Courtney P.K. 8:53 pm on October 13, 2023
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Project Update: The Guide Program’s First Month

The Guide Program was launched by the Training Team at the beginning of September 2023. This program empowers new contributors to the Training Team by providing them with comprehensive training resources and opportunities to strengthen their skills, through mentorship with experienced contributors. For more details about the program, please see the Guide Program handbook, and for further background, see the original proposal post.

In this post, we’ll go over the key aspects of this program, and recap its launch. We’ll also share some feedback and learnings from the first month of the program, including potential next steps.

Guide Program Goals

  • Provide a structured and effective onboarding process for new contributors to the program
  • Provide leadership opportunities for experienced Training Team members
  • Foster a supportive and inclusive learning environment within the Training Team
  • Help new contributors to the Training Team learn how to leverage their skills and identify their area(s) of contribution
  • Inspire and empower community members to contribute to the Training Team and share their expertise

Pilot Launch and Setup

At the beginning of September, we matched 9 new contributors with one of 5 Guides. If a Guide was supporting multiple contributors, some chose to run the program as a cohort, but many worked one-on-one with them.

For this pilot month, the program closely followed the structure in the Guide Program Handbook, but we also ended up integrating some additional processes that were inspired by the excellent Contributor Mentorship program:

  • A dedicated, 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 was created for everyone participating in the program to connect with each other, including all new contributors and guides.
    • A weekly thread in this channel was made at the end of each week to call for individual learnings, wins, and challenges.
    • All contributors and Guides were encouraged to connect with each other in this channel outside of the weekly thread.
    • With a public channel, anyone in the community is also welcome to join the channel to observe and support the participants.
  • A private Slack channel was created for Guides to discuss the program, and support each other in their roles.

How did the Guide Program do?

At the end of September, a feedback form was shared with participants. As of October 16, we have received 6 responses to this form. The following information was gathered from this form, as well as from Slack conversations, so the below activity might not be comprehensive.

Contributions made by participants

  • 3 Translations made
  • 1 Meeting notes taken
  • 8 Tutorials reviewed
  • 1 Training Contributor badge earned
  • 1 Translation Contributor badge earned

Success Stories

Most of the respondents to the feedback form feel more confident and prepared to contribute to WordPress! Below is a selection of success stories we’ve heard from our newest contributors.

@benjirahmed

I was the meeting note taker at the 26th September and will try to do it once a month. Also, learnt how to translate and review content. I will stick to the training team and attend the meeting for future contributions. Thanks to my mentor @sumitsingh and all the mentors.

It is with great joy that I share with you all that last week I was able to make my third contribution to the training team. It was a great achievement and I am excited to be able to continue making positive contributions to the team. With hard work and dedication, I am confident that I will make many more important contributions going forward.

@marcio-zebedeu
@devmuhib

I participated on September guided cohort program and learned a lot about contribution. 

@courtneypk and @kafleg helped a lot in my journey. I translated 3 high priority content this month. Planning work as note taker on next available date.

Thanks for the excellent guided program.

After some time spent getting to understand the contributors roles, I began contributing as an editor a couple of weeks ago. While reviewing tutorials, I continue to attend virtual Meetups and consuming published tutorials in Learn.WordPress. I appreciate the support of the community in our cohort and look forward to being a more active contributor in the future.

@tinacollier

If you participated in the Guide Program in September, please feel free to share your own success stories in the comments!

Suggestions for Improvement

Overall, input from participants in the Guide Program has been largely positive, but we also heard some suggestions for improvement, which are dependent on the participant’s individual experience. Suggestions that have been shared so far include:

  • Strengthen Guides’ abilities to plan and manage time effectively
  • More synchronous check-ins
  • Hands-on sessions to demonstrate and walk participants through the contribution processes

Next Steps

The Guide Program is significant in expanding the Training Team’s reach and support system for contributors, and it will continue! That said, there are some changes to the program that we intend to integrate.

