 Right. How's everyone still charged up ready to go? I know it's a little cold in here, so thank you for, you know, being vigilant and staying. Our next speaker is Hanadi. Hanadi is a professor and program coordinator of the Digital Business Management Bachelor of Commerce degree program at the Faculty of Business Humber College in Ontario, Canada. She's been teaching at Humber College since 2006 and coordinating the Digital Business Management program since 2015. Her talk today is from classroom to community, empowering business students and small business owners with WordPress to build sustainable online presence. Let's give a warm welcome to Hanadi. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. It's the end of the day. I know and this room is freezing. I appreciate everyone who decided to join this session. Thank you. So I will be talking about my experience teaching WordPress. I have been teaching at the Longo Faculty of Business, the web development course forever. Since I started there, and of course it was HTML and CSS, and students did not like that because they are business students. They're not technical students. They're not developers. They're not programmers. So when they see HTML and CSS, it's not very, do we have any educators in the room? Okay. Any students? No. I see another educator coming in. Okay. Yeah. So in the history of this course in 2006, of course, it was HTML and CSS. And then do you remember Microsoft front page back in the day? Yay. Yes. And then expressions. And they'll be Dreamweaver. And we went through a whole bunch of tools, of course, to make it easier for business students to develop websites and put them online. And eventually in 2008, I introduced WordPress. And I had no idea if it was just one of those tools that was going to eventually go away. But so happy, we're still here. We're using WordPress. And my students know it's not a choice. They have to do their work using WordPress. So they use it because they're business students. They use it as a content management system. Again, they're not developers. They're not programmers. We do a little bit of coding, just a bit. So now the course is mostly WordPress. And we do look at Adobe Dreamweaver. We do include some HTML and CSS. So one unit, one unit. But mostly they do WordPress. They do lots of SEO content. And everything else that comes with web development. So in there, the program that I coordinate is four years. It's a bachelor of commerce. And in their third year, between years three and four, students have what we call a work placement. Now it's called work integrated learning. And this is a job that they have to do in the summer between years three and four, 420 hours. And it's paid. Sometimes they do take unpaid opportunities if the opportunity is amazing and they want it for the experience. So we do have a career development course that takes care of this. We connect them with industry and with small businesses in the GTA. The GTA is the greater Toronto area. So we work with businesses that we can actually visit, go to, so they're geographically close. The small business owners usually come to hire students when they need a website. So some of them would say, I have a website that someone, a friend developed for me 10 years ago. And I need to update it. I need to add new products. I need to update my team. And I don't know how to do that. Sometimes they say, I have an idea, but I don't have a website. Can your students build a website? And sometimes they just want to update a blog post or have a blog and start blogging. They ask, what is SEO? So they come with different needs, but we're talking about small businesses that cannot afford to hire a web development company. So they ask to connect with students. So they do hire a student for three months. And sometimes we get funding internal or external and we actually pay the students to work for that small business. So that's a win-win situation because the business literally pays nothing, but the student gets paid through federal or provincial funding. Now, after the three months, so the student worked with the client, with a business owner for three months, but after the three months the client says, I cannot sustain my online presence. I still don't know how to update and maintain my website. So really, we did not solve their problem. And the specific question usually is, can the students sit with me and show me? I need to learn how to log into the dashboard and I need to learn how to do it myself. I don't want the students to do it for me. I want to do it myself. And again, we're talking about small businesses. That's the one person or a small family running that restaurant or renovations or any other small business. So I'm going to walk you through my experience teaching WordPress in the classroom, then connecting with the small businesses to update, maintain their own online presence. And then we took that international and we worked with female refugees in Kenya. So when I teach WordPress, I start with the theory. And again, those are business students. So I need to explain what is open source. Yes, they don't know what is open source. We talk about the difference between .organ.com. Then I show them the demo of the WordPress website. Then we get into blogging and SEO. So I'll walk you quickly through how I teach those points. So of course, we talk about the classic free isn't free beer versus free isn't free speech. And we have that discussion. I use analogies in class. So I love baking and I bring cookies on that day and they remember. And sometimes we bring cookies and chocolate chips and something else. And then we talk about how that cookie, that recipe is a secret. But if I give it to one person, they can add stuff to it. Now it's a new recipe and so on. So I find this example works well. They remember it. And sometimes on the test, they actually write, you know, the cookie recipe I added dried fruits to the cookie. So that's open source. For most of them, it's usually a new concept. And then we talk about .org versus .com because