Wes Theron 7:41 am on October 4, 2023

Learning Pathway outlines

The Learning Pathways project is gaining momentum!

For those who may not have had the opportunity yet, I would like to direct your attention to the Project Thread: Learning Pathways on Learn WordPress, where you can find information about the project’s goals and strategies. The primary objective of the Learning Pathways project is to develop and launch dynamic, user-centric learning pathways tailored to diverse learner profiles.

We have drafted learning pathway outlines tailored for Users, Designers, and Developers. Our community feedback initiative began on August 24th when we reached out, seeking input through the post titled: Looking for feedback: Learning pathway outlines. The closing date for feedback was on the 15th of September. Following this, we consolidated the feedback received and utilized it to enhance and update the outlines.

Herewith are the proposed learning pathways (please use the tabs below to navigate to the relevant outline):

LEARNING PATHWAY OUTLINES

You are welcome to continue sharing any feedback or ideas to improve the pathways. We will make every effort to incorporate them; however, please understand that once we begin creating content for these pathways, our ability to review feedback might be limited until after the initial launch period. Your understanding and patience during this process are invaluable, and we are committed to considering all input to improve the pathways in subsequent reviews.

Birgit Pauli-Haack 10:44 am on October 4, 2023

I took a look at the Developer pathways, and here are my first impressions.

The Developer learning pathways seem to be pretty comprehensive.
For Beginners, I would love to have seen a more synergetic approach from classic to blocks. It seems to be stuck in the classic vs blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. realm and I don’t think that’s helpful for a new developer coming to WordPress. It’s the perspective of us that have been working with WordPress for over a decade. For a new developers exploring WordPress and a basis for their web work, it might not be as helpful, as she doesn’t have to unlearn things to relearn stuff.

A few examples:

Classic themes
Template tags and conditional tags that chapter could also use an overview how template tags compare to theme blocks. It would provide a bridge to smoothen the juxtaposition between classic themes vs block themes, more a synergy and expansion of classic theme through block themes features.
Given the timeline, and the efforts to rewrite the Theme Handbook, the learning paths, might need to focus more on the block themes, and the mention of classic theme is more for the freelancer who will encounter for years the classic way of doing things.

An introduction to developing WordPress blocks
WordPress blocks are also plugins so they should be integrated in the earlier chapter of An introduction to developing WordPress plugins. Another hint as to why this might be important is that the following chapters of Internationalization, Roles and Capabilities and Common APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. would also apply to plugins that contain blocks.

The Common API section
This chapter seems to be missing the Block API, Interactivity API and Block HooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same., Style Engine, Components. etc. they are in preparation for the upcoming releases.

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 Directory section
This needs a mention of Single Block plugins, that are the hidden secret of plugins development.

These examples are not meant as nitpicking the outline for missing pieces. It’s more a call to caution that if those learning paths inform content creation in the next two years, it might help all of us to start thinking in the direction of WordPress backend (PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php., Database, Rest APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/., wp-cron, wp-cliWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/) and WordPress frontend (Blocks, JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/., ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/., themes, site editor etc. ) – (credit to @hellofromtonya for this distinction) so we remove the classic vs. block dichotomy for a more integrated eco system, dare I write ‘framework’.
Nick Diego 4:47 pm on October 14, 2023

I also reviewed the Developer Pathway, and many of my comments are echoed by Birgit above. The proposed content topics are very thorough. I consider myself a fair WordPress developer, and I don’t know half the items on that list 😅

So while I think it’s great, even someone like me would get a lot out of this content, I worry that it is not focused enough on what WordPress development will look like a year or two from now.

In the interest of time and resources, I would de-emphasize “legacy” topics like shortcodes, jQuery, Classic themes, etc. They could still be covered, but they are far less important than teaching a new developer how to build blocks, extend the BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Editor, work with the new Admin interface coming in Phase 3, etc.

Basically, I think this learning pathway should prioritize developers who are completely new to the WordPress ecosystem. What do they need to know to successfully build WordPress sites in 2025 and beyond?