  • Since the idea for the program-specific Slack channels was integrated after launch, we should make it an official part of the program and include it in the handbook.
  • A “Best Practices” handbook page could help Guides be more effective.
  • A section in the handbook to help Guides facing common challenges (e.g., low engagement, time management, etc.) could be helpful.
  • For Check-in 3, it is currently suggested for “The Guide prepares an update to share at the next Training Team meeting to introduce and acknowledge the new contributor and their area(s) of contribution.” We could modify this to be flexible and make a few recommendations of when and where to do this, instead of just being limited to meetings threads.
  • It would be ideal to have this program run on an ongoing/rolling basis instead of tied to a calendar month. That way, new contributors can get the support they need soon after joining the team. This would make the program more focused on one-on-one mentorship, which can be more reasonable for Guides’ bandwidth, and give new contributors more focused support.

This is just the beginning!

If you participated as a contributor in the Guide Program, please take a moment to complete the feedback form that was shared with you, or comment on this post. The insight that you share is important, as it will help us evaluate our newest program, and guide us in iterating on it to best serve new contributors in the future.

All contributors, whether new and experienced, are encouraged to participate in future Guide Program pairings! If you are interested in participating, please go to the Guide Program handbook page and submit the form that is relevant to you.

Thank you to @piyopiyofox for reviewing this post.

This post was last updated on October 17 to update the “Contributions made by participants” section.

#guide-program

Sumit Singh 7:08 am on October 13, 2023
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Training Team Meeting Recap – 10th October 2023

This meeting followed this meeting agenda in GitHub. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have 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/ account, you can set one up.)

Introductions and Welcome

There were 21 attendees:  @piyopiyofox,  @sumitsingh,  @webtechpooja,  @chetan200891,  @nahidsharifkomol,  @devmuhib,  @iqbalpb,  @jdy68,  @psykro,  @sancastiza,  @nayanchamp7,  @karthickmurugan,  @huzaifaalmesbah(async),  @lada7042(async),  @sierratr(async),  @west7(async),  @courtneypk(async),  @benjirahmed(async),  @quitevisible(async),  @mebo(async),  @vanpariyar(async)

We’ve had several new people join the channel recently. Let’s get introduced to 7 new people here: @Stuti Goyal @Vincent Martinat @Lisa Sabin-Wilson @zstepek @Nabin @Parag Wadhwani @Rashi Gupta  

News

Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes in this handbook page.

Meeting Note Takers

Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes on this handbook page.

Looking for feedback

Updates from last week’s dev-squad triage session

This week, the dev-squad triaged 2 new PRs and one new bug:

There was some discussion around #1880, which the dev squad would like to bring to the team.

Other News

Please see the Nomination for Training Team Reps 2023 post for details on how we handled nominating new team reps last year. We are hoping to make this process more clear for future reps and potential leaders.

  • Badges Rewarded  – Congrats @Muhibul Haque! Thank you for your contributions to the team.

Open requests for review

See our Guidelines for reviewing content to review the following content.

Tutorials

Translated Content

If you are able to pick any of these reviews up, please comment on the issue directly.

Project Updates

Open Discussions

The discussion topic at hand revolves around GitHub issue #1880, which involves adding IDs to headings for anchor links on the website. The dev squad is seeking clarity on whether to use sentence case or all lowercase for internal anchor link fragments. The HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. spec doesn’t specify a requirement, but lowercase is the common practice.

The dilemma is whether to formalize and document this practice across the site. @Jonathan suggests switching to all lowercase, but this would require a thorough review and update of existing lesson plans. The group is open to discussion on this matter.

@Destiny raises whether this issue will still be relevant if the content is consolidated according to the new information architecture for Learn. @Jonathan mentions that it depends on whether the “Tip” section in the Lesson Plan synced pattern is carried over to the new content types. Removing the tip section entirely is a possible solution.

