Webmaker/2015/Mentors/Clubs

Webmaker Clubs

Preamble

This is a living document to think aloud about how Mozilla & friends are evolving our web literacy offering to address the following problems:

• higher quality teaching and learning. How can the teaching and learning experience be improved for mentors and learners?
• local community networks. How can local learning communities grow stronger and more networked through Webmaker?
• contributor retention. How can mentors be encouraged engage with Webmaker longer?

We believe the best way to design a solution is to build it in the open with lead users and partners based on their needs and interests. It should be tested with real mentors and learners and be agile.

There are also substantial pieces already made and tested with this model, so much of what we'll do in 2015 is consolidate and iterate.

This document describes how we imagine that process working and what we're learning along the way.

What Clubs are

"Clubs" is a placeholder term. As this initiative develops, it may or may not have the trappings commonly associated with clubs. The term is just to help us hang our thoughts on a noun. It could die. Or it could be what we call it. Let's just see.

Roughly, we anticipate that clubs have the following elements:

Series of activities.

A collection of activities to learn about the web. It includes instructions for the mentors on how to facilitate the activities and materials for learners. There may be ways to recognize learning and participation in these activities.

Hypothesis: Our theory is that activities should be modular and remixable, so mentors can easily modify them for their needs. Yet they should also be simple to use so that mentors feel confident. We also think learners do best when they are making something together and have agency in their own learning.

Lightweight community participation.

Simple processes for connecting with other clubs & mentors. The goal is to celebrate what's happening and to help people learn from one another. Could be things like a shared hashtag and a discussion forum.

Hypothesis: To be successful with this initiative, we need simple ways for people to share what they're doing in their club and to reflect. This will help us respond to real mentors as well as help mentors help each other. Good social interactions encourage people to stay engaged longer.

Local groups globally networked.

A way for clubs to express their own local flavor, to be locally relevant and to innovate based on local needs. And whatever the local instance looks like, there should be something that unites it globally with other clubs. Things like design elements, webpages or physical gear could be ways to show local and global connections.

Hypothesis: There are ways to be local beyond simply "geography." Clubs could adapt to audiences and spaces (e.g. adults in a library or young people in an afterschool program), by language (e.g. Bengali or English as Second Language), by partner network (e.g. ThinkBig or CoderDojo). We think clubs will be most successful when mentors & learners can make them their own. Yet there is some shared DNA that connects all clubs.

Leadership development

Clubs should cultivate and recognize local leaders. Clubs can be where local leaders test and innovate, as well as create spaces where they have independence and agency that roll up to a larger community. There may be resources and staff support to coach leaders on being more effective and distributed including professional development.

Hypothesis: We have a stance on leadership: it works in the open, it's facilitative, and its about having your own agency as a leader and creating spaces for others to develop their agency as well. We think the same learning methods that work for teaching web literacy will be effective for teaching community leadership. Make it about learning with others, interest-based, and blended online and offline.

Integrated with other Mozilla mentors networks

These local groups will be interwoven with other mentors networks, especially the Hive, as a larger community of practice spreading digital & web literacy. Hives can start clubs, clubs could become Hives. We see these offerings as deeply interrelated. There is also huge opportunities to continuing expanding this work with Mozilla networks like Reps and MDN.

Hypothesis: The Hive networks have been greatly successful in having local roots with global community. They are lab and classroom for web literacy. Webmaker Clubs can find a sweetspot in these ecosystems that brings something new (like particular stance on web literacy and community leadership) while leveraging and integrating what exists.

Club Creators

This is a group of collaborators with whom we'll co-develop the club initiative. It is a mixture of larger learning networks and individuals who are dedicated to teaching the web.

We have worked closely with them on a variety of projects already, including Hive, Maker Party and Mozfest.

Whatever we build, it will be shaped deeply by the needs and ideas of this group. They are our distributed leadership. They bring expertise and experience, and our offering should be in service to them.

• Hive members
  • Scripted - confirmed
  • Gina
  • [Toronto]
  • [Chi]
  • [Chat/KC] Code for America

• Maker Party partners
  • After School Alliance - confirmed
  • Digital Harbor - confirmed
  • Steven Flowers, Coder Dojo Manchester
  • Su Adams
  • Jess Weichler Wellington
  • Kelesy (Innovate the Cape)
  • NTEN

• Webmaker Super Mentors
  • Chad (NWP)
  • Emma (Hive Vancouver)
  • San James/Lawrence (Mozilla Uganda)
  • Vineel/Raj (Mozilla India)
  • Faye (Mozilla Philippines)

• Web Lit Map community (Doug)

• • tbd

Club Content

We will continue to write and test the club activities and instructions with the club creators.

Here are resources we're building off of:

• 8-week arc by Laura. This is a way to sequence an 8-part arc covering the core web literacy competencies. It includes detailed agendas and resources.
• Webmaker Club Alpha by Chad. This is a series of activities designed and tested in a school club.
• Webmaker by MOUSE

Club Dependencies

We are trying to do this with minimal dependencies on other teams or external factors.

Nevertheless, dependencies and skills needs we anticipate are:

• Club creators. 15+ lead users and partners to join in this endeavor with their time and local community. We are deeply dependent on their availability and interest.
• Online community manager. Someone to monitor and engage with club creators and their learners online. This could include managing social media channels, posts in Discourse and mailing lists, and organizing community calls. There is also a lot of storytelling (blog posts, mailing lists) needed.
• Learning experience designer. Someone to make and package the club activities and the supporting instructions and materials. Should bring across the learning experience effectively and in our pedagogy.
• Club coach. Someone to work closely 1:1 with the club creators to understand how they are implementing the clubs, where they are getting stuck, how to surface insights and issues. This includes programmatic knowledge, community organizing and facilitation skills. Also monitor larger community to see if someone is ready to become a club creator.
• Partnership builder. Someone to see opportunities to expand and further develop this work, through deeper programmatic or financial partnerships. Ability to understand the program design and inform how to adapt it effectively for the right opportunities.

We may also need:

• Project management
• Print & web design
• Frontend web development

Milestones

Q4 2014 (pre-alpha)

Deliverable: Initial commitment and calendar of club creator cohorts (alpha, beta, release to market). Requirements gathering and assemble assets.

• Oct 24 -26: Initial club creators conversations at Mozfest. First draft meta arc complete. Pitch doc v1 complete.
• Nov 1 - 15: Planning for 2015 and further program design.
• Nov 15 - 30: Invite club creators to kickoff call. Scope and scaffold process for Q1. Collect needs and opportunities.
• Dec 10: Kickoff call with 1st club creators cohort. Blog post.
• Dec 10 - 20: 1:1s continue with club creators to seed first tests.

Q1 2015 (alpha testing)

Deliverable: Be feature complete. Complete first tests.

• Jan 21: Fortnightly call with club creators as a group. Review first iteration of activities.
• Feb 1: Next iteration of activities. Feedback from creators.
• Mar 1: Activities ready for testing.

Q2 2015 (beta testing)

Deliverable: Be usable. Preview / early access with next cohort. Focus on usability testing.

• Apr: Unpack learning from first test. Prepare for next iteration.

Q3 2015 (release to marketing)

Deliverable: Be market ready. Go gold.

Q4 2015 (release party)

Deliverable: Be reflective and celebratory.

Club Clound Nine

Ideas and links we don't want to forget.