this is the biggest confusion for the students, unfortunately. So I talk about, I do ask them who lives in a house and who lives in a condo in a building. And they literally get up. And those who live in a house will start talking about the advantages of living in a house. And because we live in Canada, the advantage is no, the snow is not an advantage. That would be the advantage of living in a condo. I don't need to shovel the snow. But those students who live in a house would say, you know, if I want to have a swimming pool, I can. So we talk about all the things that you can do when you're in a house and the things that you cannot do when you're in a condo. And then I link it to wordpress.org or .com. We did this was, of course, during the pandemic when I taught this online. And those comments are literally from the students. And they actually talk about sometimes they use the right words that I'm looking for such as security maintenance. So and then they understand that if I want to run wordpress.org, I need to have the skills, the muscles to shovel the snow, or I need to have the technical skills to deal with hosting and what is hosting and all that stuff. And then we move on to wordpress.com. And I'm paying someone to do it for me. And it's easier, easy to manage. And then they decide what they want to do. The advantage in the classroom of wordpress.com is we don't need to worry about the hosting, we don't need to pay. But of course, the advantage of .org is all the scalability and looking at the plugins and all the fun things that come with it. So typically in a class of 40, I find 30 of them would choose .com and 10 would choose .org. But eventually, eventually, some of the .com students would convert because they look at everything else that happens in the house, the swimming pool, and all the things that they can do. Then I talk about also, I show them the dashboard, I talk about the themes and we use this example. So you have your content and the theme is basically the outfit. So we talk about the outfit and I can change the outfit, it doesn't change the outcome. And then we try some of those and they can see how sometimes I can look at the outfit and then upload it or put it on my website and install it and it doesn't look good. So I have to do some alterations. So those are all things that we talk about. Again, those are business students, this is all new to them. And then we talk about logging and SEO and categories and tags. And I talk about, we usually use an example of recipes website because everyone can understand the recipes. We talk about how the categories are the larger buckets, the tags are the small details. And then the first thing I ask them to do when they get on WordPress is change the uncategorized to something. And I tell them, this is like, I'm hiding in a box and I don't want anyone to see me. So that's not what you want for your blog. Then we move into application. And those previous concepts do take a good couple of sessions because I get them to do the activities and then we analyze. And then I move on to the application and I have the students create, they work on two projects. One is their individual digital portfolio. And that's when they beg me to use something else such as Wix or Weebly, because it's easier and probably because they would have done it in a different class and my answer is no. So they work on the digital portfolio. And by the end of that digital portfolio assignment, I know that they would, oops, sorry, I know that they would have acquired all the how-to WordPress skills. So they know how to create a page and a blog and configure a theme and do all of that. They look into the organic SEO. So they're comfortable with this. And that's an individual assignment which guarantees that everyone actually does get into WordPress. Then we move into working with clients because the objective is to get them ready for that real actual outside client who wants to hire them for their summer work placement. So client management is a whole other skill. And so I partnered with another colleague, Chef Gray, who teaches in our culinary program at Humber College. I'm not supposed to do that. And what we do, we connect our students with the baking students. This picture was from during the pandemic. We were online. They were on campus actually. And so they have a course called entrepreneurship. And that's where they develop a product. And that product could be a box of chocolate. It's usually something different. So they develop the products, they create it, they bake it in their kitchens. And then we create the online presence for them. So those students are acting as the client. And my students are acting as the web developers or the service providers. The best part is we get samples and we get to taste and we have a big party and we love it. So those are the bakers. They work on their creations. And then they photograph the products. Again, we partner with another department at Humber College. The photography students are the ones who actually take the pictures. So we have really good content. So we're having the students work with the photographers, the bakers, the online, the web developers. And those are people who usually would never meet each other because they're completely different schools and programs. And the students love this. So those are some of the professional pictures taken by the photography students. And everyone loves that. It's good for their portfolio. This was sushi dessert. So that was really, really different. And we also played with AI with Canva. Canva is a text to image. So my students, the web developers, received descriptions of the product before even seeing the product. So they played with a few of the AI tools to actually generate pictures of that product. The sushi dessert was a real challenge. AI couldn't get a sweet sushi with caramel and chocolate, and that didn't work. But this was a good example of tiramisu. And then they work on the packaging and they work with another department and another group of students in the