Tag Archives: learn-wordpress

Hugh Lashbrooke 8:04 am on July 30, 2021
Tags: learn-wordpress   

Learn WordPress: User Survey & Focus Groups

Learn WordPress has been live since December 2020 and, in that time, the platform has seen solid growth in content and collaborative learning. While there are many plans in place for where the platform is intended to grow, a more structured roadmap needs to be established so that things can move forward with a clear direction in mind.

In order to facilitate this, a thorough analysis and needs assessment of Learn WordPress is underway. This assessment has a few different facets to it, one of which is direct research into what learners and potential learners would like to see, both in terms of content and the learning experience as a whole. In order to gather reliable data with which to work, a survey has been compiled and focus groups will be run. These will help answer questions about what kind of things people want to learn about and how they want to learn.

The survey is anonymous and open for anyone to complete – it will only take a few minutes to go through. You can find it here and fill it out right now: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LearnWordPress. The survey will be open until Friday, 13 August.

The focus groups will be video calls that last for about 1 hour and will include 5-6 people in each one. There will only be a small number of focus groups and people who join them will have no further obligations beyond attending and taking part in the call. You can complete this form to register your interest in being a part of one: https://forms.gle/jdk2qkkvGyszx1SG6. Focus groups will ideally take place during the week of 2-6 August but can be postponed to the following week depending on interest and availability.

These efforts will be the most successful if people with a broad range of skill sets and experience levels take part, so please share the links above (or just this post!) with as many people as possible. The results will be valuable no matter how well people know WordPress – whether they’re interested in using it for the first time, have just started using it, or have been using it for a long time already.

Fill out the survey
Register interest in focus groups


The results of the survey will be published on this blog, along with relevant anonymised data gleaned from the focus groups.

#learn-wordpress

Hauwa Abashiya 12:45 am on July 3, 2021
Tags: learn-wordpress, , ,   

July 2021 Training Team Sprint

The Training team is using the Sprint method to determine what we are working on and to determine our timeframe for delivery.

What is a Sprint?

[Sprints] are fixed length events of one month or less to create consistency. A new Sprint starts immediately after the conclusion of the previous Sprint.

https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-sprint-in-scrum

Sprint Content on Learn Goals

Theme: How to contribute to the WordPress Project with screenshots and videos (guidelines for how content within screenshots and videos appear).

Think about these with as much consideration toward 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) as possible.

Ideally, these guidelines could be adopted by other teams as well, turned into a video series of workshops, and help onboard others into several parts of the project. Additionally, it lifts needing to maintain this from our team handbook into content on Learn.

Lesson Plans

Functionality of Learn Goals

Training Team Goals

You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.

Training Team Mission

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.

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.

Team Links:

#learn-wordpress, #learnwp, #sprint, #training-team

Cami Kaos 11:04 pm on January 27, 2021
Tags: learn-wordpress,   

Learn WordPress Working Group – Call for Handbook Volunteers

Whether you’re a first-time blogger or a seasoned developer, there’s always more to learn.

That’s how start the Learn WordPress site which encourages visitors to take a workshop and learn, or use a lesson plan to share WordPress with others. The one huge thing we’re missing on the Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site. is the documentation to help people who want to share WordPress with others create the very video workshops we’re sharing. It’s time to fix that with a brand new handbook!

Some documentation was written up as we built the workshop portion of Learn but it’s incomplete and unpublished. I’d like to change that by the end of February 2021 by publishing a handbook for contributing to Learn by creating workshops, leading discussion groups, and vetting workshop applications. 

Since this is a relatively new way to contribute we’ve been making it up as we go along, but now it’s time to get these processes out of our minds and onto the screen.

I’ve put together an outline for the handbook and with the help of @evarlese and Hari Shanker we’ve fleshed out quite a bit of content. But there is still more to add and there is the whole thing to review. 

If you’d like an advance look at the existing documentation, you can view the read only document here. Edit access will be given to contributors next week.

This coming Monday, February 1 at 9:00am PST I’ll host a discussion in the #training channel of WordPress 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 discuss next steps and answer questions for volunteers. If you’re interested in contributing by helping to build this handbook please join me then. If you’re not available at that time feel free to comment here to show interest or ask questions or 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.” me in slack where my username is camikaos. 

+make.wordpress.org/community/

#learn-wordpress

Cami Kaos 10:38 pm on November 19, 2020
Tags: learn-wordpress   

Updating Sprint ahead of Learn launch

Howdy folx! In order to get some momentum in updating the lesson plans on Learn WordPress prior to the upcoming launch we’re hosting two updating sprints!

