Courtney Robertson 6:21 pm on December 4, 2020  

Current Focus Areas

Categorize a post as Highlight to add it to this section.

Projects

Categorize a post as Project to add it to this section.

Other Work in Progress

Categorize a post as Work in Progress to add it to this section.

Courtney P.K. 7:54 pm on March 24, 2023
Tags: , faculty-survey   

Faculty Survey Results – Q1 2023

TL;DR: A survey was conducted among the Training Team Faculty members to gain insights into their experiences and perspectives. Based on the responses, main takeaways are to recruit and/or train more Administrators, increase engagement on the team blog, and continue to focus on improving communication, collaboration, and processes. Next steps and plans for improvement on the program will be shared in an upcoming post, after reviewing additional comments and suggestions on this post.

As we approach a year since launching the Training Team Faculty program, a check in with all Faculty members was conducted to gain insight into their experiences and perspectives on the Faculty program. This also included asking their estimated amount of contribution hours they could dedicate to Faculty tasks, so we could determine if there was a need to train new Faculty members.

Faculty check-ins were accomplished by sharing a check-in survey with Faculty members. This post serves to share the findings and insight from the survey.

Training Team Faculty at a glance (as of 28 February, 2023):

  • Number of Faculty members: 32
  • Number of completed surveys: 28

Faculty roles:

  • 2 Administrators
  • 11 Content Creators
  • 5 Editors
  • 11 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
  • 6 Faculty members work to progress the needs of all roles

*Note: Some Faculty members fulfill more than one role on the team, which is why the numbers add up to more than the total number of Faculty members.

Let’s explore what our Faculty members had to share. Please read on for more details!

Continue reading →

#faculty-program, #faculty-survey

Jonathan Bossenger 9:14 am on March 24, 2023  

Proposal: How to run a Learn WordPress course cohort

Introduction

The Training Teams’ vision for 2023 is to “empower users to achieve their goals with WordPress through actionable and practical learning experiences that bring the community together.”

One way that this vision can be achieved is through the concept of course cohorts.

A course cohort is defined as a group of people who go through a learning journey at the same time. Course cohorts can be run asynchronously, but include planned synchronous sessions for group-related activities. Course cohorts usually follow aspects of social learning, where the group can interact with each other, and learn from each other. 

This post is a proposal for how the Training Team could run course cohorts. The idea behind this post is to look at how the Training Team could plan, market, and execute course cohorts using the available course content on Learn WordPress. Ultimately, once feedback has been gathered from the Training Team and the WordPress community, this proposal can be turned into a handbook entry and used to launch the first Learn WordPress course cohort.

Considerations:

  • Attendee availability
  • Attendee location/timezones
  • Course material
  • Asynchronous access to content
  • Group leadership
  • Attendee engagement
  • Defining success

Timeframe

Given the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL./self-paced learning environment of Learn WordPress, we cannot assume that attendees have large amounts of dedicated time to apply to a course cohort. The nature of a cohort is that it has to have a set start and end date. It is also not ideal to require attendees to commit to lengthy cohorts, as they might lose interest, thereby affecting completion rates. 

For this reason, it’s recommended that a course cohort based on Learn WordPress content not be longer than 4 – 6 weeks. 

The majority of our existing courses consist of either 4-5 modules or 4-5 lessons (short courses) so this fits with the suggested timeframe. 

When preparing the course content, we should determine a specific amount of hours required by attendees each week to review the course content, attend synchronous sessions, and complete course activities. Ideally, we should expect course attendees to spend an average of 2-3, but not more than 5, hours per week on these tasks and should adjust the course content accordingly. Course activities should be practical, but not too lengthy. 

Teaching structure

I propose that we leverage existing course content and lesson plans to run course cohorts. The most straightforward way to do this would be to create a copy of an existing course in the Sensei LMS on Learn WordPress and configure it for a course cohort. This will allow us to both manage attendees for a course cohort and add specific lessons for any planned synchronous sessions. This version of the course can then be reused for later cohorts. 

Course content

For the first round of course cohorts, we could use courses that are beginner-friendly, have enough content (but not too much) to fill up the estimated timeframe, and can be run by any members of the faculty content team or subject matter experts (SMEs). 