applied tech where they actually create the mold using 3D printers. So they create literally their own molds and packaging and they design all that stuff. And then on presentation day, we do, and I did put Shark Tank as I realized this is more popular here of course. Our Canadian version is the Dragon's Den. So they do that. They bring the products, we taste them. And then at the same time, we look at the website and the online presence that the other team of students, my students did. This is another fun day because I get to eat everything. I have to. I have to try everything. And this group of students was graduating so it's a really happy end of semester, end of year, big event. And they display also the website so they will have QR codes so the judges would be tasting the products but also looking at the website. And sometimes they do go the extra mile and create social media accounts for that and sometimes they don't. So those are just examples of screenshots of the websites and those are all WordPress websites of course. And then the students talk about the challenges and the lessons learned and what worked and what did not work. Now the web developers, those are my students that we had samples. So there was a day when my car was full of food samples that I brought on campus and they had a big party, tasting party and that was the class. They designed activities and it was just a very relaxed and fun day. Lots of discussions. They invited the other program coordinators, faculty members, deans, the associate dean, everyone was there because it's a bigger project. So some of the skills that we added here would be the teamwork so the students working with a group but also with clients and the clients were the bakers. And that is an interesting combination. So for most of you would know in class we would have the 20 to 30 percent top students. We would have the 20 percent invisibles no matter what we do. And then there is in between. And somehow the top students get to work with the top students from both classes like the web developers with the bakers. And this is usually an amazing project. And then there is the in between and then there is the invisibles. So it's all very interesting to watch and a great learning experience for the students of course. So at this point we felt we were ready to send our students to the community to work with small businesses and do a better job. So as I mentioned, most of the time we do get funding. It could be internal through Humber College, it could be external. But to be honest I don't care who gives me the money. I hire the students and they get to work with small business owners. And when I mentioned the GTA, again that's the greater Toronto area. And sometimes we get to go to the to the actual business and sometimes the business comes to us or we do both because we typically have a whole semester to do that. And we work with different industries. So that's theatre, arts, we had the client come and meet with the whole team. And typically I hire a multidisciplinary team of students. So to keep the same concept I have the web developers, but I also hire photographers and videographers and graphic designers. And those are students from different schools at Humber College and different programs. This is a fashion designer. We have a psychotherapy business. And this was in collaboration with Humber's Child and Youth Care program in what we call the Play Lab. And our students did not even know that we had something called, they did not know there is something called a Play Lab and that we actually had it on campus. They didn't know that we had a culinary program and we have bakers and people who actually make chocolates and desserts. So all of that it adds to the, I feel it adds to the college experience because they leave with lots of connections and friendships. Fitness, wellness and nutrition. So we visited that, we went onsite to the market. So again this is all, this was all great experience for the students. Yoga and mindfulness. This was a magician. He's a professional magician and this was a really fun client to work with. And eventually I hired him for my son's, I think it was seventh or eighth birthday party and that was a blast. The magician wanted to sit with the students and know what are you doing. How do you do the dashboard? How do you customize things? How do you make changes? But that's anyway what we were doing. So that was a great fun project to work with. We worked also with this Canadian actress and model, Linda V. Carter. We also, I had a project where I took the students to Milton Center for the Arts. This is an arts center in Milton where I live. And we actually ran workshops for the local artists. So there was a day when all the local artists came to the center and the students sat with them one on one to show them how to use WordPress. So that was a whole about four or five hours of course. But before that day, we had a session where I ran the session and talked about the content and the difference between pages and posts, dynamic versus static content and how to prep for this. This is another success day and the students loved being out there. They love getting on the bus and going somewhere, right? So this was fun. So at this point, we felt that we've been doing this in class. And that course is usually their second year. And in their third year, they work with online businesses. So there was an opportunity when they were that same class in their fourth year, an opportunity came through another Humber department called the International Development Institute. And that opportunity was to work with an organization to support female refugees in Kenya. So we did not work with the refugees, with the beneficiaries. We worked with the organization that was going to provide them with the training. And this was funded through Global Affairs Canada. So I had to hire the students and it's like recruiting my own class. This is any teacher's dream, is to actually recruit the class because I chose, of course, the high performers, the students who