The group agrees that the new architecture may change the current situation, so they consider merging the PR and addressing individual lesson plans on a case-by-case basis.

Asynchronous participants are encouraged to share their thoughts on the GitHub issue. @Jonathan notes that it’s essential to consider the impact of the new architecture.

The conversation ends with @Destiny mentioning a request for members of the dev-squad to review and test a PR for the Sensei Pro upgrade created by @Jonathan, asking for help from contributors with developer experience.

You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.

#learn-wordpress, #meeting-recap, #training, #training-team

Sancastiza 9:19 am on October 12, 2023  

Training Team Meeting Recap – 3rd October 2023

This meeting followed https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/1897. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have 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/ account, you can set one up.)

For those newly joining us, 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.

We have a few ways for you to get involved: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/getting-started/.

Introductions and Welcome

There were 28 attendees: @webtechpooja, @jominney, @sumitsingh, @sierratr (async), @courtneypk (async), @yuli-yang,@psykro, @nayanchamp7, @digitalchild, @piyopiyofox, @jominney, @jdy68, @onealtr (async), @west7(async), @devmuhib, @benjirahmed, @sancastiza, @huzaifaalmesbah, @vanpariyar, @lada7042, @quitevisible, @karthickmurugan, @amitpatelmd, @tantienhime(async), @weblink, @eboxnet, @chetan200891, @devmuhib.

We’ve had several new people join the channel recently. Let’s get introduced to 3 new people here:

 @Stephen Dumba @Kaisma @Claudio Nhanga

Welcome to Training. What is your interest in Learn/Training, and what do you enjoy outside of WordPress?

News

The best way to contribute to the training team is by writing meeting notes. Here’s the guide that you can take help from.

Meeting Note Takers

Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes on this handbook page.

Thank you for taking notes this week @sancastiza.

Looking for feedback

Other News

  • Discussion: Defining Active and Engaged Faculty @Courtney P.K. asked how can we better define “activity” and “engagement” for Faculty members in the Faculty program? Please bring your thoughts to this discussion.
  •  We’ve published a couple of update posts to the wider Make Teams and our Learn community here:

Open requests for review

WordPress 6.4 is due to be released on November 7th, which is just a month and a few days away 

We have priority issues that need updating open in GitHub that are labeled 6.4. We’d like to ask for Training Team members and @faculty-content-creators to prioritize working on some of this content.

The Training Team established a Contributor Hour framework this week and @Courtney P.K. @Courtney are examining how they can put some on in order to aid with these efforts.

@piyopiyofox is also encouraged to help by hosting a Contributor Hour, bandwidth permitting.

@courtneypk said : She noticed that the section ‘For Faculty – How to host a Contributor Hour’ is awaiting an update… It’d be great to have those guidelines to help us along! Will we be seeing an update to this soon?

See our Guidelines for reviewing content to review the following content.

Project Updates

@west7 said : The outlines were published yesterday: https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/10/04/learning-pathway-outlines/

We also have an update on the Guide Program :  Update: At the beginning of September 

In early September, 11 new Training Team contributors were each paired with one of 5 Guides who generously dedicated their time and expertise to assist them in their contribution journey. Given that the program is expected to last for 3 weeks, the initial participants should have already completed it. We trust that these participants have gained a comprehensive understanding of the Training Team and are now empowered to make their initial contributions.

And thank you @benjirahmed shared your first contribution : He was the meeting note taker on September 26th and will try to do it once a month. He also learned how to translate and review content. He will stick to the training team and attend the meeting for future contributions. He expressed gratitude to his mentor, @sumitsingh, and all the mentors.

