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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Eric Karkovack (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm your host, Eric Karkovack. Today, our topic is education and how the WordPress Credits Program is connecting students with the open source community. My guest is Isotta Peira who is the head of the WordPress Credits Program. Isotta, welcome to the WP Minute, and my apologies for any problems pronouncing your name.
Isotta Peira (00:26)
Thank you so much, Eric. Thanks a lot for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor and thanks a lot for making the time. And don't worry all about mispronouncing my name. I will do the same with yours, I'm sure, and with many other words in English. So it's fine. Thank you so much.
Eric Karkovack (00:44)
I appreciate your patience. ⁓ tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you work for Automatic. What do you do at Automatic?
Isotta Peira (00:52)
Sure. I joined Automatic in 2022 and I've been a full-time sponsored contributor for the WordPress community since then. When I joined in 2022, well, it's literally four years ago. It was January 17th and I started contributing full-time to the community team. So supporting event organizers, work camps, meetups worldwide.
and I've been doing so since then. in 2023, 2024, in the community team, there were many conversations about coming up with new events formats to be able to reach new audiences. And we tested out with contributors and organizers around the world, different type of events.
And specifically one event that turned out being a success was ⁓ one or multiple days workshop for students at schools and campuses. And this was thanks to Anand and the community in India. They launched something that has become last year, one of the official education programs for the community, the Campus Connect.
And so in that context, we see as a team the importance and the opportunity on supporting more education. And so helping WordPress entering schools and colleges. And this is where my contributions shift a bit. And I was able to invest more time into education programs.
and with a couple of our contributors, we designed and built WordPress Credits, this contribution-based program that we are now offering to colleges and schools around the world. So basically the idea is, okay, help students gain WordPress skills, but also give them basically a playground for working, for training their skills by contributing to the contribution teams.
This is the situation, the little bit journey and where I'm right now.
Eric Karkovack (03:16)
Thank you for that. I know just in the WordPress community over the years, there's been a lot of talk about.
How do we get that next generation of users and developers into WordPress? Because the WordCamp events have been wonderful. They're very welcoming. But at the same time, lot of people outside of WordPress don't know about them, right? So this educational ⁓ initiative seems to be a great way to reach ⁓ younger folks who are looking to ⁓ learn WordPress. What challenges have you faced, though, in trying to implement this so far?
Isotta Peira (03:54)
There have been a few challenges on different fronts. At first, this was something new. As far as I know, no other open source communities have tried to do something similar. So we had no playbook, there was no ⁓ guidelines, so we tried and tested. And since it was completely new,
It was just me at the beginning and two contributors sponsored by Weglot who had a few hours per week. So we first had built a program and the structure, then we tested it out with the first students from the University of Pisa in Italy. And we realized, OK, this doesn't work. This flaws doesn't work. This needs to be changed.
And so at first it was a lot of, okay, finding out the best way to operationalize it. And then the biggest challenge right now is creating the contact with the schools and institutions because even though the WordPress community has started hosting more events on campuses.
it's still hard to find, for example, the right person to talk to and the person who can eventually make the decision about what program to launch. But we're getting there. The support from the community is amazing and plenty of professionals or volunteers in the community who are helping creating these contacts. And then what's... ⁓
a challenge that we are facing right now is making sure that we are ready to scale up the programme and start receiving hundreds of students every quarter. Because since we launched it, it was June, then we started having the first pilot students in July and August. We were talking about low numbers, so we might have 15 students from a school, 10 from another.
But now we are getting ready to start welcoming hundreds of students at the time. So we really want to make sure that we don't create any confusion within the contribution teams. And also we ensure a mentorship flow because we also want to assign mentors to the students. And we really want the process to be smooth for everyone involved so students can really make the best out of it.
Surprisingly, there's one aspect that I had anticipated as a potential challenge, which turned out not to be so, is to explain schools the value of the program and how impactful it be for their students to be part of the WordPress community. Even when talking to schools who have never worked on WordPress or...
almost never heard about it. They can see what our environments could mean for students and help them develop transferable skills, helping them step out of their comfort zone and already creating contact into a remote community like ours with companies, professionals, volunteers from everywhere. So this was a surprise.
Eric Karkovack (07:38)
I did want to ask about the different universities. How involved are they in the program? Are they mainly providing you ⁓ the facility to work in and to attract students? Or are they more, are they focused at all on the curriculum or is that totally up to ⁓ the contributors?
