Strategy: Fundamentals - a way forward, goals of CYF, meta-threads

[Dedekind561]

(This layout is for my benefit - but may help others to understand my thinking)

Problem

Huge lack of diversity in tech. Lack of opportunities for folks from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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The goal - CYF mission

Train some of the most deprived members of society to start careers in the tech industry.

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The sub-goals - things we need to achieve our mission

• flexible problem-solvers
• fluent technical communicators
• self-learners

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🧭 Strategy - how do we achieve our sub-goals?

To achieve our sub-goals, we do the following:

Together we build a community that can:

[Dedekind561]

1. A community that can self-organise

[Dedekind561]

The workshop in Week 1 of Fundamentals should address this strategic goal. How can volunteers and trainees come together to self-organise from the very beginning of Fundamentals.

Solution

We use Rhythm of the week together with the curriculum website to make sense of what we are doing and when we are doing it.
We also use the day plan to self-organise the activities we do together on Saturdays.

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2. A community that can self-learn

[Dedekind561]

Week 2 of Fundamentals should address how the community can start self-learning. They can achieve this by understanding that we use a flipped classroom approach at Code Your Future. In this kind of approach, as a community, we prioritise active learning.
We don't lecture.
We don't use slides.
Trainees are expected to spend at least 3 hours preparing during the week before they come to the Saturday class. It is the responsibility of trainees to start learning independently before the Saturday session.

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Solution

Trainees can use the prep section of the curriculum to start their learning journey before the Saturday class. In addition, they can use tools like Slack to ask questions during the week.

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3. A community that can self-evaluate

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As a community we need to frequently evaluate our progress and check our understanding - both individually and collectively.

Solution

We use code reviews.
We use milestones for trainees to check their progress on the course.

[Dedekind561]

Together we use the curriculum - which is a highly organised sequence of resources, notes and activities - to achieve our strategy of community self-organisation, community self-education and community self-evaluation.

[Dedekind561]

I think we need the following:

• a guide to how CYF works, which surfaces the core information in this discussion. Volunteer onboarding and fundamentals can both reference this information
• Rhythm of the week
• 3 workshops with the following themes: how we self-organise, how we self-educate, how we self-evaluate
• Surface the workshops in the Fundamentals day plans