Become a Welcome Committee member today!

This month, the Training Team launched a new onboarding program to improve the onboarding experience of new contributors. Because of this, the function of the Welcome Committee (formerly Welcome Wrangler) has changed. Please check out the Welcome Committee’s new handbook page. And if you are an active team member interested in this role, come join the list of committee members!

What changed exactly?

Previously, the role required special access to the team’s email inbox in order to see contact form submissions from new contributors. With the launch of the new onboarding program, the contact form has been retired, removing the need for this special access. Now, any active contributor on the team can become a Welcome Committee member!

Is that all that changed?

There’s more! Previously, the role involved connecting with new contributors in direct messages, responding to contact form submissions, and sharing multiple resource links with them in order to get them set up with the team. Now, the focus has changed to just public interactions with new contributors. One only needs to direct them to the new onboarding program, as all other resources will be gradually introduced there.

Why no longer “Welcome Wrangler”?

The Training Team has called this role a few different names over the years, including “welcome wagon committee”, “welcome committee” and “welcome wranglers”. In September 2022, it was raised how the word “wrangler” can be difficult to understand, especially when translating to non-English languages. Those involved in the conversation then agreed “committee” would be a good alternative to use instead.

If you have any question, please leave them in the comments below. If you are interested in joining the Welcome Committee, feel free to 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.” @bsanevans or @faculty-admin in the #training 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.

Interested to know what other roles the team has? If so, then also check out Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today! Or, come experience the team’s new onboarding program.

#contributors, #roles, #training-team

Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today!

The Training Team offers many ways for contributors to create content for https://learn.wordpress.org/. This month, I’ve been processing applications people submit to become Online Workshop Facilitators and Tutorial Presenters. I realized some people may not be aware of these contribution opportunities, and wanted to take a moment to reintroduce them to the team.


What are Online Workshops and Tutorials?

Online Workshops are interactive learning opportunities, often hosted via Zoom. They are safe spaces where people can come as they are, develop new ideas, explore issues, ask questions, network over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate on work, and thrive in uncertainty. Online Workshop Facilitators are volunteers who host these workshops and encourage attendees to join in on the topic being looked at in the session.

Tutorials are short standalone videos that walk viewers through a process, or teach a WordPress-related concept. Tutorial Presenters are the driving force behind the creation of Tutorials on Learn WordPress, and are the voices people hear when they watch these recordings.

This sounds interesting! How can I join?

The Training Team is always looking for new contributors to facilitate Online Workshops, and present Tutorials! You can apply to become each of these roles below:

Having knowledge or experience about the topic you’ll present on is useful. But you don’t need to be an expert to apply to these roles! Let us know in the application form how familiar you are with your presentation topic, and what sort of assistance we can offer you to help you be successful. If you have any questions about joining, feel free to reach out in the #training 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, and we’d be happy to answer those questions for you.

What is reviewed in the application process?

The Training Team offers many opportunities for people to contribute without the need to apply. The Online Workshop Facilitator and Tutorial Presenter roles are unique in that there is a vetting process. One reason is because the team is looking for people who follow the WordPress Community code of conduct, and honor the WordPress guidelines around licensing and trademark usage. You can read more details about the vetting processes below:


Thanks for reading. We look forward to seeing you join our team of Facilitators and Presenters!

#contributors, #online-workshops, #tutorials

Community Course Creation: A Proposal

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)

A flowchart of the community course idea. It starts with a contributor having an idea; this contributor writes a proposal and submits it to the faculty program for review. This review can take anywhere from 48 hours to 1 week. If the faculty approves the course idea, they create a course github issue and assign a faculty buddy to help the contributor with learning objectives, audience, and micro-objectives (mini-lesson s that add up to a finished course project or "chunked" units). There will be a buddy planning conversation to generate these ideas. During their conversation, they will create a course project objective, focusing on what skills learners need to complete the course project. From there, they break the course into lesson plans; the content creator writes lesson plans and can collaborate with other training team contributors to create and complete lesson plans. As lesson plans are created, the creator's buddy can answer questions. Once all lesson plans have been completed, the training team will review all lesson plans using the normal process. After that, the buddy helps the creator create a course frame in learn.wordpress.org; they reach out to the marketing team with a proposed "finished" course timeline. At the same time, the creator migrates lesson plan content to learn.wordpress.org. A final review is conducted by both the training team and the marketing team. Final changes are made, and the course is published. Finally, the marketing team promotes the content.

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.
  1. 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?
  2. 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. 
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

2015 Contributor Survey

Hi training folks! Thanks for all your hard work and contributions in 2015. Could you contribute few more minutes to fill in the 2015 contributor survey? It will help us establish some baselines around the contributor experience so that we can see how things change over time.

**This is being posted to all the Make teams, so if you subscribe to a bunch of p2s and keep seeing this post, know that you only need to fill the survey in once, not once per team.**

The survey is anonymous (so you can be extra honest), all questions are optional (so you can skip any that you don’t want to answer), and we’ll post some aggregate results by the end of January. It took testers 5-10 minutes to complete on average (depends how much you have to say), so I bet you could knock it out right after you read this post! 🙂

There are two sections of the survey. The first has questions about team involvement, recognition, and event involvement, and is pretty much what you’d expect from an annual survey (which teams did you contribute to, how happy are you as a contributor, etc).

The second section is about demographics so we can take a stab at assessing how diverse our contributor base is. All questions are optional, but the more information we have the better we can figure out what we need to improve. If there’s some information you’d rather not identify, that’s okay, but please do not provide false information or use the form to make jokes — just skip those questions.

The survey will be open until January 15, 2016. Whether you have 5 minutes now, or 10 over lunch (or whenever), please take the 2015 contributor survey. Thanks!

#annual-survey, #contributors