And also let’s congratulate @tinacollier on her contribution experience 👍

  • She was introduced to the program while attending WordCampUS in National Harbor, MD this year.@courtneypk helped onboard her, and she was placed under @mhanes wonderful mentorship. After some time spent getting to understand the contributors roles, she began contributing as an editor a couple of weeks ago. While reviewing tutorials, she continues to attend virtual Meetups and consume published tutorials in Learn.WordPress. She appreciates the support of the community in their cohort and looks forward to being a more active contributor in the future
  • @Jonathan shared he had the pleasure of guiding @marcio-zebedeu, @mebo, and @lordzibbar, who are all interested in contributing to Learn content such as Tutorials and Lesson Plans. @marcio-zebedeu and @lordzibbar have started their journey by reviewing content, and Melita is working on some lesson plan topic ideas that she will be posting soon.

Open Discussions

Last Friday, Sep 29, was Mid-Autumn Festival, which is celebrated in Chinese culture :luna_llena: @piyopiyofox loved seeing pictures of mooncakes online.

benjirahmed 4:14 am on October 12, 2023
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Training Team Meeting Recap – 26th September 2023

This meeting followed this meeting agenda in GitHub. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have 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/ account, you can set one up.)

For those newly joining us, 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.

We have a few ways for you to get involved: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/getting-started/

Introductions and Welcome

There were 20 attendees: @webtechpooja, @huzaifaalmesbah, @weblink, @piyopiyofox, @ravikhadka, @jominney, @karthickmurugan, @sumitsingh, @digitalchild, @bsanevans, @shaggykat27, @onealtr, @yuli-yang, @devmuhib, @amitpatelm, @lada7042, @vanpariyar(async), @courtneypk(async), @sancastiza(async)

We’ve had several new people join the channel recently. Let’s get introduced to 7 new people here:

@Shamali Sulakhe @IdeaSmith @Ramesh Bharathi @Asif Jamil

Welcome to Training. What is your interest in Learn/Training, and what do you enjoy outside of WordPress?

News

The best way to contribute to the training team is by writing meeting notes. Here’s the guide that you can take help from.

Meeting Note Takers

Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes on this handbook page.

September 26 – @benjirahmed

October 3   – @sancastiza

October 10 – @sumitsingh

October 17 – @huzaifaalmesbah

Thank you for taking notes this week @benjirahmed

Looking for feedback

Proposal: Updating the Contributor Ladder to a five-path model
Last year, the Training Team identified a need to clarify the contributor roles in the team. This post first outlines what improvements have been made over the last 12 months. It then proposes updating the team’s Contributor Ladder handbook page from a linear ladder to a five-path ladder, matching the team’s onboarding and faculty program structures.

Data we should collect to Highlight the team’s impact on WP community

@Ben Evans is working in collecting more data around the Training Team’s work. What data should we collect to highlight the Training Team’s impact on the WordPress Community and on Learn?

The team started a conversation last to last week about how we could indicate folks have completed a course cohort. Please leave your ideas in this Slack thread from last week’s meeting.

The team also started discussing: “When can an interested contributor take over developing a piece of content which had originally been assigned to another contributor, but no progress has been made for some time?”

Looking for volunteers

We’re looking for volunteers to author the October edition of the Learn WordPress newsletter. (See the Learn WordPress Newsletter – September 2023 to see how its structured). If you want to volunteer, please show your interest in this thread 

Abha is looking for volunteers to help:

  • Prepare a presentation beforehand
  • Contribute to the presentation and Q&A on the day
  • Edit the recording afterwards and updating documentation

This meeting followed this meeting agenda in GitHub. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have a Slack account, you can set one up.)

For those newly joining us, 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.

We have a few ways for you to get involved: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/getting-started/

The Training Team is looking for more Online Workshop Facilitators and Co-Hosts!

