Learning

	Mozilla Learning
	Owner: Erin Knight, Michelle Levesque, Jess Klein, Laura Hilliger	Updated: 2012-06-14
	Mozilla's Learning Group team

About this Project

The Mozilla Learning team is hard at work defining a set of core web literacy skills and developing learning pathways for people to develop and hone these skills. Our goals are to develop and empower more webmakers by providing them with the opportunity to learn making by making. This work is leveraging all of the great momentum, tools and content built through Hackasaurus.

NOTE: The Open Badges project is also part of the Learning Group. For more on that project, see http://openbadges.org

Community Calls

Date/Time:

Thursdays, 10am ET (GMT +5)

Conference Call Number:

• Conference Number: 800-503-2899
• Secondary Conference Number: +1 303-248-0817
• 7-Digit Access Code: 5435555#
• Etherpad
  • Old Etherpad

Design Principles

The Principles guiding our work:

Learning to make by making. Less yak, more hack.

• Built around tools and making exercises that 'help teach'
• Learning is a byproduct of making

Help people hack on things they care about at the core.

• Support/encourage interest-based learning
• Have meaningful, authentic making (vs. arbitrary tasks or overly sandboxed environments)
• i.e. For StoryThing for journalists, we have them build out their stories online and in the process, learn HTML, CSS, etc.

More pathways == better. Avoid, and even fight, one prescribed way to learn.

• Leverage existing content and pathways, don't reinvent the wheel where we don't have to.
• Balance self-driven options, authority/faciliated options, peer options (Ultimately: choose your own adventure approach!)
• Offer multimedia options where possible (online, offline, synchronous, asynchronous, etc.)
• Support various levels / entry points (age, skill level, learning types, etc), embrace role fluidity

Support / encourage the social aspect.

• Encourage social interaction, peer learning and sharing
• Leverage peer assessments and mentorship

Build in fun / play.

• Explicit fun in cases where it makes sense, but also implicit fun (interest based learning)
• Promote / support interest-driven learning
• Capitalize on intrinsic motivations already existing

Embed assessments in the learning and learning in the assessments.

• Be innovative about assessment - honor the nature of the learning experience / making
• Authentic and relevant assessments built into the learning experience
• People should be able to learn more through taking the assessment as well as assessing other people's work

Support graceful degradation - Fail well

• Help users when they get stuck. -- and make it as easy as possible for their friends (or volunteers) to help them out when this happens
• Build in trial and error as much as possible
• Congratulate people for failing; congratulate people for trying alternative methods

Build in recognition.

• Legitimize this learning - make it count beyond the learning experience
• Build badges into our learning experiences

Design for extensibility / scale beyond ourselves.

• Make it easy to run events around learning content - event kit + plug and play content
• Modularity
• Mentorship and teach the teachers, nurture a community that can run itself

Reveal the universe.

• Show people everything there is to learn and how - let them see where they fit into it and where they can go.

Produce consumer grade web experiences and software.

• High quality, authentic experiences

2012 Must Haves

• Definition of core set of Web Literacy skills
• Generalized learning curriculum/pathways
• Webmaker Badge System
• Pilots (web literacy curriculum + badges) for filmmakers, teens, journalists (through programs)
• Event Kit
• Learning pathway scaffolding/ support for community
• Online pathways for learning webmaker skills through make.mozilla.org

Web Literacy Skills (alpha)

Roadmap

Q1

• Webmaker Skills/Curriculum
  • Initial definition of web literacy skills, scoping around where we are starting
  • Audit of existing curriculum / identify the gaps
    • Involves also auditing other tools/curriculum out there that we might be able to leverage
  • Definition of learning design principles
  • Planning for initial assessment approaches/offerings
• Pilots
  • Build initial pilot with Open News - webmaking 101 for journalists
  • Start planning for next pilot with Popcorn
• Event Kit development
• Building Instructor Community
  • Initial planning for scaffolding/ support for community participation/use of our learning content
  • Launch initial space
• Hiring additional curriculum horsepower
• Events
  • Open News sprint (Feb 6-10)
  • Event Kit sprint (Feb 27-29)
  • DML Conference (Mar 1-3)
  • SxSWEdu (Mar 6)

Q2

• Summer Campaign Planning and Kickoff
  • Mission development
  • How Tos and curriculum around existing tools/offerings
  • Summer Campaign badge system development
• Pilots
  • Launch of Open News Pilot
• Webmaker Tool planning and MVP development
  • Mission Maker
  • Assessment Builder planning/mapping
• Event Kit / Site launch
• Building out instructor/facilitator community, including Instructor Conferences / Site
• Finish Hiring
• Events
  • Instructor conferences: late April, early May
  • NESTA Mission Design Jam: May 12, London
  • Day of Code (Summer Campaign Kickoff): Late June

Q3

• Summer Campaign
  • Complete evaluation of Summer Campaign learning offerings - missions, how tos and badges; roll into next version of offerings
• Webmaker Skills
  • Develop next iteration of the webmaker skills and plan learning offering work around them
  • Develop of the Webmaker badges
  • Webmaker+ - knowledge map of all the badges + learning pathways
• Pilots
  • Evaluate Open News pilot
  • Launch Popcorn Pilot
    • Also push Popcorn pilot through the Hive
  • Develop Hive Pilot
• Webmaker Tool Phase2
• Instructor Community
  • Launch revamped community space for instructors/facilitators

Q4

• Webmaker Skills
  • Launch of Webmaker Badges and knowledge map (Webmaker+) showing all of the pathways for developing the skills/earning the badges through make.mozilla.org
• Pilots
  • Evaluate Popcorn Pilot
  • Launch Hive pilot
• Events
  • MozFest, Nov 9-11, London

Team

• Erin Knight, Senior Director of Learning
• Michelle Levesque, Webmaker Literacy Lead
• Jess Klein, Learning Design Lead
• Laura Hilliger, Curriculum Designer
• Chloe Varelidi, Assessment and Game Designer
• Carla Casilli, Open Badges Project Lead
• Sunny Lee, Open Badges Partner and Product Manager
• Brian Brennan, Open Badges Technical Lead
• Chris McAvoy, Open Badges Technical Advisor / Consultant