I've known through the class and through working with the small businesses. I'm not going to read that, but if anyone has a question about what this funding is, I did not want to make a mistake. So I copied and pasted it. So we use the coil or collaborative online international learning framework. And of course, this happened during the pandemic. So it was the only model. It was the only way to do it. And it was very convenient that we already had the technology. We were already comfortable with being on camera online. So we did that. So this is us meeting with them. This is them in Kenya together. So CAPEA or CAP Youth Empowerment Institute, it was our partner. So Humber partnered with CAPEA. And I hired my students and they had to recruit the beneficiaries who are the female refugees who have small businesses. And most of them were into clothing or jewelry making or some sort of handcraft. And they wanted to monetize that and they needed support with online presence. So this is what CAPEA does. It's a non-governmental organization located in Nairobi in Kenya. Unfortunately, we couldn't go there. I would love to go there one day, but that was not an option due to the pandemic. So the project was called EDC, Entrepreneurship, Digital Lifelihoods and Creative Arts. And as I mentioned, it was to support the female refugees to create their online presence and monetize their business. So those were the beneficiaries. They were recruited by CAPEA. And this was my team, the Humber team. So I managed to recruit students from four different programs at three different schools at Humber. So the Digital Business Management, those are my students. I know them. I've taught them. I've had them in class. We work together with small businesses. We also hired fashion arts and business students because most of the beneficiaries were into clothing and fashion. So we needed that. And we needed students from the professional writing and communications, liberal arts, to write the content, create the content that was before chat GPT. We will always have a team of students who would provide the copy, so the copywriter. And then we had students from the creative advertising to deal with all the graphic design and branding. So this is another great experience for the students working with an actual team, different skills, and working with a real client international. So our part, this was a huge project, but our part was tiny, which was creating or providing the digital training. So we had about 20 hours to deliver. We created curriculum. And to do that, we used a case, and we called it Katinga fashion. And that was another very interesting learning piece for the students, because I didn't know what's Katinga. They didn't know what's Katinga fashion. So it's a type of pattern that they use, basically. And it's very popular. And so we wanted a case that the beneficiaries would actually connect with and understand. So this was the work of our graphic designer, and eventually they chose this as a logo. So we created a WordPress website for them. It had to be .com because we couldn't deal with to simplify it. We couldn't deal with the hosting and everything else, the technical skills that come with .org. So it was .com. They also created for them social media accounts. We surveyed them, we spoke with them, and the three main ones that they used were Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They also, they've been using WhatsApp. They use WhatsApp all the time as the online store. So this is a very short video. I don't know, are we okay with time? Can I show that quickly? We had to translate to Swahili, so I think you'll hear the Swahili. So I'll stop it because it's basically the, this is an introduction for the beneficiaries to show them what is it that they were going to learn in these courses. Bless you. So those were the sessions that we worked on. That's the curriculum that we developed, and we had two weeks, TOT training of the trainer sessions that the student team delivered with me to the trainers at CAPEA, and they were going to provide that training or deliver to their beneficiaries. So those were the modules that we've built. So the first one was branding, and we used Canva. We tried to use tools that, well, we checked with them, tools that they would have access to. And all of the videos were built using Android, not iPhones, because that's what they use. We also had to use English and French, because we couldn't have access to Swahili, and there's a whole list of languages and dialects. So we decided, or they decided, that English and French would be sufficient. And then we had a full module on communications, how to use Gmail, how to use WhatsApp, and social media, the three accounts, and this is, this was my favorite part, of course, it's the WordPress. So they actually show them how to download WordPress on their phone, on their Android phone, and then how to create an account, how to add a page, how to add a blog post, what are categories and tags. And they created, they were all very short videos that they can download and watch. So we're thinking about the internet connection and all the details that come with having to access the training. So that's an example. And as you can see, these are all short videos, we kept them down to three to four minutes. And this would be a screen recording, and we had the English and the French. So for example, how to set up an account with WordPress, how to select a website theme, linking social media. And then so we had a video for every single one of those items for them to use. And these were available to them anytime. And those were created by the students, of course. So those are by the digital business students. And then we had the the videography students work on the editing of the videos. And then we had someone do the voiceover. So to the students, this was a huge project. This was a really big project, but very, very rewarding. Especially when they knew that someone is actually learning from them, and it's helping their own businesses. So at this