An educational path is composed of several data pieces that need to be specified in a very specific format. Here´s a step-by-step guide on how to create and submit one.

Which Paths

Here are the current help requirements for our Advanced Educational Paths.

ADVANCED EDUCATIONAL PATH STATUS
Path	Current Status	Type of Help Needed
Against All Odds	Nearing completion	None
Storytelling	Nearing completion	None
Educational Speeches	Nearing completion	None
Speaking in Business Contexts	Project Plan Complete	Full
Critical Thinking	Partially Done	Writing educational materials
Leadership	Partially Done	Writing educational materials
Interpersonal Skills	Project Plan Complete	Writing educational materials
Dramatization	Not Started	Full
Humorous Speeches	Not Started	Full
Persuasive Skills	Project Plan Complete	Full
Speaking for Entrepreneurs	Not Started	Full
Sales Speeches	Not Started	Full

 

Depending on the stage of the path, two types of help are usually needed:

• Full means that the plan needs to be completely defined. All of the steps outlined below need to be completed, and then the educational materials developed
• Writing Educational Materials  means that the steps outlined below are all complete and what remains is to edit the wiki pages for each of the project and provide the educational content.

Additionally, you can propose a new educational path, in which case once approved it would require going through all the steps below, and then creating the educational materials.

Necessary Educational Path Information

An educational path is composed of:

• A name (e.g."Basic Educational Path"),
• A square image (at least 350x350 in size) that's used as the icon for that path
• An index page in the wiki
• One or more groups,

In turn, each group has:

• A title
• One or more projects inside

For example, the Basic Educational Path has currently four groups, and each of them has four projects. There are no limits on the number of groups or projects except for practical reasons. The groups within a path and the projects within a group are ordered - the system preserves the order in which they are created, and displays them in that way, although it does not enforce any particular completion order.

Finally, each project has:

• A title
• A number of goals to achieve (at least 1, with a maxium of 5 for practical purposes)
• One or more activities to perform. For many projects there will be only one activity to perform - to prepare and deliver a speech. However, there are projects that require role playing, handling Q&As, doing something externally (outside of the club), doing a speech analysis, etc.
• Since all activities are evaluated, there should be a set of questions that will serve as a guidance to the evaluator. Also, all activities are timed, so each activity will have information about the signals
• A wiki page with information and educational materials.

All these data items need to be defined in a very specific way in a spreadsheet so that they can be added to the system in an automated way. You can use this Google Sheet spreadsheet as a template and starting point. 

Throughout this document you will see references to "identifiers". An identifier is a sequence of words in lowercase separated by dots. For example: "paths.interpersonal.skills". All identifiers must be unique globally (there cannot be two equal identifiers anywhere in the system), and there cannot be any symbols in the identifier other than regular latin alphabet letters and the dot. This means no other punctuation (?, !, etc.), no spaces, no diacritics (á, é, ô, ..), etc.

Creating an Educational Path

 

STEP 1  - Create the spreadsheet

Make a copy of this spreadsheet template into your own account:

On the copy make sure to share it so that everyone with the link has access. 

Please create one spreadsheeet for each educational path you want to submit.

The spreadsheet has different tabs that need to be filled. You will see that many tabs have different colors. The colors are for clarity only - they do not play any role as far as processing is concerned, so you may change them, remove them, or do as more suits you.

 

STEP 2 - Fill in the Path Data

In the "Path Basic Data" tab, remove the sample existing row for the Basic Educational Path and add your own information, as follows:

• Path - Specify a unique identifier for the path. Path identifiers start with "paths." and then a one or two words representing the path.
• Name - The name of the path that will be presented to the user
• Help - A short text explaining the path that appears in the wiki below the path name
• URL of the English Page - The location of the path index page in the wiki, without the https://wiki.agoraspeakers.org part.
• Image - The name of the path icon

STEP 3 - Fill in the Path Groups

Now, proceed to the "Path Groups" tab. As before, remove the sample existing rows for the Basic Educational Path and add your own information, one group per row:

• Group Key - Specify a unique identifier for the group. Group identifiers should be of the form ".group.nn"
• Group Name - Indicate a group name
• Certificate Title - If the member gets a certificate after completing the projects in the group, indicate the title of the achievement (e.g.:Qualified Storyteller). Please keep the titles formal and realistic.