Each week, there should be at least one asynchronous activity and at least one in-person session that participants are asked to complete. The asynchronous activities can include online whiteboard exercises, course content quizzes, and/or technical exercises that can be submitted. Ideally, where needed, these quizzes and exercises should be capable of “self-assessment”. 

Alternatively, we could consider how we could make it possible for course attendees to assess each other’s exercises anonymously.  

The in-person session can be held via Zoom, or the facilitator’s choice of video conferencing platform, as we do with our Online Workshops. These sessions, however, should be for course cohort participants only.

Ideally, the course should also have one overarching task, in the form of a final project, that participants are encouraged to complete. 

Where possible, this project should be such that a series of automated tests can be performed on it to determine whether it meets certain criteria. Project types that would be suitable for this type of testing would anything to do with building with WordPress or extending WordPress. This could be in the form of unit tests (testing units of code), functional tests (testing collections of functionality), or acceptance tests (also known as e2e tests, where you automated the process of manually testing the task in a headless browser). For projects that can’t be tested automatically, we should rely on course attendees assessing each other’s projects anonymously.  

It is important therefore to decide what this final task will be upfront so that the testing framework can be defined and implemented beforehand.

Attendee numbers

Managing a course cohort is something new to the Training Team. Therefore at this time, we don’t have a good handle on what is possible, or how many is too many. Personal experience in running online workshops points to limiting the initial maximum number of attendees to 15. However, we can review this over time, and adjust accordingly.

While ultimately the number of attendees should be decided by the course facilitator, we suggest no fewer than 5 and no more than 30. 

Attendee selection

Given the asynchronous nature of our work and the fact that our learning community is spread across time zones, it is recommended that we approach attendee selection in a fair but randomized manner. 

Once the course content has been determined, a public post on the Training Team blog will be published, announcing the fact that interested participants can sign up to be considered for the course cohort. 

We can then work with the Marketing Team to have the course cohort post marketed across social media platforms and WordPress news platforms. Some popular platforms include: 

  • WordPress.org News – https://wordpress.org/news/
  • WP Tavern – https://wptavern.com/
  • WP Content – https://wpcontent.io/

This post should include a couple of validation questions, to ensure possible attendees meet a small list of requirements:

  1. They have a 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/ profile
  2. They can dedicate the required time each week to completing the course content/activities
  3. They should be able to attend at least one in-person session per week or be able to catch up with the session asynchronously.

The post should remain open for at least 2 weeks, after which time 15 attendees will be chosen at random. This allows for a fair selection process. Any attendees that are not selected can be added to the waiting list for the next time this cohort is run and notified accordingly. 

Cohort group leaders

It is recommended that in order to lead a course cohort, contributors should meet the following requirements:

  1. Be a member of the Training Team faculty
  2. More specifically, be a member of the faculty content creators or subject matter experts
  3. Have a proven track record of hosting online workshops, tutorials, or courses
    1. Ideally have hosted at least 2-3 online workshops OR 
    2. Published 2-3 tutorials on Learn WordPress OR
    3. Published a course on Learn WordPress

The reason for these requirements is due to the fact that course leaders will need to be trusted to run the course in alignment with the WordPress community guidelines, as well as have an understanding of how to create and present learning content. They may also need to have access to private attendee data (e.g., email addresses) and should be trusted not to abuse this data access.

Course cohort updates

As discussed elsewhere in this proposal, all course updates should happen via the Training Team blog. Below is a list of the possible blog posts that could be created, to update the community on a specific course cohort:

  1. Course Announcement/attendee sign-up post
    1. Include details about what a course cohort is, what to expect, and how to sign up
    2. Include details of the specific cohort topic/course content
    3. Standard 2-week comment/sign-up period
    4. A final comment to indicate course sign-up is complete, and close comments
  2. Course commencement post
    1. Indicate that the course cohort has begun, with an estimated end date, and projected outcomes
  3. Course wrap-up post
    1. Include details of course progress, invite participants to send in their course feedback, and tease the next cohort

Course cohort communication

In order to allow learners and facilitators to the community with each other asynchronously during the duration of the course cohort, we will need to implement some form of an intentional and focused learning community for Learn WordPress. Options include using the Make 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/., a dedicated forum like Discourse, or a WordPress 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 solution like bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. installed on Learn WordPress. 

