WordPress University: Would You Attend, Teach?

Published

January 31, 2013

16 Comments

The WordPress world seems to need more teachers and learning resources. There are plenty of themes already.

— Galin Simeonov (@galins) January 31, 2013

This is what I immediately thought when I saw @Galins‘ tweet this morning, which is neat because I wrote on my personal blog something similar along the lines of education recently:

Closely aligned with local idea is education and this idea of IRL or elements of being fully present and physical with technology. Education is the hidden gem of the tech world as a trillion dollar industry that few have been able to really tap into. Education may be the 5th wave.

I shared how the first 4 waves of the internet could be easily summed up as:

Directory
Search
Social
Mobile

And how the 5th wave is something of significant interest to entrepreneurs and those that are on the edge of technology.

I believe that Galins is half-way right insofar as the fact that there needs to be more education around WordPress – it’s something that we here at WP Daily are passionate about and something we’ve already discussed internally for 2013.

The other half is that I believe that we should continue to promote and encourage new theme developers to create their own products and/or companies – there’s no reason to discourage any budding entrepreneur to not try their shot at building the next best theme out there. Why not. Competition is good and is one of the sources of quality innovation.

Yes, there are tons of themes out there but we still have room for more. We should help these authors, though, be wise and use best practices when we can – which is one value that we have here at WP Daily. It is far better to have educated and quality products than mediocre and mere copy-cats.

Perhaps we need to create this WordPress School or WordPress University of sorts. Perhaps it could be funded and/or partnered with the WordPress Foundation and leverage the already-existing passion of the Events Team / Meetups and WordCamps.

Would you teach at it? Would you attend if there was such a thing? Let’s dream a little, shall we?

There are 16 comments

January 31, 2013 #

Sami Keijonen

As I replied to Galin I would definitely apply for teaching in this school. That would be something awesome.

I’m thinking that there is tons of potential about teaching and educating. There could be physical lessons like WordCamps/Meetups but also virtual lessons. We have that crazy little thing called internet. There should be lessons for beginners and for pros.

So, when shall we begin?
January 31, 2013 #

Japh Thomson

WordPress University. What a cool idea! 🙂

As I’m sure you know, I’m passionate about teaching WordPress to others. This is what I strive to do on Wptuts+, and at the local meetup I run.

Helping people get started, to make improvements, and give them the best chance, is invaluable.
January 31, 2013 #

Rami

I would happily attend in any capacity; student, teacher, admin work. I’m fond of coursera.org and similar sites for continuing education – maybe something like that could work?
January 31, 2013 #

James Dalman

I believe education is the KEY missing component in the WordPress marketplace. There are great businesses like WP101.com, WebDesign.com, Treehouse, etc., but there is a huge opportunity for instruction in a variety of areas. The WP University model is something I even toyed with — and would invest in. I think what would take to be successful is a broad range of topics and instructors to pull it off.

Now I have to go back and rethink some ideas. LOL
January 31, 2013 #

NatalieMac

I would LOVE teaching at such a university. I get so much satisfaction from putting the power of WordPress into people’s hands. There’s nothing more rewarding than hearing from a student after a WordCamp, meetup or workshop that they are putting what they’ve learned to use successfully.
January 31, 2013 #

Tom McFarlin

I’d definitely sign up to teach (and even take a few classes depending on who was teaching what – Prof Jaquith on security?)

But seriously, since WordPress means so many things to different people (app platform, themes, plugins, blogging, publishing, “web site maker,” website, etc), the vision would have to be concrete.

Love this idea.
January 31, 2013 #

Jay Hoffmann

Yea, I’d seriously get on board with an idea like this. Love to teach, love to attend, love to help you put it together!
February 1, 2013 #

Jess Jurick

Take a look at what the Community contributor group is doing with the Learn WordPress workshops. I’m sure they would welcome the support / contributions: http://make.wordpress.org/community/2013/01/23/level-up-training-for-diversitygrowth/
February 1, 2013 #

Chris Lema

Count me in – I’d love to teach at such an institution. I’d also not mind helping construct it. I built one of the first LMSs in 1995 at Berkeley Lab and online education captured my heart back then (to the point that I did my graduate work online).

