Webmaker/Training/Contribute

Introduction and Background

is a program that will help spread Web Literacy by teaching people to teach the web. It's an initiative designed to strengthen and expand the community and help people contribute meaningful resources and actions to the Webmaker Project. There are online and offline components to Webmaker Training, and both the digital and real world Training initiatives inform and connect with one another.

Check out the Roadmap

Conversion points

An overarching goal of Training is to bring new people into the community so they can contribute by creating a safe space where they can learn about the mission and community that makes up Webmaker while leveling up their own Web Literacy competencies and skills. Some manage to contribute during training, but because Training is in its infancy, the majority of the focus is on converting people from Users to Supporters. The conversion from Supporter to Contributor will improve exponentially as Training content and community grows.

Tracking the Conversion

Using the Sniff Test, we've identified a way to track the progression from User to Supporter that Training enables. This conversion is complete when a Training participant has:

• been involved in interaction with other members of the community
• is a real person (bot-proof and impossible to spam)
• creating rather than consuming
• spent at least 15 minutes of effort

Using these attributes, we can see that 71 people have made the full conversion in discourse (e.g. This number doesn't include people who participated in one of Training's live sessions, posted in social networks about Training, etc). What we're unable to quantify is how close a person might be to the conversion point.

Contribution inside of Training

Contribution, as defined by the Engagement Ladder and the metric team's Contributor Dashboard, includes Webmaker Mentors and Super Mentors who have completed the training and 'got the badge'.

Community members begin contributing to Training when they lead by example and truly participate. Due to the nature of online learning, participation is achieved through active engagement and support. Connectivist experiences like Webmaker Training are life blood for Connected Learners, but for newbies it is painful to learn in this manner. People are simply not used to being in control of their own learning. The more people we as a community engage, the more contributors we inspire.

In the most recent Training, we saw primed community members making tutorials and teaching kits, giving constructive feedback and answering questions. These community members were already primed to achieved Webmaker Mentor status.

Contribution to Training

What we need

We need people to engage and support new participants in Webmaker Training, to help each other teach and learn open attitudes, online communication skills, as well as digital making skills, teaching skills and more.

How it helps contributors

Contributors can learn from each other and the public, while broadcasting their skills and interests to a global community. They will level up and feel the joy of helping other people level up too.

Qualities/skills the contributor should have

We need "self starters" in Webmaker Training. We have tons of different opportunities, but we need people who express their interest and get started. The idea is that contribution is equal to participation, with very active contributors being the people that help new contributes become active.

Specific opportunities

• Evangelism: help push the theoretical understandings of Open cultures in academic, political and social circles in an effort to change the way we, culturally, think about teaching and learning in the 21st Century as well as policy and common action.
• Writing, designing or developing: help curate and make open educational resources that teach web literacy at multiple levels, both online and offline. This can include everything from video-based tutorials to exploratory projects to innovative demos. Basically, if someone can use the creation to illustrate a point or help a learner grasp a concept, we can package it as an OER.
• Teaching: Run online and offline events that spread open attitudes, digital skills and web literacy and evangelizing.
• Connecting/Broadcasting/Networking: Share local actions back with the community to inspire and to help Mozilla tell the story of Mozilla, the Open Web and Open Education, build local networks to strengthen local teaching and learning.

How it supports our 2014 goals

Webmaker Training is relevant in:

• Invest in Sustainability
• Grow Adoption of Webmaker & Open Badges
• Enable Communities that have Impact

Training is explicitly mentioned in "enable communities that have impact", and training people to think and contribute to an open community is a large investment in sustainability. Since we use Webmaker and Open badges to help people who are not already a part of it come into the open source world, it's quite obvious that we'll grow the adoption of these two projects.