Measuring success

To measure the success of a course cohort, we can consider the first two levels of Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation. 

  1. Results: The degree to which participants find the training favorable, engaging, and relevant
    1. How many participants complete the weekly activities?
    2. How many participants attend the in-person sessions?
    3. How many participants complete the course feedback survey?
      1. This should include a pre-course survey and a post-course survey to measure attitudes, engagement, and value.
  2. Learning: The degree to which participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment based on their participation in the training
    1. How many participants complete the course?
    2. How many participants pass the quizzes/tasks/assignments during the course
    3. How many participants pass the final task?
    4. How many participants both complete the course and pass the final task?

At this stage, it is hard to pinpoint what is an indication of success for each level. Therefore the following arbitrary numbers are proposed.

  1. Results – at least 50% of participants complete the activities, attend the in-person sessions, and/or complete the feedback survey
  2. Learning – at least 50% of participants complete the course, and pass the final task, or both.

As this content is both open source and community-driven, we don’t really have a way to measure the second two levels, namely, the degree to which participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job, and the degree to which targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training and the support and accountability package.

Share your feedback

What do you think of this proposal? Do you think we’ve covered everything that we need to be aware of? What’s missing, what’s not necessary?

This post is open to feedback until Friday, April 7, 2023. Please leave your feedback in the comments below.

Mumtahina Faguni 1:03 am on March 24, 2023
Tags: , ,   

Training Team Meeting Recap for March 14, 2023

This meeting followed this meeting agenda post. 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.)

(We have alternated our weekly team meetings according to the timezone. This week we are having the Team Meeting in the APAC timezone, and a Coffee Hour was held in the Americas/EMEA timezone at Tuesday 17:00 UTC.)

Introductions and Welcome

There are 17 attendees, either live or async: @webtechpooja, @courane01 @faguni22, @nomadskateboarding, @mehrazmorshed, @eboxnet, @thisisyeasin, @lada7042, @ibalmarwan, @chetan200891, @caraya, @courtneypk, @westn, @dhanendran, @onealtr, @azhiyadev, & @bsanevans.

Welcome to the team (Slack usernames): @Freeom, @mujuonly @Muhammed Iqbal P B, @Mehraz Morshed @Mateusz, @Lyndi Castrejon

News

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.

  • March 14 – @Mumtahina Faguni
  • March 21 – need volunteer
  • March 29 – need volunteer

Faculty Members Update

  • We are considering discontinuing async meetings. Please leave your comments on this Slack discussion. (Note: This link will take you away from this meeting flow.)
  • Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12 for AMER and March 26th for EMEA. And according to the poll, we will run the meeting at 16:00 UTC. We will change the time from the next meeting i.e. March 21. 
  • Would anyone like to co-host the upcoming EMEA/AMER meeting on March 28 with me? Please leave your name in the comments if you want to volunteer.

Dev-squad update: Triage sessions planning

This post summarises the discussions that followed the dev-squad proposal.
The dev-squad triage sessions would alternate weekly:

  1. APAC dev-squad sessions will be held on Tuesdays at 06:00 UTC
  2. AMER dev-squad sessions will be held on Tuesdays at 22:00 UTC

The first dev-squad sessions were held in the APAC timezone today at 6:00 UTC.

We managed to review 5 Pull requests and assign labels according to their status. Our Faculty-member, @bsanevans, also added:

I’m really excited to see this kick off, and to see the progress the squad was able to make in just 30 minutes

@bsanevans

Introduction to WordPress Development: A proposed learning path

Please provide your feedback on the proposed learning path. Here I would like to mention @Courtney also shared a draft for learning pathways, just before the meeting started. Here is the link 👇

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RW657Q/p1678805300219399 (Please note this link will take you away from this meeting flow.)

Launching the Contributor Working Group: Call for Volunteers

This post aims to start building the proposed mentorship program using the contributor working group! If you would like to contribute or be a part of this, comment on the post.

Start working on revising and creating content for WP 6.2 on LearnWP

Projects

Other Work in Progress

The following items are other projects that team members have volunteered to take on. Would any of the project owners like to provide the team with an update?

@courane01 also stated that,

No updates yet, I have drafts in progress and will start sharing those when I have them a bit more finalized. With the release underway, expect a slew of updates a few days after the release.