These folks should (hopefully) never need to learn how to build shortcodes. This approach also helps existing developers who know all the old stuff but are struggling to learn the new stuff.
Flo (SkillDisplay) 9:35 am on January 15, 2024
Thank you Jonathan for directing me here (@psykro).
First of all: great job!

What we’d like to contribute
- Help you transforming your work for linear pathways to a WordPress Skill Tree that enables individual learning pathways over strict linear learning
- Assist you in creating an underlying skill structure for pathways that enables you to map any learning resources to these pathways and have them suggested to users on their journey
- Foster communication and collaboration between Open SourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. CMS (see our talk at FOSDEM https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2315-making-foss-cms-easier-to-teach-with-shared-competency-standards/)
Why do we do that?
Our company (SkillDisplay GmbH) is the successor to a NPO and follow up to an EU Erasmus+ project supporting education by creating common skill definitions defined by experts of their field.
Supporting education worldwide is still one of our coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. values. We’d like to offer you the methodology and tools to enhance your learning pathways, as a public common skill language would also greatly benefit our (and your) partners from public schools, international NPO projects, etc. (In designing their courses as well as representing the expertise of their learners)

How would we like to do that?
All information about the methodology is openly available, all generated skill definitions are public. Our platform is Open Source (and in parallel offeres as SaaS).

If you are participating at FOSDEM this year we are looking forward to meeting you there! If not feel free to reach out to schedule a hangout for any questions you have.
- Jonathan Bossenger 1:31 pm on January 22, 2024
  
  Hi @skilldisplayflo
  
  Help you transforming your work for linear pathways to a WordPress Skill Tree that enables individual learning pathways over strict linear learning
  
  Assist you in creating an underlying skill structure for pathways that enables you to map any learning resources to these pathways and have them suggested to users on their journey
  
  Perhaps you could expand on these two items, and help us understand how this differs from what we already have planned.
  - Flo (SkillDisplay) 2:05 pm on January 22, 2024
    
    Hi Jonathan,
    the learning pathways as currently outlined are a good concept, because the allow someone that is on point A (no experience) to reach point B (Mastery).
    
    Unfortunately it lacks flexibility in a scenario where you have community contributed learning resources and flexible demands.
    
    Example
    A teacher wants to show her students the main tasks as editor and a small glimpse at creating own themes.
    
    Classic Learning Paths
    With learning paths they now have to study 2 learning paths (Editor and Designer) , then check the learning resources and then individually skip the parts they don’t need for teaching.
    Also they miss out on additional learning resources the community might have contributed, but which are currently not linked to the learning paths.
    
    SkillTrees
    The teacher cherry picks the skills (aka learning path tree nodes) she really needs, can instantly render her own curriculum for a handout and gets matching learning resources that are tailored towards her use case.
    (This is possible because both the teachers needs and learning resources are mapped to the skill tree)
    
    I’ll contact you in 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/. to give you an example for WordPress, as one of our partner schools has already created a custom WordPress Skill Tree for in-house use.
  - Flo (SkillDisplay) 6:35 pm on January 22, 2024
    
    In a nutshell: The main advantages are flexibility, quality control and long term support.
    
    ———-
    
    Focus
    
    Classic Pathways – Creator First Approach
    The creator offers one single learning pathway.High effort to compare my own learning goals (personal development, coaching in classes, creating an onboarding scenario) with the learning pathway.The curriculum is static.
    
    SkillDisplay – Customer First Approach
    The customer (learner, educator, business representative) cherry-picks from the available skills in the tree and automatically gets an individual learning pathway based on the Skill Tree.Learners are guided step by step on their journey towards their own custom goal in a highly flexible manner, Educators can render custom curriculums which match official learning goals (ideally certification) for use in classes, etc.
    
    ———-
    
    Inclusion of community learning material
    
    Classic Pathways – High Effort
    Manual spotting and comparison of learning material
    
    SkillDisplay – Low Effort
    Learning material creators tag their material with skills.Material is suggested to learners right at the time they need it (by comparing which skills they have with which skills they need and which skills the learning material covers)Users confirm their progress (or non-progress) after using the learning material which results in an objective rating for the material.
    