Almost exactly a year ago, Ben published this post: Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today! And the call for help is still relevant today. If you haven’t read that post before, please take a look

Also, Ben ran an Online Workshop 2 weeks ago about how anyone can apply to become a facilitator or co-host. Come checkout the recording here: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/online-workshops

Updates from last week’s dev-squad triage session

Triaged one new open PR and two new open bugs

Thanks @Jonathan for providing update and conducting triage session. If anyone want to join these efforts, Dev-Squad triage happen every week on Thursday at 7:00 UTC

Other News

Contributor Badges Awarded: @Harsh Gajipara, @akshaya

WordPress 6.4 BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 releasing today at 4:00 PM UTC at #core channel

Come check out Let’s share our notes from the Community Summit And if you attended the summit, feel free to add your notes there, too 

Checkout Hallway Hangout: What’s new for developers in WordPress 6.4

Open requests for review

We are looking for folks to help review these pieces of content. See our Guidelines for reviewing content to review the following content.

Tutorials

Lesson Plans

Translated Content

We’re also looking for translation reviewers who speak German, Gujrati, Chinese or Bengali.

Project Updates

@jominney said :
This post was published today with the work done so far. We are looking for feedback on the potential filters we plan to use and on the overall suggested revision to the site structure. Please comment on the P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org post with any feedback.”
– https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/09/26/looking-for-feedback-learn-website-information-architecture/

@piyopiyofox said :

We also have the following tentative timeline updates re: learning pathways outline work

  • Incorporate feedback – 27 September
  • Publish learning pathways – 3 October
  • Content audit + what do we have in place – 17 October
  • Estimations: how long will it take to create these pathways? – 20 October

Next steps for GitHub updates
Thanks to @Yuli for her work wrangling the labels out of 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ for us! We have compiled this spreadsheet and we are seeking the assistance of anyone who is familiar with the repository with providing feedback on their usage (if any) of the labels. We will be publishing a post with the planned revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to the templates soon, also!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XGJKG26N1T59dPM-G_oT6eI67mlgaaGV4YQm_XbGDqg/edit#gid=0


Open Discussions

@piyopiyofox asked Amit Patel to share about putting on an SEO Online Workshop

@amitpatelmd said : Happy to share that I will be working on a workshop for introducing tasks for SEO expert SME, would love to have feedback from you all.

You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.

#meeting-recap, #training, #training-notifications, #training-team

Jonathan Bossenger 12:15 pm on October 6, 2023  

Take part in Hacktoberfest 2023 by contributing to the Training Team

Hacktoberfest is an annual worldwide event held during the month of October. The event encourages interested individuals to contribute to open-source projects by having 4 pull requests (PRs) accepted on 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ and GitLab repositories.

Since 2022, Hacktoberfest has allowed non-code contributions to count towards the 4 required PRs. meaning that things like documentation updates, meeting agendas, and content creation can also count towards participation for Hacktoberfest.

So join us in working on 4 GitHub issues on the Learn WordPress repository, and take part in the fun.

How to participate

  1. Visit the Hacktoberfest website and register your GitHub account
  2. Find an open issue labeled hacktoberfest that you’d like to work on. If you find an issue that interests you and does not already have a hacktoberfest label, 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.” @psykro and we will add it for you
  3. Create a pull request linking the issue you are working on.
  4. Remember, to complete Hacktoberfest, you need 4 accepted/merged Pull Requests. So only open one pull request per issue you are working on.

New to Learn WordPress

We have a detailed getting started guide, which includes all the information you might need to know about contributing to this project. Please read through it and select your area of contribution.

It may also help you to read our help doc on how we use Github as a project.

If you are planning to contribute with code, you can read all about our local development environment, which is based on Docker, in the project readme.

Code contributions

Found a bug you’d like to fix? Create new a pull request which includes the required changes and a link to the issue.

Please read the Code Contributions guide on creating new Pull Requests

Non-code contributions

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/ has many non-code areas of contribution, including (but not limited to) creating, reviewing, editing, or translating content, updating documentation, drafting meeting recap notes, and more.

Hacktoberfest also supports non-code contributions, so if you’re working in any of these areas, you can also take part.

To facilitate creating a pull request for these contributions, we have created the hacktoberfest-2023.md file. You can use this file to create the pull request for your work, to take part in Hacktoberfest.

