Lesson Plan Testing Guide

Thank you for volunteering to test a lesson plan! Testing is a vital part of the WordPress Training project and helps make sure that the lesson plans are the best learning resources they can be in a live, classroom or workshop environment. If you enjoy teaching people how to use and build stuff for WordPress, testing a lesson plan is a fantastic way to contribute to the community. This guide goes through how you can get involved with the WordPress Training Team by testing a lesson plan.

Step 1: Choose a Lesson Plan to Test

Visit Learn WordPress and select a lesson plan.

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Step 2: Tell the WordPress Training Team You’d Like to Test a Lesson Plan

Once you’ve chosen a lesson plan, send us a message through our testing lesson plans form so that we can help with any questions you may have and so that we can keep track of the testing schedule. You do not need to wait for a reply or be approved before you conduct your test.

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Step 3: Find a Venue

Make sure you have a venue to host your training. If you organize a regular 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. group you may already have a venue, but if you do not here are some suggestions of the kinds of places where training team members have hosted trainings in the past:

  • Public libraries
  • Chamber of Commerce
  • Coworking spaces
  • Colleges and local public schools
  • Local restaurants

While meetup groups are an excellent place to test lesson plans, you can test with just a small group of people. Do you have a few friends or colleagues who want to learn something new in WordPress? Get them together and test a lesson plan!

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Step 4: Tell Your Attendees About the Training

Notify your attendees. If you organize a Meetup, use whatever mechanisms you usually use to communicate with your meetup. For each lesson plan, the description and screening questions sections have been written with the intent for them to be used in training event descriptions, so please use that language as part of your description of the session.

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Step 5: Prepare to Present

Read through the lesson plan and make sure you understand the content and flow of the lesson plan. Pay special attention to the teacher notes section. These notes were included with the intent of helping you prepare to present the information contained in the lesson plan. Many lesson plans include demo sections, so make sure you have a WordPress installation set up and ready. If you will not have access to WiFi during your training, you will want to have a local install of WordPress.

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Step 6: Present the Lesson Plan

Present the lesson plan to your group! The hands-on walkthrough sections of these lesson plans are intended to be the bulk of the presentation. Use the lesson plan as a guide for what you can say, but don’t feel like you need to follow it exactly as you would with a script. To ensure the efficacy of the test, please present the content and examples contained within the lesson plan in the order they are included in the lesson plan.

Please note how much time it took you to present a lesson plan.

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Step 7: Send Your Feedback

How did it go? We want to hear an honest appraisal of how your session went. What worked well? Do you have suggestions on parts that could improve? Please tell us through our testing feedback form. In addition to your feedback, if you create any materials to support your lesson (slides, handouts, etc.), we’d love to see them. If you published the materials online (Slideshare, Dropbox, etc.), you can add the link to the feedback form. If you would rather submit the materials by email, we will send you the address after you complete the feedback form.

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Step 8: Bask in the Eternal Gratitude of the WordPress Training Team

Thank you for testing a lesson plan! We appreciate your support of the WordPress Training project. If you’d like to get more involved with developing and testing training, feel free to join our weekly meetings on Tuesdays at 16:00 UTC or Wednesdays at 03:00 UTC or Office Hours on Fridays at 10:00 UTC in the #training channel on Slack. Office Hours on Fridays at 11:00 BST in the #training channel on Slack.

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