    ———-
    
    Comparability with other scenarios
    
    Classic Pathways – Not Comparable
    A single learning path for a single purpose with a single goal
    
    SkillDisplay – Highly comparable
    
    Single skills are verified on different levels (by the users themselves or third parties like educators) and the own profile can be matched instantly against other scenarios.(How far am I on the way to official certification? Am I the right person for the job? How long until I have completed a course?)
    
    ———-
    
    Redundancy
    
    Classic Pathways – Medium to High
    The training team has to manually check the assigned training material for suitability or create it from scratch.
    Especially when updating the material (e.g.: new version of WordPress) every part of the pathway and staticly assigned learning path has to be revisited.
    Duplicates are possible between static pathways, especially when tackling overlapping topics.
    
    SkillDisplay – None
    Skills are assigned to available learning material. On the next iteration of WordPress skills (and their learning goals) which have been reworked are marked accordingly or marked as obsolete. Therefore all obsolete learning material is instantly clearly identifiable and can be revisited. (This is also true for community learning material where content creators can be contacted and invited to update them)
- Jonathan Bossenger 7:58 am on January 23, 2024
  
  @skilldisplayflo thank you for this detailed breakdown.
  
  The next question that I have is, how do you see this fitting into the current work being done for the Learning Pathways project?
  
  Structured Learning Pathways were identified by the WordPress community in early 2023 as the next step to improving how they consume Learn.WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ content. So this project is our priority for 2024.
  
  Our current focus is on the learner, and more specifically, a learner who is on point A (no experience) and wants to reach point B (Mastery). Which, as you’ve pointed out, is what Learning Pathways are good at.
  
  However, once we have completed and launched the Learning Pathways, we will be looking at our next challenges, which may or may not include the option to include SkillTrees. That decision will ultimately be up to the Training Team, based on the WordPress community’s requirements.
  
  At the moment, all content, learning pathways, teacher notes, and anything else that the WordPress training team creates, is hosted and available at Learn.WordPress.org. So do you see this as something you would want to contribute to be hosted on that platform?
  - Flo (SkillDisplay) 8:04 am on January 24, 2024
    
    How does the process fit into the current work for Learning Pathways
    
    Our partners often have an existing certification or coaching curriculum. (TYPO3 Certification, Doctrine Project, Erasmus+ Schools, etc.)
    
    As a first step the existing curriculum (in your case: Learning Pathway Objectives) is re-modeled in a tree structure. Our experience is that this results in a quality improvement, as dependencies are discovered which are hard to spot in a classic linear approach (“We should have talked about X before Y”).
    
    For your project I’d recommend to build a first version of a skill tree, based on your existing learning pathway as this has a lot of instant side benefits with little additional work. (see below)
    Basically you’d depict your learning pathway as a tree without leaves – slightly rework it from there and grow the tree over time.
    
    Do you see this as something that you would want to contribute to be hosted on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/
    
    Absolutely. Our goal is to work with you to provide skill definitions which are Open Data and created by the main authority for the technology (you).
    We’d like to see those skill definitions to be used in any way you see fit on WordPress.org and also hosted on SkillDisplay (including the tree). Our platform provides means for learners to browse skill definitions from experts and add them to their personal portfolio.
    
    This feature is also available via APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. This means that learners can track their own progress on your learning path directly on wordpress.org if you choose to go that route. (in the long run you can make use of more SkillDisplay features like providing individual recommendations for learning resources and official training, statistics for training progress, etc. either by connecting with our main platform or hosting the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. solution yourself.)
    
    As already said: Our main goal is to support public education together with experts. In our opinion it is important that everyone (Learners, Educators, Business Representatives, Certifiers) can relate to a strong skill structure to speak a common “skill language”.
    We want to offer you (and other software providers – see https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2315-making-foss-cms-easier-to-teach-with-shared-competency-standards/) our tools to improve and optimize a process which you need to handle anyways (creating and maintaining a curriculum) and make it more accessible for everyone for mutual benefit.
  - Jonathan Bossenger 10:57 am on January 24, 2024
    
    Ok, thanks for clarifying.
    