Instructions to create your pull request are in the file.

Still not sure how to get started?

Here is a quick video guide on the process:

Need help

If you have any questions or need any help, please comment on this issue in GitHub or in the #training team 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.

Shail Mehta 4:58 pm on October 5, 2023
Tags: ,   

X-post: Looking for a #gu translation reviewer for Learn WordPress content

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/polyglots: Looking for a #gu translation reviewer for Learn WordPress content

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.

Courtney P.K. 2:11 am on September 28, 2023
Tags:   

Discussion: Defining Active and Engaged Faculty

TL;DR: We need your insights and perspectives! The Training Team is seeking your input to help define what makes an active and engaged Faculty member.

As you may already know, the Training Team Faculty is a team of dedicated volunteers who work to achieve the goals of the Training Team and the Learn WordPress platform. The expertise and guidance of Faculty members fuel the growth and development of our fellow contributors and learners in our community. If you’d like to read more details about what Faculty members do, you can review the Faculty handbook page, Areas of Responsibility.

Our goal is to identify and distinguish active and engaged Faculty members in order to better evaluate the engagement and participation within the Faculty program. By establishing standards for what defines an active and engaged Faculty member, we can assess the need for any necessary updates to the program. This is important to help ensure the continued growth and success of the Training Team.

What defines an active and engaged Faculty member?

To get the discussion started, below are a few preliminary thoughts we’ve gathered on what it means to be an active Faculty member. These initial ideas are by no means definitive and are open to discussion.

  1. Regular participation in Training Team meetings: Active Faculty members make it a priority to attend Training Team meetings, whether synchronously or asynchronously, at least once a month.
  2. Engaged communication: They actively contribute to Faculty member update threads during Training Team meetings, ensuring they stay informed and connected.
  3. Prompt responsiveness: Active Faculty members respond to role-specific 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/ group pings at least once a month, demonstrating their commitment to collaboration and support.
  4. Role-specific activities:
    1. Administrators: Actively contribute to the Training Team’s Help Scout or the Learn 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository within the past month.
    2. Content creators: Actively contribute to various content-related tasks—such as writing, recording, editing, or facilitating—within the past month.
    3. Editors: Lend their expertise to the editing process by collaborating with Content Creators and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) within the past month.
    4. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Actively provide their specialized knowledge by collaborating with Content Creators and Editors in the past month.
    5. Translation Coordinators: Actively contributing to translation efforts within the past month, including working closely with Content Translators.

Let’s hear from you!

Please post in the comments what you think can define an active and engaged Faculty member. Thank you for your input!

Thank you to @bsanevans for reviewing this post.

#faculty-program

Kaito Hanamori 5:30 am on September 27, 2023
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Looking for feedback: Updates to GitHub issue templates and labels

Summary: In an effort to streamline the team’s GitHub repo, the Next steps for GitHub updates project is looking to reduce the number of 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue templates in the repo from 9 to 5. The project is also looking for input as the current list of 119 labels is reassessed and reduced. Please leave your feedback on the proposed changes by October 17th (Tuesday).

Please review the new list of GitHub issue templates

In an effort to streamline the team’s GitHub repo, the Next steps for GitHub updates project has identified a need to reduce the number of GitHub issue templates. The expected benefits from this change include:

  • Less confusion for contributors creating new issues.
  • Less redundancy during topic vetting. (Currently, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) must vet the same topic for multiple content types.) 
  • Reduction in quantity and complexity of automations that will get set up.
  • Preparation for the consolidation of content types, as proposed in Looking for Feedback: Learn Website Information Architecture.

Below is a table listing the current 9 issue templates, and the 5 proposed templates they’ll correspond to. Each of the new templates have already been created and can be previewed from https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/new/choose. (Scroll to the bottom of the list, and you’ll see these new templates prefaced with “_do-not-use_”.) Please leave any questions, suggestions, or other comments about these templates below.