Request for review

Tutorial

Lesson Plan

Course

Other ways to Contribute

➡️ Co-host an upcoming Online Workshop
Learn more about Co-hosting an Online Workshop on our handbook page.
➡️ Help resolve a Content Error
We have information on how to validate and Triaging Content Error Reports.
➡️ Join the Training Team Welcome Committee!
Help us welcome new members to the Training Team and foster our growing community.

Online Workshop this Week

Open Discussion

@psykro mentioned confusion around the process of applying for team badges. @webtechpooja mentioned the team was in the process of updating handbook pages. The 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/ issue in use right now will be closed once those updates have been published.

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, #training, #training-team

Benjamin Evans 12:47 am on March 20, 2023
Tags:   

Meeting Agenda for March 21, 2023

This week’s meeting will be held in APAC timezone on Tuesday, March 21st, 2023, at 07:00 UTC, and @bsanevans will be hosting.

1. Intro/Welcome

Welcome to all new teammates who joined the Training Team this week!

2. News

  1. Meeting Note Takers
    • March 21 – @nomadskateboarding
    • March 28 – need volunteer
    • April 4 – need volunteer
    • April 11 – need volunteer
  2. Faculty Members Update
    • Monthly faculty meetings have been discontinued.
    • Faculty members had an annual check-in survey they completed recently. @courtneypk will be sharing results in the next week or so.
  3. Meeting times for EMEA/Americas is changing from this week
    • Please see the Make WordPress Meeting Calendar for up-to-date information about meeting times.
      • EMEA/Americas meetings and coffee hours on Tuesdays will now be held at 16:00 UTC. Friday EMEA/Americas coffee hours will continue to be held at 10:00 UTC.
      • There are no changes to APAC meeting times.
  4. Dev-squad update: Triage sessions planning
  5. Learning pathways
  6. Team badges
    • The process of requesting a team badge has been updated. Please see Team Profile Badges for details.
    • @psykro was awarded the Training Team Badge this week for 12 months of consistent contribution to the team.
  7. We’re looking for WordCamp EU Contributor Day Table Lead volunteers!
    • WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. EU Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. will be on June 8th this year. @webtechpooja will be attending, and will be one of two Table Leads. We’re looking for one more volunteer!
    • If you’re interested in becoming a Table Lead, please reach out to a team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. (Pooja or Ben) to show your interest.
    • Please show interest by March 29th. The selection will be announced by March 31st.
  8. We have a new handbook page drafted: Preparing for a WordCamp Contributor Day
    • Please leave feedback on the draft by March 31st. You can find the draft linked in this Slack message.
  9. News from other WordPress teams

3. Creating content for the WordPress 6.2 release

Please reference the resources below as we prepare content on Learn for the 6.2 release.

Content for 6.2

4. Content published in the last week

5. Open requests for review

6. Project updates

7. Open discussions

If you have topics you’d liked discussed in the meeting, please leave them as a comment on this post.

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.

#agenda

Chetan Prajapati 2:17 am on March 18, 2023
Tags: ,   

Contributor Day Recap – WordCamp Asia 2023

Contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. started on 17 February 2023, 9 AM at ICONSIAM, Bangkok, Thailand. The day started with our Table Leads Benjamin Evans (@bsanevans) and Chetan Prajapati (@chetan200891) introducing the Training Team to attendees. Around 20 people joined the Training table that day, with more than a dozen new contributors joining the team for the first time. Here’s what we achieved:

  • New members completed the team’s onboarding program, and then went on to continue contributing to Learn WordPress in their interest areas.
  • Destiny Kanno (@piyopiyofox) hosted a Training Team Contributor Day Online Session and 5 people attended.
  • New content translations were started for Japanese, Arabic, and Khmer.
  • New reviewers for Tamil content translation were recruited.
  • 2 training page handbook pages were updated.
  • The Individual Learner Survey was promoted both individually and with Marketing.
  • The team hosted its second brainstorming session for Training Team 2023 Goals Setting. Notes from this session include:
    • Create a dev road map for 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..
    • Get involved with the redesign work happening on Learn.
    • Figure out a method to manage localized content translation.
    • Nurturing the Locale Ambassadors program (making sure people who show up have people they can connect with).
    • Create a Learn newsletter for learners.