What?

  • Updating and checking images in the lesson plans on Learn WordPress to ensure that the images are: all images are stored in the Learn Media Library, missing images are replaced, and all images contain alt text. (Instructions are here.)
  • Reviewing code snippets in lesson plans. (Instructions are here.)
  • Completing lessons that are “Almost ready, but already live on Learn” as listed in the Training team TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing..
  • Linking slides from GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ into Learn Lesson Plans. (Instructions to come soon.)

You can find more details on our priorities post.

When?

There will be two work sprints on Tuesday, December 1, 2020:

Where?

We’ll be congregating in #training on community 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/..

Questions?

If you have any questions or need guidance during the sprints, Slack will be the best place to go. If you have questions in advance, or need access to the Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site. to help with updates, please comment here.

If neither of these times work for you and you’d like to host a sprint at another time, please let me know!

#learn-wordpress
Courtney Engle Robertson 10:30 am on October 29, 2020
Tags: learn-wordpress, ,   

Agenda for October 30, 2020

Please join us Friday at 11:00 UTC 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 for our weekly meeting! As a team, we will stick to UTC time.

Alert: This agenda is long. Consider a quarterly progress report and introducing topics we need to work through over the next few months. It would help to review the overview before the meeting and then clarify parts during the meeting.

Today’s Agenda

  1. Team Reps
  2. Additional roles
    1. Welcome committee
    2. Meeting note taker
    3. Checking inboxes from forms on Training and Learn websites for new contributors
    4. APAC timezone facilitator
  3. Badges redefined while not with GitHub & track current contributions & props. We don’t need to have answers now but do need to help track who has contributed during this season of transition.
  4. Audit update – all live lessons have had a first pass! Here are small chunks of areas to contribute:
    1. Call for screenshots contributors
    2. Call for code snippets help
      1. Proofreading
      2. Testing
    3. Call to remove some templated post content that has moved to taxonomy
      1. Target Audience
      2. Experience level
      3. Types of instruction
      4. Time duration
  5. Lesson plans nearly “done” – these are medium chunks of ways to contribute
    1. Refer to our Trello – almost done column at the FAR right.
    2. As a team, do you want to just pick and choose, or shall we start with those almost done?
  6. High-level organization and potentially larger areas of commitment for contribution
    1. Additional proposed lessons and organization of a series of lessons
      1. Learn WordPress Course Planning & our Trello lesson plan ideas (middle column roughly)
    2. Slides – we have talked about them for ages. They are useful for instructors to use when presenting. They may or may not hold up well in pre-recorded videos for the Community online workshop route, but can be.
      1. Historically, the team has settled on Shower.md. We have a good bit of content on that now.
      2. We rejected Google Slides after putting considerable work into 2 screen ratios and a template to standardize the look.
      3. Issue tracker
      4. Key posts
        1. https://make.wordpress.org/training/2015/08/25/slides/
        2. https://make.wordpress.org/training/2018/05/10/recap-of-may-10-2018-meeting/#post-10773:~:text=Slides,-have
        3. https://trello.com/c/jpp5ob7t/192-slides
        4. https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/guidelines/slides-style-guide/ (note, the team decided on open source tools as a requirement)
      5. It’s a big ask to have some means for slides functionality on the Learn site.
        1. Understandably .org is very stringent on adding plugins to a multi-multi-site.
        2. We need revision control tools
        3. We need a way to make it easiest on attendees to view slide decks, presenters to access the slides, and display in any manner
        4. Do we need the means for storing that to be open source-based code?
        5. If we add something to .org, what are our long term commitments and expectations to a new tool?
        6. Would this solve ease of contribution?
        7. Do we revisit tools again that we have already decided against?
    3. More granular auditing work is on the horizon. We need to plan how to track so many moving parts
      1. If/when we include videos on lesson plans (like the video Workshops portion of the site), tracking updates to those. Unlike Vimeo, WPTV videos do not get overwritten with newer uploads, so embeds will need to be tracked. Related – when it hits core, we may get chapter options!
      2. Links to Support/DevDocs articles –
        1. oEmbed?
        2. Taxonomy
        3. Get notified about articles updated
      3. Revision control for lesson plan post content. If a lesson is live, we need to have a draft version to prepare for releases and also to be proofread and revised before it goes live.
      4. Sensei assessments are an option on Learn.
        1. We have assessment questions for each lesson. Those do need to be available for facilitators in a live setting without requiring users have internet connectivity.
        2. We can additionally convert our assessment questions to Sensei quizzes.
      5. The trouble with terminology (teacher, coach, instructor, class, workshop, curriculum, course, class, and more).
    4. Cross-team coordination
      1. Workflows on releases and procedure
      2. Release squad
  7. Open announcements/discussion

You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.