Isotta Peira (08:04)
It depends from institutions. ⁓ There are some institutions that approve the programme, they help us promote it on their channels and our programme is one of the thousands of options that students have to enrol in a practice programme. But there are other institutions that are investing more.
This also usually depends on ⁓ how the institution is organised, if they have more ⁓ bureaucracy around the programme they offer and the type of involvement that they can have. ⁓ But there are ⁓ so far at least one institution in Latin America, one in Asia and one in Europe,
have decided to include WordPress credits as a mandatory part for one of the courses that they already have in place. So what we doing right now is to train the teachers so they can become mentors for their students with the long-term goal to enable them to run this program every year without having to depend on the availability of mentors from the community or
administrators of the program. So literally, ideally, we would want to have every school participating in this, all the resources they need to keep feeding the community and their program mutually. And because this is going to be the best way to ensure that more students are included, that they also learn in like the step they have to take. It's going to be
even easier because it would be in their safe space at school and also their teachers would be the first one connecting them to the community. And this would also create a lot of opportunities for teachers to learn new skills, to also increase the level of the service that they give to students. at the end, this is the main direction.
which we're going and I've been able to share more about the feedback that we get from students and schools in the upcoming month. Also, we just started onboarding the first ⁓ college in the United States and they're also interested in exploring the mentorship program for the teachers. So, finger crossed, we will be seeing teachers, professors, students.
and hopefully we would see students becoming mentors for the new students joining the program ⁓ the next year. We will see. I hope that I can come back in six months with neither of us to share with you.
Eric Karkovack (11:13)
Well, that's wonderful. I think it's great that you have, you also want the teachers involved so that it's not simply community-based. You don't have to rely solely on volunteers to come in.
and teach WordPress now that the professors, the teachers at each institution might be able to carry on that work that you've started here so that you can kind of have this curriculum just going from place to place. That's wonderful. ⁓ For those of us that don't know a lot about the WordPress Credits Program, how does that work? Who is it for?
Isotta Peira (11:48)
The WordPress credits program has been created for institutions. Originally, was college level, higher institutions, and now we're also opening up for ⁓ high schools and younger students. Let me tell you about the flow. What is the journey?
The interested institutions sign an agreement with the WordPress Foundation where they basically commit to recognise the time spent on this programme as either credits if they use a credit system or just recognise it as a part of the curriculum. Then we start receiving students. We don't limit the participation to computer science or text studies.
we were open to any type of studies that can find a way to train their skills in our community. And once we have an agreement with the institution, we prepare onboarding windows for the students. Currently, the students ⁓ usually are onboarded the first two weeks of each month. we as students have to sign up on a form. We assign them to a mentor.
and they receive instruction via email on how to create the WordPress profiles and how to start the first connection with the mentors. We have a platform for them created on learn.workpress.org. So it looks like a course. can, students who registered, gain access to the course and then they have a step-by-step program to fulfill. The program is meant to be
150 hours with the possibility to expand it. And students experience ⁓ three phases. The first one is the onboarding part, where they learn about WordPress as a community, open source and WordPress skills. And they get to create their personal website.
They will have a website on WordPress. We have sponsors who provide ⁓ hosting a domain and plugins that they might want to use. And once they have published their website, they start learning about contribution. So they jump into the project phase, the biggest one, the second. They get to know everything about the contribution teams, how they work, where they meet, the tools they use.
and each student will have to pick one or two contribution teams they want to contribute to, depending on how long it's going to be the program for them. And at this point, they will start connecting with the teams and working on their project. The mentor is there to guide them along the way. They will have weekly check-ins with the mentor, things, and then more conversational things.
But what we really want to achieve is for the students to also experience the real contribution journey in our community. ⁓ they are asked to participate to the contribution team meetings, to attend events in person, if there are any, or online. We encourage them to create their own student's club on campus, which is another of the programs that we...
that we launched last year. so, depending on the students, 13, 18 weeks, they're supposed to keep working on the contributions. They will use their website to, of course, publish their content, personal.
⁓ personal interests and passions, but also they are required to ⁓ publish once a week a recap of their contributions as a way to ⁓ encourage them to post more and so get more familiar with WordPress itself, but also as a way to teach them how in a remote tech environment we usually work. So you own your project, nobody is micromanaging you.
but still you are expected to share updates with the other stakeholders. And also, this also provides ⁓ the program administration a very easy way to see if students are progressing. And at the end of the program, they are asked to create a final presentation about their journey and their contribution, which they will upload on WordPress TV.