Here is a summary of folks who attended, and some other contributions they worked on:

We are thankful to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia organizers, our team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. Pooja Derashri (@webtechp​​ooja) who also attended, and especially all contributors who participated that day – both in-person and online.

Memories

Benjamin and Chetan giving opening remarks on-stage at WordCamp Asia 2023 Contributor Day
9 contributors sitting around the Training Team table at WordCamp Asia 2023 Contributor Day
12 people sitting around the Training Team table at WordCamp Asia 2023 Contributor Day
A screenshot of 6 attendees attending WordCamp Asia 2023 Contributor Day online via Zoom

Bonus: Here are 5 past and current Training Team reps who were able to catch a group photo together!

5 past and current Training Team reps

#contributor-days, #wordcamp-asia

Abha Thakor 7:33 pm on March 16, 2023
Tags: ,   

X-post: Call for volunteers to help with 6.2 end user documentation

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/docs: Comment on Call for volunteers to help with 6.2 end user documentation

Pooja Derashri 9:00 am on March 13, 2023
Tags:   

Meeting Agenda for March 14, 2023

This week’s meeting will be held in EMEA/AMER timezone on Tuesday, March 14th, 2023, at 17:00 UTC, and @webtechpooja will be hosting.

  1. Intro/Welcome
  2. News
    1. Meeting Note Takers
      • March 14 – @faguni22
      • March 21 – need volunteer
      • March 28 – need volunteer
    2. Faculty Members Update
    3. Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12 for AMER and March 26th for EMEA. And according to the poll, we will run the meeting at 16:00 UTC. We will change the time from the next meeting i.e. March 21.
      • Does anyone want to volunteer with me to co-host the upcoming EMEA/AMER meeting on March 28?
    4. Dev-squad update: Triage sessions planning
    5. Introduction to WordPress Development: A proposed learning path
    6. Launching the Contributor Working Group: Call for Volunteers
  3. Start working on revising and creating content for  WP 6.2 on LearnWP – WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 launched on Feb 7
  4. Projects
  5. Other Work in Progress
  6. Request for review
  7. Open Discussions

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.

#agenda

Jonathan Bossenger 11:37 am on March 10, 2023  

Dev-squad update: Triage sessions planning

This post summarises the discussions that followed the dev-squad proposal.

After the initial proposal post, the following Training Faculty Admins indicated their interest in taking part in dev-squad:

  1. @digitalchild
  2. @courane01
  3. @meaganhanes
  4. @amitpatelmd
  5. @alexstine
  6. @psykro

Triage sessions

With @digitalchild, @amitpatelmd, and @psykro all on similar APAC-friendly timezones, and @courane01, @meaganhanes, and @alexstine on similar AMER-friendly timezones, it was agreed that dev-squad triage sessions would alternate weekly:

  1. APAC dev-squad sessions will be held on Tuesdays at 06:00 UTC
  2. AMER dev-squad sessions will be held on Tuesdays at 22:00 UTC

The first dev-squad sessions will be held in the APAC timeslot on Tuesday, 14 March 2023 at 06:00 UTC.

The following week the dev-squad sessions will be held in the AMER timeslot on Tuesday, 21 March 2023 at 22:00 UTC.

From there on, the sessions will alternate between APAC and AMER timeslots.

All dev-squad meetings will be held in the #meta-learn channel in the WordPress Slack instance.

Duration

To start, the sessions will be 30 minutes in length. However, this can be extended on a case-by-case basis if needed.

Proposed agenda

Below is a proposed agenda for each triage session

  1. A short introduction and welcome
  2. Review any open PRs
  3. Triage any open bugs

This a reminder that the goal of dev-squad triage sessions is to help move PRs and issues forward, not to physically review/verify them. Triage sessions can also focus on either PRs or bugs, and do not have to cover both in a single session.

Syeda Sanjida Afrin 8:27 am on March 10, 2023
Tags: , ,   

Training Team Meeting Recap for March 7, 2023

This meeting followed this meeting agenda post. 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.)

(We have alternated our weekly team meetings according to the timezone. This week we are having the Team Meeting in the APAC timezone, and a Coffee Hour was held in the Americas/EMEA timezone at Tuesday 17:00 UTC.)