Current issue templatesProposed issue templates
Bug Report Template
Content Feedback		Feedback
Topic IdeaContent Development (general)
Lesson Plan Template
Tutorial Template
Online Workshop Template
Course Template		Content Development (for Faculty)
Content Translation TemplateContent Translation
Meeting Agenda TemplateMeeting Agenda

Some points to note in these changes:

  • All feedback pertaining to Learn WordPress, regardless of whether it is regarding the website itself or the content, will be submitted in one issue. Automation similar to what the Docs team has will be set up, allowing any contributor (regardless of GitHub access) to triage and send these to their respective projects where they’ll be actioned on.
  • The current “Topic Idea” template will be renamed to clarify this is actually the issue content creators should use when creating content. These issues will be highlighted to SMEs to be prioritized in their topic vetting process.
  • Faculty who will immediately create content themselves may skip the vetting process. The four content templates the repo currently have are designed for this process, but weren’t labeled as such, and were therefore confusing general contributors. These will be consolidated into a single template marked “for faculty”. Automation similar to what the Docs team has will be set up, allowing Faculty to call the respective development checklist for their content type with a command.

Help us review the current list of GitHub labels

The project has exported the current list of GitHub labels into this Google Spreadsheet. We’re looking for Training Team contributors with experience in labeling issues in the team’s repo to help us document the purpose of each label.

Once completed, the project will:

  • Reassess labels based on their current use.
    • Similar labels may be consolidated.
    • Labels may be renamed for clarity.
    • Some project-specific labels may be replaced with custom fields.
  • Document the purpose of each label in the handbook.
    • Documentation will also include how new labels should be added and which labels are used in automation and, therefore, should not be modified.

Thank you for your feedback!

We’re looking for feedback on the proposed changes to issue templates and documentation regarding the repo’s current list of labels, by October 17th (Tuesday).

@webtechpooja and @jominney were co-authors of this post. Thanks also go to @yuli-yang for exporting the list of GitHub labels for the project!

#feedback, #github

Sancastiza 8:05 am on September 26, 2023
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Training Team Meeting Recap – 19th September 2023

This meeting followed https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/1868. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have 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/ account, you can set one up.)

For those newly joining us, 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.

We have a few ways for you to get involved: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/getting-started/.

Introductions and Welcome

There were 20 attendees: @webtechpooja, @kafleg, @nayanchamp7, @utsav72640, @jominney, @sumitsingh, @sierratr (async), @courtneypk (async), @yuli-yang, @ethicaladitya, @psykro, @bsanevans, @nayanchamp7, @digitalchild, @benjir, @piyopiyofox, @jominney, @jdy68, @onealtr, @arasae(async), @west7(async), @iqbalpb.

We’ve had several new people join the channel recently. Let’s get introduced to 7 new people here:

@aneirfan @Mohammad Elias Hossain @lensacc @bianquijulian @Josué Augusto Estrada López @patriciabt @Sandee

Welcome to Training. What is your interest in Learn/Training, and what do you enjoy outside of WordPress?

News

The best way to contribute to the training team is by writing meeting notes. Here’s the guide that you can take help from.

Meeting Note Takers

Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes on this handbook page.


September 19 – @sancastiza

September 26 – @benjirahmed

October 3   – @sancastiza

October 10 – @sumitsingh

Thank you for taking notes this week @sancastiza

Looking for feedback

Looking for volunteers

  • We’re looking for volunteers to author the October edition of the Learn WordPress newsletter. (See the Learn WordPress Newsletter – September 2023 to see how its structured)
  • Abha is looking for volunteers to help present Learn WordPress for a Portsmouth 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. in November.

-​​ The actual presentation and Q&A is going to be hosted at 18:00 UTC / 19:00 BST on November 22, 2023. But Abha is looking for people to help prepare for this event beforehand, and also turn it into a resource anyone else can take and use at their local meetups.