With the final post on their website, we can consider the program. ⁓ The program completed, they will download a certificate of completion from the platform itself, a certificate from the WordPress foundation signed by Matt Mullenweg, and they will get a WordPress credits graduate badge on their WordPress profiles.
In addition to their contribution activity and their profiles, the school can also see two additional proofs that they have successfully completed the program. And this is how their journey goes.
Eric Karkovack (17:37)
Well, I think that's wonderful. First of all, that it's not just computer science students. can see this being a very important thing for entrepreneurs too, right? Somebody who wants to start their own business, they have that WordPress experience all of a sudden and that's something that can help them grow their business. If they're selling something online, they already know how to use WooCommerce, for example.
I could see that being a huge part of the future. And then you also have this...
other facet where people are going to learn how to contribute to an open source project, which most of us, people who have contributed aren't necessarily trained in that in school, right? This is kind of just a life experience. We stumble upon something we want to contribute to and we learn how to do that. So this program really seems to be ⁓ great for people no matter which way they want to go with their careers.
Isotta Peira (18:42)
This is the idea. And I'm glad that you brought up the entrepreneur topic because also we offer this to the program to vocational schools. is really the goal of all this work that we're doing is to provide anyone with more opportunities to create their own path and learn while contributing to something meaningful. And you're absolutely correct about
the importance of learning about open source and how contributing to like a volunteer community means like in early stages of life because it's not just about the job that we're doing or the things that we get done, but it's all this high number of skills of transferable skills that we gain and would be ⁓
very, very useful and impactful regardless of the journey that we decide for ourselves. So I had this 300 % clear when I was learning about the community itself. And I started thinking, oh, yes, this could be great for, I don't know, when I was at school. This would have been a great way to practice this. Oh, but also this other thing. And then you just find yourself in a way, like in a world where there are people with different backgrounds.
different knowledges. Coming together as volunteers to contribute to something which is intended to create more opportunities for others is a pretty big learning point, I believe for us as humanity. So yeah, this is a powerful tool that we have beyond the software itself. And I'm glad that we are.
we are making advantage of it and we're trying to connect even more with people, students, different categories of professionals around it.
Eric Karkovack (20:48)
So I did want to talk a little bit about the mentorship ⁓ aspect of this as well. So what qualifications do you need to be a mentor? Like if there's someone out there listening, they're interested in becoming a mentor. What do they need to do? What do they need to know in order to do that?
Isotta Peira (21:08)
We are trying to make the mentorship process and the role of the mentor within this specific program as open as possible. I'll explain myself. At first, started accepting, of course, there is a vetting process and an application process with a course to complete.
And at first, we started receiving applications only from experienced contributors on different teams. So people are already very familiar with WordPress and the community with extensive experience on different contribution teams. Then when we started having discussions with institutions and see an opportunity for also teachers to be involved, we started shifting ⁓
the mindset and we started working to find a way to enable people who have no experience with contribution to be able to guide students. And so we started to think, okay, at the end, what do we need to ensure that then the students can navigate the community space? We need somebody ⁓ feeling comfortable connecting them.
to the right people in the right channels, on the right blogs, so even more than having direct experience with contribution because most of us have experience on one, two, maybe three teams. It ⁓ is hard to find somebody who has extensive experience across all teams. So we will always find ourselves mentoring students who are interested in a contribution area.
which is not ours. And so we modified the program for mentors and the course to ⁓ highlight more knowledge about what are the community spaces, where the team meet, how you can find the list of the team reps, how you can find the meeting or the last DevChat hosted.
So we change completely the program and now we are highly encouraging people who are involved with schools or with the community, regardless of the level of experience, to apply as mentors. There is always a vetting process, so same that we do with event organizers or community leaders for any roles. ⁓ The team is going to vet their online presence to ensure that
their online presence is aligned to the Community Code of Conduct. And so there are no red flags in this sense. And then after having approved them, they will receive an invitation to complete the mentor course. At the end of the course, they would be finally on boarded in the mentor pools.
And at this point, we host sessions like sync sessions for the mentors so we can exchange feedback, opinion, ask questions. We have a private channel as well when we need to ask questions about our students or other information that we shouldn't be sharing publicly. ⁓ And from that moment on, OK, we keep learning together because this is new for them, for us. ⁓ But this is how we are envisioning it.
also with the hope that by opening up to people who have not experienced yet, they would feel motivated and supported into also gain more experience on top of ⁓ guiding students through one channel or another.
Eric Karkovack (25:13)
Yeah, I could see it being something that benefits the mentor just as much as the student, really. That experience, and I know the program is fairly new, but I could see the...
the relationships going beyond just when the program ends, when their involvement in the program ends, that the student and mentor connect for over the years and maybe even work together at some point.