Introductions and Welcome

There are 16 attendees, either live or async: @webtechpooja, @digitalchild, @karthickmurugan, @bhargavbhandari90, @amitpatelmd, @afrin29, @nomadskateboarding, @chetan200891, @faguni22, @onealtr, @psykro, @lada7042, @eboxnet, @courane01, @courtneypk, @bsanevans

Welcome to the team (Slack usernames): @shilpa @Caleb Matteis @John, @Shipon Karmakar

News

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.

  • March 7 – @Afrin
  • March 14 – @faguni22
  • March 21 – need volunteer
  • March 29 – need volunteer

Faculty Members Update

Training Team goals

Training Team goals for 2023 have been published. Please check out the team goals for this year. This will help us prioritize different tasks throughout the year.

Meeting Time Update

Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12th at 10:00 UTC and the UK and other parts of Europe change after March 26th. We created a poll for collecting votes and below result we got:

Training Team Meeting Time Update for Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12th at 10:00 UTC, and the UK and other parts of Europe change after March 26th. We created a poll for collecting votes and Showcased the result we got through this image.

Learn Newsletter

The first Learn WordPress Newsletter was published. Please share this in your networks.

Come & Join The Renewed Welcome Committee

With the launch of the new onboarding program, the Welcome Wrangler role has evolved. Come check out the revamped role, and join the committee!

Process To Contribute To Learn WordPress

Add your thoughts to this Slack discussion. As to whether we should consistently stick to “Learn” or “Learn WordPress”, or whether both could be used interchangeably, we would be interested to hear the thoughts from the team. 

Team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. Update

Destiny will be away from March 1 – June 1 for a sabbatical. Please continue to lean on @bsanevans and @webtechpooja during this time.

Online Workshops Update

A discussion has started to include Online Workshops in the WordPress admin dashboard widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.:: Proposal: Modify the Events and News widget to show topic-based meetups worldwide

Recap: Sensei Pro LMS Demo for Learn WordPress 

Sensei Pro LMS Demo for Learn WordPress – Thanks @Courtney and @Ronnie Burt for the insight.
Here are the discussion points:

  • Chapter 1: Navigating Learn WordPress Courses
  • Chapter 2: Enhancing the Learning Experience with Interactive Blocks and Videos
  • Chapter 3: Making Use of Video
  • Chapter 4: Navigating Sensei Settings
  • Chapter 5: Improving the Course Experience

Published Content 

WordPress 6.2 release Work:

Start working on revising and creating content for WP 6.2 on LearnWP WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 launched on Feb 7and you can check Recap: WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 Release Party Ride Along

We are looking for folks to create content related to the WordPress 6.2 release. You can find content needing creation on this GitHub project board. Here are other useful links:

Projects

Content Localization Foundation

Content Localization Foundation – @bsanevans is now leading the project.

– Project completion is scheduled for March 31st – less than a month to go!

Learning Survey Update

Individual Learning Survey for the Needs Analysis which is now closed. @abhanonstopnewsuk and @Saloni Patel shared their thoughts on analyzing this survey data by 20 March (CC: project leader: @westnz).

Other Work In Progress

The following items are other projects that team members have volunteered to take on. 

Request For Review

Forthcoming Online Workshops

Online Workshop this Week:

Other Ways To Contribute

Ready to start contributing? Here are a couple of ways to get involved today!

Open Discussions

@webtechpooja started the discussion by sharing one of her celebrations’ news Holi – Festival of Colors. Also, @karthickmurugan asked about “6 of my lesson plans and handbook pages Tamil translations are waiting for a reviewer. If we find a Tamil Reviewer for reviewing those, it would be great.” Proper discussion with solutions had been provided.

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, #training, #training-team

Jonathan Bossenger 7:03 am on March 8, 2023  

Introduction to WordPress Development: A proposed learning path

One of the Training Team goals for 2023 is to “release a roadmap of new content (that isn’t tied to WP releases/features)”. To do this, we need to look at how we can plan out specific Learn WordPress content that is curated in a way that creates a learning journey for the user.

Last year, I started thinking about what skills and knowledge a WordPress developer should have. That list turned out to be quite long, but what did become clear was that defined pathways of learning are needed, in order to plot developer-focused content for Learn WordPress.

