Course creation is tough. It’s long; it’s laborious; but it’s glorious when finished.

I’d love to see more courses go live on WordPress – so, how can the community get involved in the creation of a collaborative course? 

I’ve written out some proposed steps we might take to create courses from start to finish. These are by no means permanent and are simply a suggestion of a process that may work.

The Overview (Visually)

Details

So you have a course idea. What should (could) you do first? (We have a documented process for this here, but this proposal aims to augment it to better serve the community).

1. Write a Topic Proposal: I propose we create an intake form (a very simple one to start) 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ for this that asks users what course they might like to write, briefly describe it, and submit resources that already exist on Learn that would help shape this course (lesson plans, workshops, etc.)
   
   1. Looking for Inspiration: What makes a good topic? 
      1. Check the team’s Github for existing high-priority lesson plans that might make a better course than lesson plan.
      2. Consider new WordPress releases: are there related lesson plans waiting to be written that would make a good course?
      3. At some point, we will have a completed Needs Analysis that will help us determine the most high-impact courses; this will be good to reference when it is created.
         
2. Get Approval: The training team should likely review course topic proposals and set up a meeting with the course proposer, which could be done by a process we set up within the faculty program or reviewed as a team at the weekly meeting. 
   1. Note: Courses are extremely time intensive, so I would also suggest creating a buddy/faculty member check-in program around this in order to help contributors with their ideas.
   2. Github Issue: Once this proposal has been approved, we will create a Github issue
   3. A Question: What should the timeline be for review? Is 48 hours enough (this would require faculty managing this), or a week (the greater team could help with this during the weekly meeting)?
      
3. Brainstorm Canvas: This would be an outline we provide as the training team, specifically to generate ideas about the audience for the course, overarching course objectives, and the micro-course objectives (that will be used to make up the lesson plans for the course). An example of what a Brainstorm Canvas could look like can be found here (rough draft). I would also be open to walking through this with folks if they were interested ahead of time! 
   1. This brainstorm canvas can be done individually or during a Zoom call with a buddy / other interested contributors.
   2. There are no right or wrong answers on the brainstorm to start; once the brainstorm has been completed, a faculty member (likely an instructional designer, but basically anyone who is approved) should be pinged to review course objectives and work with the contributor to polish learning objectives.
   3. What is the timeline on reviewing a brainstorm? Would a week be enough time?
      
4. Map It! Each micro-objective from the brainstorm will become the learning objective for a lesson plan within a course (example). 
   1. The course will be made up of lesson plans. 
      • Some lesson plans may already exist about that topic and may simply need to be modified for an online audience; 
   2. Other lesson plans will need to be created; these can be written either by the course creator, or with others assisting.

5. Create the Course Frame: Once a user creates a map of the anticipated lesson plans within a course, they can get started creating the course structure within 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/.
   1. Write the introduction: This introduction should help learners assess their own readiness (readiness question), explain what a learner should be able to do at the end of the course, help learners set up what they need to be successful in the course, and establish several other things that are present in most lesson plan – need to be revised for courses, potential course outline to help users experience success here?
      
6. Write each Lesson Plan on Learn.WordPress.org: 
   1. These lesson plans should be included in the monthly sprint and recorded in Github.
   2. As you complete a rough draft of each of the lesson plans, make sure to keep the Github board updated and let the #training team know during the weekly meeting or as you complete it.
   3. Link each Github Lesson Plan to the course Github as they are created.
   4. One concern I have: There is a lot of “extra” (but important) information in each lesson plan that may distract students from the content they’re expecting to receive. We’ve talked about…
      1. Having a toggle button to show teachers what they need to know in order to teach content when pressed
      2. We may also consider ways to streamline the lesson plan creation process and/or the way content is displayed. 
      3. We also might want to consider if these lesson plans should be identical to the ones that exist already, or if we need a secondary format specifically geared towards online learning. For example, an existing lesson plan may say, “Put students into groups and have them discuss X topic” which wouldn’t work for an online, asynchronous format. 

7. Rough Drafts to Finalized Versions: Completed lesson plans will go through the typical review process:
   1. It will be reviewed for content, copy edited (likely with this copy editing checklist), and for 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) (making sure every image has a detailed alt text and descriptive title, that links are descriptive, and every video has a caption, to name a few examples)
   2. If a course is in progress, it may be useful to organize “mini sprints” to get feedback and insight from faculty members on all lesson plans in a timely manner.
      
8. When all lesson plans / modules are complete, a final review will be conducted.
   1. We can make a brief checklist here to help faculty members and training team contributors review content quickly, but basically this is a final set of eyes on the finished product.
   2. At this point, we can publish the course!
   3. We may want to consider working with #marketing ahead of time to announce the course and get eyes on it, but in my view, not at the expense of slowing it getting it out into the world.
      
9. PUBLISHED! The course goes live, and everyone celebrates.

What do you think of these proposed steps? What should be changed, added, or removed? 

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section here, and in a few weeks’ time, we will finalize how we would like to move forward. I will create a list of action items to be put into Github for what documents, supports, ettc. need to be created.

#contributors, #courses, #getting-involved, #process