Training Team Mission

The WordPress training team creates downloadable lesson plans and related materials for instructors to use in live environments.

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.

Team Links:

#learn-wordpress, #slides

Courtney Engle Robertson 6:07 am on September 17, 2020
Tags: 4AWNuNL, learn-wordpress, ,   

Agenda for September 18, 2020

Please join us Friday at 11:00 UTC 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 for our weekly meeting!

Today’s Agenda

  1. Call for volunteers
    1. Today’s notetaker & willing to post Recap notes (we have a reusable 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. for that now)
    2. Welcoming new users to our Slack channel
    3. Alternate meeting for Pacific Rim
  2. Update on Lesson Plan audit
    1. Replay: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/pUqNzNAOFotXvMuXeysYm249DdzNFmy2Uv-1-d3-FOfAHaFw7L1P4yRA_5mBcY7S.K8MzXeYH1ljBFEub Passcode: #4AWNuNL
    2. Edit Flow in Learn
    3. Proposing Slides support on Learn
  3. Discussion items in the near future
    1. Renaming Lesson Plan Workshops (courses?)
    2. Lesson plans that involve brands need to be discussed/considered.
    3. Discussion on where lesson plans live
  4. Open announcements/discussion
    1. Contributor open office hours

You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.

Training Team Mission

The WordPress training team creates downloadable lesson plans and related materials for instructors to use in live environments.

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.

Team Links:

#learn-wordpress, #slides

Courtney Engle Robertson 10:35 pm on August 17, 2020
Tags: learn-wordpress   

Where do we go from here?

Hey folks! Wow… things are happening quickly here. That is exciting. I’d really love to hear how you have found the training team, what you want to help with, and your why if you are up for sharing. Swing by our 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 to say hello.

Where are we now?

At home most likely. Stay healthy friends. But really, as a team, we are regrouping. We have not had much activity in creating/reviewing lesson plans. We have a backlog of pull requests in our GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ repo as well.

But – the Learn site is live! It’s been 7 years in production. Yes, 7. Learn has been the destination for our lesson plans. It is a combined contribution of our lesson plan content and theme planning while working with Design, 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., TV, Community, and more. Talk about cross-team collaboration.

What do we do now?

Well, our lessons are now rather public. This is wonderful and has spurred new contributors to swing into our Slack channel at least. I love reading the passionate contributors’ ideas popping up.

We have a few high priority issues.

  • We’ve taken branded plugins down from the Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site. for now. Historically, the Training team began with generic lessons.
    • Before CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. included the Additional CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. area, we considered several branded plugin options. We had opted against it for a time, and then opted to include ones that were part of default WordPress installs or provided functionality that CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. did not (contact forms, formerly sitemaps) and later to also inform users about the most popular plugins.
    • Let’s revisit if and how we can partner with brand owners (and later potentially themes as well) regarding how to best present lessons that meet the needs of trainers, document any specific needs and workflows for brand owners.
  • Coordinate with Community as we share the Learn site space to move forward.
  • Audit & prioritize the already-live lesson plans for any gaps, content to take down or update.
    • Editor (we only have Classic at a user level, missing 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 completely)
    • Default themes mentioned are now out of date
    • Thorough check on branded content in lesson plans

We also have an influx of ideas from new participants. Let’s briefly revisit how and why. We have almost 100 repos.

