A Dedicated Volunteer Program for the Training Team

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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.

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#training Slack channel – meeting location

For some years now, the Community Team has been running the highly successful Community Deputy Program:

Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review 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. and MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.. We make sure that new and returning organizers are not overworking themselves, still are following the code of conduct, and generally are making positive contributions to the open-source project.

In short, Community Deputies are volunteers who contribute time to the Community Team to help keep things running smoothly. These responsibilities relate to meetups, WordCamps, WordPress Foundation events, conflict mediations, and anything else that falls under the purview of the Community Team. It is successful for a number of reasons – primarily because it ensures the workload of the team is spread across more people, and that it serves to decentralise the management of the Community Team programs.

With that in mind, I’d like to propose we introduce a similar program for the Training Team.

Introducing…The Faculty Program

In education, the term “faculty” refers to the teaching and research staff related to a particular field of study at an institution. This makes it an appropriate name for a program of this kind within the WordPress Training Team.

I envision the Faculty Program as a group of people from all over the world who volunteer their time to pursue the objectives of the Training Team. It would function in much the same way as the Community Deputy program, so it would:

Be open to anyone to volunteer
Have relevant, but not overly stringent, requirements for acceptance
Have a defined list of available tasks
Include training on how to perform the required tasks

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the types of tasks that Faculty members would be able to perform – many of these aren’t new and are already performed by many wonderful volunteers:

Mentoring and guiding contributors
Creating lesson plans
Reviewing submitted lesson plans
Vetting workshop presenter applications
Generating video captions and transcripts
Collaborating on workshop scripts
Recording workshop videos
Auditing existing site content
Publishing submitted workshop videos
Vetting new Faculty member applications

The program would be managed by the Training Team in an open and transparent manner – Faculty members would be listed publicly, tasks would be as open as possible, training would be publicly available, and reporting would be done on the Training Team blog.

It’s important to note that anyone would still be able to contribute to the team even if they don’t join the Faculty program. Part of the benefit of having a formalised team is that it becomes easier to know who is doing the work and to set targets for getting things done.

What needs to be done to make this a reality?

In order to make this an effective program, it would need to be set up for success from the start. Here are some things that would need to happen before the team can begin reaching out to potential volunteers:

Define exactly what tasks are available for Faculty members (see the above list to start)
Write complete documentation on how to do all of the available tasks
Create training materials (hosted on Learn WordPress) for new volunteers joining the program
- Training materials would be a combination of “how-to” guides (like the documentation) as well as covering the principles behind the work

Feedback

What do you think about this? Please provide feedback about this along the following lines:

Does the idea of a trained and dedicated volunteer team for Training Team tasks sound like a good idea to you?
Can you think of anything else that needs to be done in order to make this a reality?
Do you have nay other thoughts about how this program could work?

Roxy Kohilakis 2:11 pm on October 4, 2021

Does the idea of a trained and dedicated volunteer team for Training Team tasks sound like a good idea to you?

Yes! It adds a layer of fun and I like that people who participate can choose what they want to specialize in.

Do you have any other thoughts about how this program could work?

I like the idea of modeling it after a university faculty program with different levels of faculty: lecturer, asst professor, chief for the reps, etc with defined amounts of contributions that help someone climb up the faculty ladder. Maybe occasional contributors can be called adjuncts or visiting faculty 🙂
Wes Theron 8:50 pm on October 4, 2021

The benefit of the Community Team’s program leads me to believe that it would work well for the Training Team as well. It will create a structured/formal framework to work within to set goals and track progress. As you mentioned, anyone will still be able to contribute, but it does provide the opportunity for volunteers to have a more ‘official’ role if they choose to. Being part of a Faculty Program sounds fun and will hopefully also inspire people who are already working so hard to add to the success of the Training Team.
Hugh Lashbrooke 10:20 pm on October 17, 2021

I’ve started a Google Sheet to track the docs that need to be written for this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XicSs4YWogmptQgqd1raZSVTQQZ8KTfswfPDKiZwN2A/edit#gid=0
Kemmy99 2:56 pm on October 26, 2021

A trained dedicated volunteer team sounds very good. I also think after the training for the team, questions in a quiz like format can be set, so that everyone on the team can be sure they have proper understanding of the task ahead of them.
Courtney Engle Robertson 11:40 am on October 29, 2021
Marketing team discussed the terminology for “faculty” during Oct 6 collaboration session. The questions and comments below are a summary of their discussion.
- Are we bringing in a university or a team of academics to help review Learn.WordPress items?
- Is this the same as an editorial group? If so, can we call it that. It sounds like we’re trying to make it all sound very high brow and therefore less accessible to those who have not got high level of educational qualifications
- All definitions researched mean something like this: “a group of university departments concerned with a major division of knowledge.” Are the people on this going to be professionals in training and academia? It would suggest they were.
- It tends to mean natural ability in my country. Like hearing.Also used as a term in cognitive understanding. May sound a bit patronizing or confusing to use for a free resource produced by the community
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faculty
- It would imply that the people on the group are academically qualified. Will they?
- Not sure what it means and may make people uncomfortable about applying to something called a faculty. How will you recruit to it?
- Group of teachers or professors involved in a subject area is what it is in the US. Are the members going to be the same? Counterparts in other educational settings abroad do not tend to use it. Some commonwealth country universities use it in particular settings for high academic standing staff.
- Hugh Lashbrooke 5:24 am on October 31, 2021
  
  Before I dive too deeply into this, I want to ask if these are real concerns that people feel are a blocker here, or if they’re just being highlighted as points to keep in mind? I don’t want to brush them all aside, but the motivation here would be useful for context to know how much time should be spent going deeper into the name.
  - Courtney Engle Robertson 8:13 pm on November 8, 2021
    
    Noting @webcommsat responded below. The inquiry was around how the term would be perceived and translated. I have no issue with the term, but also was not expecting the word “Learn” to be translated in an odd way when it launched (in the nav bar). Mainly, I asked the Marketing team around some wordsmithing about anything public facing to get beyond the mindset I as an American public education teacher consider of the term.
    
    All good with the need to vet applicants and have a crew dedicated to upholding standards.
    
    I do think we need to be thoughtful around how to balance anyone wishing to contribute with upholding a certain workflow and standards.
webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK 4:56 pm on November 1, 2021
The collaboration discussion with Marketing and Training Team members was on wording @hlashbrooke not the need for the program. @courane01has summarized the doc and the Zoom call about the wording ‘faculty’ and not the idea of what it would do. The comments came from a perspective of whether the word represented:
- globally what the list of tasks would be from an internal and recruitment perspective
- and from an external what people would expect a ‘Faculty’ to do/ have as a background
The general discussion on the program itself was largely positive, with some questions on:
- once you join the program, is it permanent / reviewed periodically for whether someone has time to continue on it
- will there be minimum time period/ contribution expectation
- what will be the difference between the people in the ‘faculty’ and Training team contributors?
These questions also reflected what people thought should be clear in the promotions.
Thanks

WordPress.org

Welcome

Meetings

Introducing…The Faculty Program

What needs to be done to make this a reality?

Feedback

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