– Abha is looking for volunteers to help:

  • Prepare a presentation beforehand
  • Contribute to the presentation and Q&A on the day
  • Edit the recording afterwards and updating documentation.

– If you’re interested, please let @abhanonstopnewsuk know directly.

Almost exactly a year ago, @bsanevans published this post: Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today! And the call for help is still relevant today. If you haven’t read that post before, please take a look :libro:

Also, he ran an Online Workshop just last week about how anyone can apply to become a facilitator or co-host. Come checkout the recording here: https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/online-workshops/

Updates from last week’s dev-squad triage session

@Jonathan got stuck into something else and completely missed running the dev-squad triage last week. However, there were only 2 open untriaged bugs, so he quickly triaged them later in that day

Fixed and closed Bug report – Broken Link in Handbook #1861

Triaged Feature request – add link to feedback page on every content #1860

Other News

Open requests for review

See our Guidelines for reviewing content to review the following content.

We’re also looking for translation reviewers who speak Indonesian, Khmer, or Bengali: https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/104/views/10 

Thank @piyopiyofox for your wonderful suggestion that we can seek help from the community for translation.

Project Updates

@piyopiyofox said : @adamwood conducted a MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. fields audit, and the project team is currently reviewing the data. @jominney and she are finalizing initial work on an information architecture proposal, which they plan to present to the team this week. They are slightly behind schedule for the Planning phase, but they have gained valuable insights into the Learn sitemap and indexing that will benefit the team. 

@jominney audited our current site structure/sitemap and identified areas for improvement. We want to ensure we capture all our findings.

And also thank you @west7 for sharing the project’s planned schedule.

  • Incorporate feedback – 27 September
  • Publish learning pathways – 3 October
  • Content audit + what do we have in place – 17 October
  • Estimations: how long will it take to create these pathways? – 20 October

Next steps for GitHub updates

  • We’re facing a slight delay in the project schedule for the upcoming to-do items. Currently, we’re working on the following:

1. We’ve brainstormed ways to decrease the number of 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue templates, aiming to reduce the 9 templates to 5. A formal proposal will be presented to the team by September 22nd.

2. @jominney will export the current list of GitHub labels into a spreadsheet, which will be shared with the team for input. Our objective is to gain a clear understanding of the current usage of each label and, ultimately, reduce the number of labels while creating documentation on their appropriate usage.

Open Discussions

@Jonathan brought up these two topics.

An additional agenda item, Sensei Pro, which we have a license key for and use on Learn WordPress, has had a few updates since we last updated it on Learn, so it might be a good time to create a new PR to merge the latest updates.

Additionally, it might be a good idea to somehow set a quarterly reminder to check on the Sensei Pro version and wrangle a Learn WordPress update.

And he said : “I’m ready to submit the PR for merging. I want to talk about two things:

  1. How can we set a quarterly reminder for the team to check on this?
  2. How should we handle this if I’m not available for updates?

I think it might be suitable for @faculty-admin to take ownership of this, but I’m not certain.

I just want to initiate a discussion. We could also consider assigning it to @faculty-dev-squad, but that would broaden the dev-squad’s scope.”

@jominney she mentioned that @piyopiyofox, @adamwood, and she had been discussing Sensei usage as part of the pathways project with @burtrw . She wondered if he could provide additional guidance on this matter and emphasized the importance of keeping it up to date with the latest version, especially given the significant changes they planned to implement that relied on it heavily.

@piyopiyofox also asked: ¨Is there a friction point for auto-updating Sensei?¨ and @Jonathan replied: ¨So far we’ve not had any issues, but no developer I know is going to auto-update a 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. without doing some testing first. Additionally, because it’s the Pro extension, we don’t have the option, as far as I know, of auto-updating it; it needs to be a PR. Unless we build some auto-updating mechanism for the Pro plugin.¨

You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.

#meeting-recap, #training, #training-notifications

#training-team