point, we added one more skill. So and I talked to the students about their resume and what they can put on their resume and anything they put, they have a story to support it. So they added the international project management and all the stories that came with that project and all the things that they had to change and switch. And because they all we all assumed that we're going to do the stuff on iPhone. They don't have iPhones, most of them. So the survey showed that 95% of them of the beneficiaries had Android. So we had to switch. And then the language barriers, of course, was was another point. So we assumed that it's going to be in English, but then they said, no, that doesn't work for us. You need to at least add the French we did. I'm not going to run this video, but it will be in the slides. But this is a very it's a lovely documentary that that shows the whole story and and the results. So it tracks the story of some of the beneficiaries, the female refugees in Kenya, and they talk about their businesses and then they talk about how they attended the training and the skills that they've acquired and how they have used online tools, whether it's a website or social media or, you know, whatever works for them. And thank you for the chat yesterday. I added this video last night. Oops, no, no. Okay. So those were the three pillars that I wanted to share about my experience. So now, now the students kind of understand when I say, no, no, it's going to be WordPress. You have no other options. They know because they understand now that WordPress is an industry standard and a huge percentage of websites. I don't know today. Does anyone know what percentage of websites are on WordPress? I'm sure about 40%. Yeah. 42. Okay. Yeah. And it's it's growing. So we we know that. So the business owners back to the business owners and also the female refugees in Kenya, they leave us with technical skills that they they feel comfortable that they can maintain and update their own website. We usually provide them with a user manual and we also record the training sessions. So we do short training sessions where and it's of course online and that's the beauty of the online world. They we record those sessions so that they can keep them um uh for reference and we we we like to do small really short step by step how to videos that they can refer to and use. So my next step is and and this is the reason why I'm here is I would like to get involved into I would like to get my students involved in meetups and WordPress meetups and eventually word camp and someone mentioned yesterday that there is a word camp Canada that is being organized. So I'm going to dig into that. Canada is huge. So it doesn't mean that it's going to be close to me, but I hope because I think the students will have a great experience, especially that they can talk about they can benefit from the technical talks and sessions. But also there is a lot to do with with business and content strategy. So that is my my talk and I'd like to thank Yoast for sponsoring my my visit here and feel free to connect with me and if you have any questions please. No, no, they we had to deliver 20 hours off. Yeah. No. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 20 hours of curriculum. Yes. Yeah. The videos would be a little shorter, but I think they they they also count for the time used to deliver in class. Yeah. We were told 20 hours. We worked within those parameters, but no, it took way longer. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. How to's etc. If if you could identify one or more additional resources that would make you even more successful or empower you or your students, what would some of those resources be out in the WordPress community? Wow, that's a tough question. I would say more WordPress for business students. Again, I keep thinking business students, they're not developers, they're not any technical language they would feel intimidated by. So anything that is more related to business would be super useful for our students. Does that answer the question? Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah. I was wondering if you had I teach college as well. And you know, sometimes I have students come in and they I've literally had them tell me they've never looked at a website before because they, you know, only use apps, which is like a little terrifying for me as a web developer. Wow. But do you it clearly, you know, from what you're showing here is that they seem to really take an interest in building, you know, a website, you know, and understand the benefits over like a social media platform. Do you have any ways of walking them through that journey? I like I could use some tips there. So the truth is this is a core course for the digital business management students so they don't have a choice. I am their program coordinator and I teach that course. Like that's the worst thing ever for us. I'm the PC, the program and I teach the course. So they're in their second year. They're with me in class. I'm the boss. Yeah, so they have to. But the students who really don't want to create a website would try to persuade me into, you know, an easier tool. In my e-commerce I tried Wix or I tried Weebly or I tried, you know, so and so and it was so much easier. Why don't we do that? Not a choice, no. But I have to say by the end of the course, again, not all of them, but I would say 50% of them would be comfortable with WordPress. The other 50% would say, no, it's okay, I'll choose something else or they're not web developers. They're not going to be web developers. Yeah, however, if a small business wants to hire them and they see that when they get to the third year, because we have so many of the small business owners who come to us asking for a web developer. But what they really mean is someone who can get into my website and make changes. That's all they need. Yeah, so the students see the benefit. So they contact me again. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? No? Okay. Thank you so much for being here.