  • Lesson plans are on GitHub.
  • We have a format for each lesson plan. They can be found in our GitHub repo. Factors that drew us to using this as a repo for the lesson plans before they moved to Learn can be found in the archives here. In short, the team needed a way to take a lesson through its paces on revision, auditing, and more. These plans where originally living in the team Handbook. Drafts are still there, now unpublished. The images in the media library disappeared before the move to GitHub, with much sadness.
  • Slides – we have talked about them for ages. They are useful for instructors. They may or may not hold up well in pre-recorded videos for the Community online workshop route, but can be. I’ve found them rather incomplete.
  • As long as we are using GitHub for our team/project, we need help reviewing PRs. Should we seek out Slack integration?
  • Is GitHub the best repo still for lesson plans? Those less familiar with using GitHub have a barrier to entry in contributing this way. The team does need a strong revision tool, assurance that the media library or other valuable aspects of our content will be backed up. New voices have shared an interest in where we keep those.
  • The Learn site, and any repo or staging for our lesson plans and live video workshops will need auditing as WordPress updates. 5.5 had quite a few updates to the block editor that are substantial enough to warrant revising content. We need to plot a path for reviewing the team TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. to ensure it is current, and tools within the Learn site or lesson reposrepos The Training Team uses GitHub for working copies of lesson plans. You can find them at https://github.com/wptrainingteam. to audit. @juliekuehl shared a still current and valid option that could work within Learn. (note: We don’t even have using the Block Editor lesson yet.)
  • The Learn site is now a cross-team platform. Let’s get together with a few key players from Community that helped us ship the site. As teams, we need to plot our path forward on maintaining content, interlinking, and more.
  • Workshops per the Training team were intended to be Lesson Plan + Lesson Plan + Lesson Plan = Workshop. We now have video-based workshops. Can we connect them with interlinking?
  • Our team directive was to provide downloadable materials for offline use. Lesson plans, slides, and now videos can all be potentially downloaded in ways that presenters can use offline. Are we still aiming for downloadable content?
    • Note: for slides, that wouldn’t just be a PDF, but also a way to download the related slide deck and display it in a browser, with or without connectivity.
    • @tikolan shared a tool to download slides for lesson plans. I can test that by Thursday, August 20.

For the many many contributors that have passed through the Training team, again, thank you! Props were pulled together on fast notice and can be found where the Learn site launch was announced. This was our first official time giving props for the launch.

#learn-wordpress

Courtney Engle Robertson 6:15 pm on August 6, 2020
Tags: learn-wordpress   

Update on learn.wordpress.org

Hey there Training team

I hope you are all faring well through this trying season.  It’s been quite some time since we’ve met.  For those able to join in for a chat, come join in some open office hours at 11am EDT on Monday.  

We’ve got some big news.  So much effort by our team has gone into shipping a new Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site.. @man4toman @chetan200891 and @dufresnesteven have done a fantastic job at building out the site.  @juliekuehl and @jessecowens have led this team through the reorganization of our lesson plans moving to our GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ repository, and soon we’ll get to see them living on the Learn site as well. It’s possible that the Learn website will be able to soft-launch within one week. 

As WordCamps, Meetups, and other in-person WordPress related events have pivoted through the Coronavirus pandemic, the Community team has reimagined online events, with a new initiative to build community beyond events.  

Moving beyond synchronous events

Using a flipped-classroom model, the Learn site will soon be an organized way to find how-to lessons for a wide range of abilities and goals.  As we compile a series of lessons, contributors can record them and offer video workshops, reinforcing the content with optional real-time discussions.  That can happen online, and in the future as in person-events resume, could happen in the pre-pandemic method we have offered.

Possible Lesson elements:

  • A video presentation about the subject, and a way to download this for offline use as needed
  • Lesson plans for anyone to use when presenting the lesson in person
  • Slides if applicable
  • Links to Support and Developer articles that are relevant to the material
  • A way to rate and review the lesson and content and presentation
  • Participant assessment of confidence, familiarity, and understanding of the content before and after
  • What workshop(s) does this lesson plan connect with?
  • Details for the next online real-time event 
  • Editor-level taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. in the admin dashboard to help us audit content readily as updates are available

What Training Team Contributors can do:

  • Continue to revise and edit lesson plans
  • Continue to form workshop plans
  • Review applications for presentations (see the application process ideas at https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/06/proposal-workshop-submission-and-review-process-for-learn-wordpress/) 
    • Presenters must apply
    • Once their video has been produced, it will go through a review for subject matter accuracy as well as production quality before going on to the WordPress.tv team
  • Create training resources for the workflow to contribute to the Learn site and Training team. 
  • Audit lessons as updates become available, documenting what needs to be revised soon.
  • Collaborate with all the teams (after videos are transcribed, lessons can then be translated and localized, with localized recordings available as well)

Where do we go from here?

The Community team is fast at work on organizing real-time online events to extend the lessons and workshops into spaces where participants can engage with instructors.  We’ll hear more about how that goes soon. 

We could set ourselves a goal, as a team, to facilitate one new lesson plan per week.  In time, lessons will culminate into workshops.

As a team, we have an amazing opportunity for cross-team collaboration, assisting instructors and other contributors, and ultimately, to empower others with ways to express their voices online.

Who’s interested? For those able to be present, at 11am EDT/3pm UTC, join me in the Training channel.  Share your ideas in the comments below. 

#learn-wordpress