Isotta Peira (25:44)
Hopefully. Something that ⁓ I always say to all the students I talk to is to care about these connections, these relationships, because first, you never know. You might end up getting opportunities to join a company or to join a project because of the connection made.
in this context or even if it's just as a ⁓ human relationship kind, there is a lot that we learn all the time from each other and how other people can help us get to our next level in our profession or in our learning journey. So we definitely hope that connection will be there beyond the programme. And also we
We want to find initiatives for the students and the mentors to help them also go to the next steps. right now, one of the ideas that we're discussing about mentors and the other people of the team is about offering students the chance to become mentors for the students who will come after them or invite them to events.
So, okay, you have done, you're completing the programme. Come to the World Camps, come to an event and tell the people more about how it went. And also the other way around, we encourage students to create student clubs on campus and hopefully they can invite their mentors or other people from the community. And one other thing that we really want to ⁓ go for this year is to connect ⁓
even more students with the local meetups. We don't have meetups in every place, we have students, but everywhere we have meetups, we really want the students to become part of their activity and being able to have each other on both sides.
Eric Karkovack (28:03)
As I mentioned earlier, we've had this discussion for years about how to get new people into WordPress. And I think this program just seems like it's a great fit for doing that. What do you see for 2026? there any, I know you said you had a...
an institution in the United States that you're starting to work with, how much expansion do you see this year and any other initiatives that you're working on for this year?
Isotta Peira (28:35)
Yeah. Look, we had a bit of context to explain how now I'm getting to the vision that I'm about to share. Last year, we were aiming to have ⁓ at least five universities or colleges partnering with the WordPress Foundation on this program and having two...
committed to include the programme as part of their curriculum. And at the end of December, we had already ⁓ eight institutions partnering with the programme. Most of them ⁓ would start the onboarding now in January, February, March. And three committed to include the programme.
We now have myself and other people based on different regions working, like proactively working into getting contact with more institutions. ⁓ for how we have organized our outreach efforts, let's say, we aim to end this year with at least 22 institutions onboarded with WordPress credits.
Hopefully, we would start seeing hundreds of students every quarter entering the programme. This is the direction. So this is also why it is a of thought that we have in our mind. It's really finding a way to refine, in the best way as possible, the mentorship programme and the onboarding flow of students in the contribution teams, because we don't want to overwhelm anybody.
Eric Karkovack (30:22)
Okay, yes.
Isotta Peira (30:24)
Yeah, so this is the direction. We really want to grow the program. ⁓ The feedback we are getting from students is fantastic. And so there is no doubt that for them this program has a value. Some of the students are staying already in the community space and they keep going on contributions even if they've concluded the program. So we really want to invest on it. And we have to be
⁓ very tough on the mentorship part and the onboarding in the contribution teams.
Eric Karkovack (31:05)
Well, it sounds like you're off to a wonderful start, so congratulations on that. ⁓ So where can people find more about these programs?
Isotta Peira (31:14)
Yeah. Can I send you the link in our chat where we talk? OK. Look, we have here the... OK, I'm going to make a pause and then you can cut because I stumbled. OK. Thank you.
Eric Karkovack (31:18)
absolutely. Sure.
Okay, sure. We'll put all this in the show notes too, so don't worry.
Isotta Peira (31:36)
Of course, let me send you the link for the WordPress.org education site. So on the page you can find everyone. You can all find information on the three main programs with lunch, which are WordPress credits, the Campus Connect and the Students Clubs. And then...
any time on Slack, you can find the WP credits channel and the Campus Connect channels. So please invite everyone interested, students who want to learn more, want to know how to connect your institution with us or contributors who want to be involved or just know more about the program. I'd say the site and Slack are going to be the best places.
Eric Karkovack (32:27)
Wonderful. ⁓ We'll definitely send people there in the show notes. And ⁓ congratulations again on the launch of this program. I think it's going to be a key to keeping WordPress relevant over the long term. getting more people involved, getting young people involved. ⁓
across the globe here, which is wonderful. ⁓ Isotta, I want to thank you for being a part of the show ⁓ and I want to thank everybody for watching and listening today. You can visit us over at thewpminute.com slash subscribe. You can receive our newsletter and support the work that we do here at the WP Minute. That's going to do it for this episode. We'll see you next time.
Isotta Peira (32:50)
Thank
Thank you so much, and everyone. Thanks for having me.