Last week, I asked what your experience has been with neurodiversity and long tutorials, and I got some great responses!
Fellow educator and trainer Kevin Cunningham (@dolearning) shared his recent experience learning Astro (shared with permission):
Super interesting article Kamran.
I recently migrated my website to Astro and was super impressed with their tutorials and docs.
They split them up and gamified them in the way you pointed out.
Your email has inspired me to go look at their docs and examine the components they use to make it work. Since they are all open source I can use them on the next tutorial on my site.
Here’s an example.
https://docs.astro.build/en/tutorial/0-introduction/
And it has a cool little tracker in the top right.
Now do I convert and old tutorial or write a new one …
This is the first time I've taken a look at Astro, so here's what Kevin is referring to:
Kevin has started to work on his own site and has already open sourced some "interactive components" like the above which you can check out here:
I'm loving that – I'll need to it to awesome-deved.
Kevin's wasn't the only response either. Chris Ferdinandi, the Vanilla JS Guy, chipped in too (shared with permission):
I have ADHD, and just instinctively end up creating articles, courses, workshops, etc. that are all very short and narrowly focused. It suites my own personal learning style.
I can’t tell you how many of my students are like, “Hey, I have ADHD and your stuff is the only content that’s worked for me! I love other people's personalities, but I just can’t sit through HOURS of video content.”
Ya'll, this is why it's SO IMPORTANT to develop empathy for your developer audience. This is a unique advantage that solo full-time dev educators have with their private communities of students – but is lacking on DevRel teams who don't have their own community giving them constant feedback.
Without interviewing devs who use your product, how else would you know you should focus on creating shorter-form content and education that could accelerate the adoption of your tool?
Have a lovely day,
Kamran
