Github to Topics and link different forms of content 
  • Group Alert words have been helpful
  • How can we do better to check our biases to ensure we relay constructive feedback for new contributors to action?
    • We ran out of time before getting to this issue; a meeting dedicated to this by itself has been requested.
    • Could we have a dedicated time to discuss online workshops to make sure we are being as constructive and welcoming as possible?

Action items

Listed below are action items created from our discussion. Note the items that have not been assigned, and are open for volunteers. Please comment if you are interested and available!

• Create Github Issue templates for video tutorials and workshops: volunteer(s) needed.
• Consolidate all the available resources (Blue Templates for Screenshots) into those Github issues/templates: volunteer(s) needed.
• Find a time/space to discuss online Workshops (reviewing, constructive feedback, etc.): volunteer(s) needed.
• Bring Faculty discussions to a more public venue (i.e., public 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/. channel): All

#faculty-meeting