2023-04-24 Educator WG: Formation Meeting

Owned by John Swope
Last updated: Jul 11, 2024
4 min read

Date

Monday, April 24, 1pm EDT / 5PM UTC

View Recording HERE

Meeting Notes:

  1. Welcome & Introductions

    1. Jamboard: https://jamboard.google.com/d/1m4WgX1gpjIg5voL76fPWomFqKCNRFAWGLnbTBPk5vZQ/viewer?f=2

  2. In-Meeting Decisions

    1. Defining Membership and How to Join Us

      1. Membership encompasses a wide spectrum of involvement at this point. Right now the two “requirements” consist of subscribing to Slack #wg-educator channel updates and the Open edX Forum. See link above for instructions.

    2. Defining Tools

      1. We discussed the tools we use for communication, task-tracking, and notes. See link above.

    3. How we make decisions

      1. We make decisions by lazy consensus. See link above for a description of lazy consensus.

    4. Meeting Cadence (Poll)

      1. DECISION: The group has opted to meet monthly.

      2. There may be sub-groups and projects that meet more frequently than that. And we expect to use Slack and the Forum for conversations in between meetings.

  3. Discussion and then asynchronous decisions

    1. What would you like to be the purpose of Educators WG?

      1. Two main themes came out of this brainstorm:

        1. A community of practice to share knowledge

        2. Co-Design the Open edX product by consolidating our voices and finding useful ways to contribute to the development roadmap.

          1. Here is a link to the current roadmap: Open edX Roadmap • openedx

          2. We learned that feature requests can be submitted via form. They are reviewed by a product manager and considered for addition to the roadmap: https://github.com/openedx/platform-roadmap/issues/new/choose

    2. What do you want to accomplish (short or long term)?

      1. Various ideas were written on the Jamboard (link above), with these themes arising.

        1. Support Documentation

        2. Co-Design

          1. The specific output of this is still TBD

          2. Daniel shared this example from Canvas: Canvas Ideas

        3. Various mechanisms for sharing best-practices

          1. Some mechanisms exist as part of this new working group (zoom sessions, Slack channel)

          2. Some ideas for new channels (presentation at next year’s conference, webinars)

    3. Brown-bag topics

      1. Various ideas were presented but the major theme was the immediate desire was for a presentation on the roadmap.

      2. Many other good ideas of things we want and things we can present on are shared in the jamboard.

    4. Values, Principles, Norms

      1. Ideas were collected on the Jamboard and will be collated into our Working Group document.

  4. Available Projects

    1. Two projects (Testing and Documentation) were brought up. There wasn’t time to dive into them but some member expressed interest in learning more about these things. John will share more details to the Slack.

  5. Next Session?

    1. John will work on getting a Product Roadmap presentation for the next session.

 

Action Items:

@John Swope will start organizing the next session around product roadmap.

@John Swope will solicit volunteers for Testing and/or Documentation in the Slack.

@Daniel Silber-Baker will post some more information to the Slack channel about how to be included in some of the discussions happening around product and roadmap.

@Eden Huthmacher will share the feedback with the roadmap/product team about the ability to “upvote” roadmap items. @John Swope This is certainly possible. Once a roadmap ticket has been submitted (here: https://github.com/openedx/platform-roadmap/issues/new/choose), we will embed the ticket into the correlating category on the roadmap, which will allow the community/WG members to provide feedback/support on the ticket, in order to increase its level of priority. Additionally, @Edward Zarecor and @Jenna Makowski are in the process of coordinating roadmap meetings to obtain the community’s feedback on roadmap priorities more frequently. Stay tuned for more updates regarding these meetings.

@Everyone in the group should review our working group wiki page and make any suggestions they feel necessary.

Inspiration from Other Groups:

  1. Basic working group formation:

    1. Working Group Guidelines. Source

    2. How to make a new working group. Source

    3. Active Working Groups: Source

  2. 1-sentence purpose - To be placed on the “Active Working groups” page. Source

    1. What do we want to be? Who do we want to serve?

  3. Set the WG norms and rules. Source: Marketing Working Group

  4. Define a meeting cadence

    1. Weekly and bi-weekly seem to be the norm. Source

  5. “Sanctioning” from Open edX authorities. Source. Is our guy Ned?

  6. Formation Needs - Can review How to Make a new Working Group?

    1. Charter/What we do/Description

      1. Source: Architecture Working Group

      2. Source: Data Working Group

      3. Source: BTR Working Group

      4. Source: FrontEnd Working Group

      5. Source: Security Working Group

      6. Summary: This should be determined through group consensus. 

    2. Outcomes/Goals

      1. Source: FrontEnd Working Group

      2. Source: Translation Working Group

      3. Summary: This seems more for groups with very specific outcomes they want to see in the edX product (i.e. more languages available). For Educators, this may roll up into Charter.

    3. Onboarding/How to Join Us

      1. Source: Data Working Group

      2. Source: BTR Working Group

      3. Source: FrontEnd Working Group

      4. Source: Translation Working Group

      5. Summary: Most groups have instructions on where to start for new members. Usually this consists of joining the slack group and/or zoom meetings. 

    4. Communication Tools and Norms

      1. Source: BTR Working Group

      2. Source: Translation Working Group

      3. Summary:

        1. Wiki: Atlassian

        2. Asynchronous Discussion: Slack and, sometimes Open edX discussions

        3. Synchronous Meetings: ZOOM

        4. Project Board: Github or Trello

          1. Github Comparable: Product WG

          2. Trello Comparable: Marketing WG

    5. How we make Decisions

      1. Source: Data Working Group

      2. Source: BTR Working Group

      3. Source: FrontEnd Working Group

      4. Summary: Most groups use a form of Lazy Consensus Source

    6. Leadership & Contributors

      1. Source: Data Working Group

      2. Summary: Roles, and even members, don’t seem to be strictly defined in these working groups. 

  7. Status Reports - Develop point people and cadence for “time-to-time” status reports. Source

  8. Discuss topics for upcoming brown-bag sessions. 

  9. Next steps for documentation