General Cohort Info
The xAPI Learning Cohort is a free 12-week learning-by-doing project-based team learning experience about the Experience API. It’s an opportunity for those who are brand new to xAPI and those who are looking to experiment with it to learn from each other and from the work itself.
xAPI Learning Cohorts run twice a year in spring and fall “semesters” or “seasons”.
Work and participation happens synchronously in the Weekly Live Session, and asynchronously in Slack.
Weekly Live Session
Weekly live sessions are held every Thursday at 2pm US Eastern during an active season (spring or fall).
For 2021/2022, our live sessions are held in Airmeet.
Weekly Updates
After the live sessions, a weekly update (with links to recordings, etc.) is sent via email.
Cohort Teams
Each Cohort season, Teams will be formed, starting a few weeks into the season. Sometimes a Team will continue work from a previous season, building upon their own efforts or that of a previous group. Other new Teams will form as participants start to narrow down a focus, either by polling the group or creating them on their own and seeing what sticks.
You are under no obligation to join a Team. You can join the Team’s Slack channel and just lurk but not actively participate, if perhaps you’re not ready but are interested in the topic or want to follow along.
Often there is an informal (and sometimes formal) Team Leader, though the only representative officially asked for is someone who can give a rundown of their activity in weekly Team updates to the broader Cohort.
Slack
Most of the weekly communication between participants and broad organizer announcements happen in Slack. When you sign up for the Cohort, you should receive an invitation to the Slack workspace.
You can join as many channels as you want, and feel free to lurk – you are under no obligation to participate if you’re just curious.
Channels
There are a few Slack channels that everyone starts with:-
#mainThis is where the broadest communication happens between Cohort participants.
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#socialGet loose, throw in some GIFs, request recipes, etc.
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#resourcesCan be links to articles/posts, free trials, etc.
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#xapignome-social-mediaThis is a Twitter feed from the xAPI Gnome, the official mascot of the xAPI Cohort.
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#team-xxxxxxxxxThese are the Team channels that form around project, and where that group activity occurs.
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#discuss-xxxxxxxxxThis is to gather discussion around a particular topic, but unrelated to any particular Team.
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#z….xxxxxxx
These are “archived” Teams.
Before every new season, Team Channels are prefixed with
[z][year][season]so the contents can still be accessed, but out of the primary channel flow. Sometimes, they are pulled out of retirement for another mission or can rest peacefully, just waiting for a visitor. If you’d like to resurrect a sleeping Team, just remove the prefix (and perhaps let the#mainchannel know).