    We’d like to see those skill definitions to be used in any way you see fit on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and also hosted on SkillDisplay (including the tree). Our platform provides means for learners to browse skill definitions from experts and add them to their personal portfolio.
    
    This feature is also available via APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. This means that learners can track their own progress on your learning path directly on wordpress.org if you choose to go that route. (in the long run you can make use of more SkillDisplay features like providing individual recommendations for learning resources and official training, statistics for training progress, etc. either by connecting with our main platform or hosting the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. solution yourself.)
    
    Does this mean that the SkillTrees would be created on the SkillDisplay platform first, and then you forsee an integration to Learn.WordPress.org via an API, or could the SkillTrees be something we build into Learn.WordPress.org first, and then make them available to SkillDisplay, or any other platform, via an API.
    
    Essentially the current requirements of the Training Team is that any content that is created by the Training Team and the WordPress community for Learn.WordPress.org is hosted on Learn.WordPress.org first, and can then be made available to other platforms for use, not the other way around.
    - Jonathan Bossenger 11:14 am on January 30, 2024
      
      Hi @skilldisplayflo, I just wanted to check that you saw my last question (above)
      - Flo (SkillDisplay) 11:36 am on January 30, 2024
        
        Thank you for the pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” – I missed the response.
        
        This requirement is easily achievable.
        
        In the design/creation phase for the SkillTrees you can either
        
        use a SaaS account on the main SkillDisplay platform (skills are unpublished until you confirm the publication)
        
        host the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. SkillDisplay solution on your own infrastructure
        
        When you are ready you publish the skills as Open Data on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ in any form you like (PDF, other converted data formats, as an APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., etc.
        You can make use of the open source SkillDisplay solution to use those features and host them on your own servers to maintain full control and data integrity)
        
        What we’d appreciate and suggest is to let SkillDisplay import those open data skill definitions to mirror them on the public platform skilldisplay.eu (which acts as a main entrypoint for more than one technology and has additional side benefits for both skill providers like you and us as a platform)
        
        Jonathan Bossenger 9:31 am on February 9, 2024
        
        Got it, thanks. To confirm, the original creation of the SkillTrees would need to be created on the SkillDisplay platform. There is no way to create them independently of the SkillDisplay platform?
        
        Flo (SkillDisplay) 12:01 pm on February 9, 2024
        
        There are 2 options to use SkillDisplay (and creating Skill Trees)
        The Software as a Service platform (skilldisplay.eu)
        The Open SourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. Solution which can be hosted anywhere you like (also on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/)
        
        Therefore:
        
        Would the original SkillTrees have to be created on the SkillDisplay as a Service Platform: No
        
        Do you need the SkillDisplay Open Source solution hosted on your own servers to create the original Skill Trees: Most likely, yes
        
        The SkillTrees and SkillSets can be exported/imported in JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML., therefore strictly speaking you could re-develop your own solution using just the methodology if needed. (You’d forfeit some years of development however as the platform/open source solution already provides much functionality you can make use of)
        
        You can find the code on packagist/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/, our next major update is scheduled for release in February:
        https://packagist.org/packages/skilldisplay/core
        https://github.com/SkillDisplay/core
        
        Jonathan Bossenger 1:12 pm on February 9, 2024
        
        Got it. Thank you.
        
        I will prepare a high level summary of our discussion to share with the training team in our meeting next week.
Ross Wintle 10:58 am on January 25, 2024

Hi folks,

I had a chat with Jonathan this morning. Hoping to be able to return to contributions at some point.

These look great. I’ve not reviewed them in depth, but my main comment is that I think it would be really helpful to show pre-requisites for each lesson or module. e.g. to learn WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ you either need:
– existing knowledge on how to use the command line; or
– some initial lessons on how to use the command line in general

Pre-req’s help to give courses and lessons scope by saying what does NOT need to be taught, and they help users know what they need to know to get the most out of a pathway or lesson.

Thanks – this is GREAT work and I’m looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

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Learning Pathway outlines

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