STEP 4 - Fill in the Path Projects

It's time to fill in the data for each of the projects.  Since people will usually do the projects in order, make sure that the projects are ordered in ascending order of difficulty and skill.  Each path should have at least 5 projects. Although there's no upper limit, for practical purposes try to keep the path to less than 15 projects. If you need more, maybe it's better to have two paths - one with the more basic material and a follow-up with the more advanced one.

Start with the "Path Projects" tab. Remove the sample existing rows and add your own information, one path per row:

• Project Identifier. Specify a unique identifier for the project. Project identifiers should be of the form ". project.", where "project title" should be 1 to three words identifying the project.
• Group - Group to which this project belongs. It should be one of the group keys defined in the previous step. 
• Title - Project title as presented to the user
• URL of the English Page -  Location in the wiki with the English materials for that project, without the https://wiki.agoraspeakers.org part.
• p1.activity - Identifier of the first activity that needs to be done in the project. Must be one of the following identifiers:
  • activities.speech_delivery -> Present a speech
  • activities.qa -> Handle a Q&A session
  • activities.role.play -> Role Play
  • activities.external.project -> Externally delivered project (outside of the club)
  • activities.speech_analysis -> Speech Analysis
  • If you need a different activity, please sync with us first.
• p1.g, p1.y, p1.r - The time (in minutes) for the Green, Yellow and Red timing signals for the activity
• p2.activity, p2.g, p2.y,p2.r -> Same for the second activity. Leave blank if the project does not have a second activity
• p3.activity, p3.g, p3, y,p3.r -> Same for the third activity. Leave blank if the project does not have a third activity. 
• microphone - Indicate if a microphone can be used for this project. Possible values are : 
  • A: Allowed,
  • Y: Required (project goals not met if not used)
  • N: Must not be used (project goals not met if used), Note that this is an uppercase N.
  • n: Should not be used (not recommended). Note that this is a lowercase N.
  • R: Recommended
• lectern - Same as above, for a lectern
• notes - Same as above, for written notes during the activities
• presentation - Same as above, for presentation software
• materials - Same as above, for physical visual aids

After you've filled in the data for one project, switch to the "Project Goals" tab, and add the goals for that project, one goal per row. There should be a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 goals per project (the maximum is a limitation for practical and educational purposes). Each goal has an identifier and a text that is printed both on the project path and on the evaluation sheet.. The goal identifier MUST be ".goals.nn", where the "project identifier" matches whatever you wrote as identifier for the project in the project sheet.

For example, if the proejct identifier was "paths.sales.project.cold.calls", then the goals should be  "paths.sales.project.cold.calls.goals.1", "paths.sales.project.cold.calls.goals.2", etc.

All goals for all projects are specified on the same sheet, consecutively. 

After you've filled in the goals for the project, switch to the "Project Evaluation Questions" and add the evaluation questions for every activity of the project. These evaluation questions are printed on the evaluation form that the evaluator uses as guidance to provide feedback to the member. There should be at least 2-3 questions for each activity, and a maximum of 10 due to space limitations (we want to keep the project feedback forms as one page documents). As with the goals, each evaluation question has the following information:

• An identifier, which MUST be in the form "..qNN", where is whatever you specified in column A in the project description, activity identifier is one of the project activities as specified in the columns "p1.activity","p2.activity","p3.activity", and N is the number of the question.
  
  For example, if the project identifier is "path.sales.project.cold.calls", and it has an activity called "role.play", then the question identifiers must be: "path.sales.project.cold.calls.role.play.q01", "path.sales.project.cold.calls.role.play.q02", etc...
   
• The question text, in English
   
• The answer type. It must be one of the following. This will be implemented in the near future
  • T - Free text. The evaluator must answer the question with a free-form text
  • Y - Yes/No answer.
  • N - Numerical score, from 0 to 10.

• Is it a required question? Y/N. This does not have any effect on paper-based feedback forms, but it will be used in the future for online evaluation forms. If you indicate a "Y", it will make this question required (the evaluator MUST write something), otherwise the question will be optional

 

All questions for all activities are specified on the same tab, consecutively.

 

STEP 5 - Submit the spreadsheet for review

Once the data is filled in, please send the spreadsheet link for review to info@agoraspeakers.org. We will check whether the data matches the overall requirements, as well as whether the educational path is appropriately structured and relevant. If everything is correct, we will incorporate the path into the system and create stubs for the wiki pages that can be edited later on.

STEP 6 - Create the path materials

Once the path is into the system, you can go into each of the wiki pages for the projects and edit them to add the educational content. Please keep any code and references that are already present there (usually they are in the form of IFRAMEs that reference project headers, footers and other elements that are generated programmatically)