After spending a few months creating content for Learn WordPress, I’ve started narrowing down these learning paths for the new WordPress developer. In my estimation, there are generally three “levels” of knowledge and experience, namely beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

What defines the beginner level?

The beginner level can be defined as the fundamental knowledge that a new WordPress developer should know, from having no knowledge to being able to develop with and extend WordPress.

To put it another way, if you could send someone to a WordPress university for a three-year period of study to earn a degree in Developing with WordPress, what is the fundamental knowledge you would want them to have learned by the end of their first year?

It should be noted that there are two types of developers that this definition could apply to.

The primary audience for this content is developers who are new to extending WordPress. Perhaps they have built blogs and sites using no-code tools, and now they want to broaden their knowledge of how to build and extend WordPress. They may have some coding experience elsewhere, but they have never coded specifically for WordPress.

The secondary audience for this content is developers who are experienced in other development platforms. They could have come from building websites and web-based apps using other programming languages, content management systems, or frameworks. They already understand much of the foundational knowledge needed, and now merely need to learn the WordPress way.

What does the beginner-level learning path look like?

With all this in mind, this is my proposal for the content needed to create a learning pathway for the beginner-level WordPress developer:

  1. A brief overview of how WordPress works
    • The WordPress file system
    • Creating basic things like posts, pages, and users, and changing settings
    • Permalinks, and how they work with the rewrite module on both ApacheApache Apache is the most widely used web server software. Developed and maintained by Apache Software Foundation. Apache is an Open Source software available for free. and NginxNGINX NGINX is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It started out as a web server designed for maximum performance and stability. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for email (IMAP, POP3, and SMTP) and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers. https://www.nginx.com/.
    • How a dashboard page request loads
    • How a front-end page request loads
  2. The programming languages of WordPress
    • 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.
    • CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.
    • JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/.
    • PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php.
    • MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/.
  3. WordPress development fundamentals
    • Setting up a local development environment
    • Action HooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. and FilterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. Hooks
    • The WordPress database
    • WordPress coding standardsWordPress Coding Standards The Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. May also refer to The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the PHP coding standards.
    • Enabling the debug.log
  4. An introduction to developing WordPress themes
    • Classic themes vs 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. themes
    • Theme requirements
    • Templates and template parts
    • The WordPress Template Hierarchy
    • Classic themes – Template tags and conditional tags
    • Block themes – patterns
    • Block themes – theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.
    • Enqueuing CSS and JavaScript
    • Custom functions
  5. An introduction to developing WordPress plugins
    • 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 requirements
    • Creating custom post types and taxonomies
    • Using post 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.
    • Enqueuing CSS and JavaScript
    • Introduction to developing plugins securely
    • Preventing common vulnerabilities
  6. An introduction to Roles and Capabilities
    • How to create and apply user roles
    • How to create/modify/remove capabilities
    • How to check user capabilities
  7. An introduction to the WordPress REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/.
    • Using the WordPress REST API
      • How to make an APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. request, differences between GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE
    • Interacting with the WordPress REST API
      • available endpoints, schema, authentication, creating, updating, and deleting data
    • The WordPress REST API under the hood
      • overview of how the REST API works, detail about design decisions
    • Extending the WordPress REST API
      • creating custom routes and endpoints
  8. An introduction to developing WordPress blocks
    • Using JSX vs vanilla JavaScript
    • Setting up the block development requirements
    • Building your first simple block
  9. An introduction to WordPress multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network.
    • Setting up a Multisite network
    • Managing a Multisite network
    • Building plugins and themes that support multisite
    • The differences between developing for multisite vs single site
  10. Debugging in WordPress
    • Enabling the built-in WordPress debugging options
    • Examining the state of your PHP code using error_log and print_ror vardump
    • Examining the state of your JavaScript code using the console object
    • Popular debugging plugins
      • https://wordpress.org/plugins/debug-bar/
      • https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/

Next Steps

My next steps would be to review the content we already have on Learn WordPress, as well as those items in production, against this list, to see what is already there, and what still needs to be created.

However, I’d first like to get some feedback from the Training team and the wider WordPress development community. Does this list cover the fundamental knowledge the new WordPress developer needs? Are there items here that might not be necessary? Are there any items that you might consider more important than others?

Please leave your feedback in the comments before Tuesday 21 March 2023.