Who’s doing it and where do I send a check? 🙂
February 1, 2013 #

Galin

I was actually referring to the ordinary WordPress user. There seem to be enough resources for developers – for those who want to learn and improve at least.

But the end user is left in the dark. If a site owner decides to try WordPress and starts looking for info, he soon finds himself buried in marketing materials, reading sales copies and “informative” affiliate-link-enriched articles.

In no time such user is “educated” which is the hottest commercial theme framework and how to earn millions by using someone’s magical plugin. But even months later he/she is not aware of fundamental WordPress concepts.

Every day I have to explain the difference between ‘post’ and ‘page’ in WordPress, or what a featured image actually is and what you cannot use it for. And I often have to argue with the same people, when they start pointing to irrelevant examples.

Even if you look at wordpress,org – the main (almost) non-commercial WordPress hub, you’d see tons of themes and plugins, doing almost anything you can imagine. As a result, the user doesn’t see a reason to educate himself and grasp the basics. “Why should I bother? I can just install that plugin and I’ll have my pink links.”

As a side result, the ordinary end user expects to be spoon-fed. He is detached from the “WordPress community”, has zero appreciation for the provided resources, and doesn’t care about things like GPL or the WordPress spirit/ideology/whatever.
- February 1, 2013 #
  
  John Saddington
  
  ah good clarification my friend! we need to get more people to be self-sufficient. right on.
- February 1, 2013 #
  
  Andrea_R
  
  And that is exactly what we are working on with the learnwordpress.org and the training initiatives – the USER. 🙂
  - February 1, 2013 #
    
    John Saddington
    
    YES!
- February 2, 2013 #
  
  Kathy Drewien
  
  I struggle with, “The ordinary end user expects to be spoon-fed. He is detached from the “WordPress community”, has zero appreciation for the provided resources, and doesn’t care about things like GPL or the WordPress spirit/ideology/whatever.”
  
  New users have been led to believe WordPress is the silver bullet for designing a website with little investment of time or money on the front end. We tout the 5-minute install and beauty of pre-designed themes everywhere without stopping to explain a theme requires steps beyond installation.
  
  As a result, people who are excited about finally getting their website up and running install WordPress, agonize over finding the right theme, and then spend countless frustrating hours wondering why they can’t make their site look like the theme demo. By the time they discover someone who is willing to help they either feel stupid for not “getting it” or blame the theme designer for thwarting their efforts.
  
  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “WordPress is hard to learn.” Once I help them see there is difference between “learning WordPress” and learning how a theme works – and why it’s difficult to change the color of hyperlinks – they begin to feel a sense of empowerment with the smallest tasks.
  
  And yet, new users are still fearful of attending a Meetup where, they believe, they will be the dumbest person attending. It is risky to ask questions in a room full of designers and developers! We respond in a foreign language we take for granted without pausing to learn if our answer makes any sense to the one raising the question. If you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you even ask for help?
  
  Sorry for the quasi-rant… I am passionate about helping people learn what they want to learn while respecting their inexperience, and all too often those of us active in the community don’t slow down enough to be helpful.
February 2, 2013 #

MaAnna

I would be delighted to both teach for and attend a WordPress University! I’m passionate about helping site owners get a solid WordPress foundation and then taking them all the way through content, conversion, and SEO using all of the flexibility and power that WordPress provides as a CMS.

Maybe this is a bit of a tangent, but I’d also like to see a well structured PHP course too. Everything about developing WP themes and plugins relies on it. There are already some beginner courses online, and then it skips the middle and jumps to disjointed advanced topics from well-known developers. A solid basics course that relates to design would be a good place to start for the WP Univ. and then perhaps make friends with coders to use it as a model to develop more advanced courses.
July 6, 2013 #

Ayman

I already had this Idea in mind…

I would be ready to colaborate in creating the University.

Keep up the great Ideas

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