Calendar of events
Upcoming events
WordPress in Education: What we teach when we teach WordPress
Tuesday, March 24th 10 AM Eastern
Across higher education, WordPress is used as a publishing tool, but when we engage with students, it becomes part of the learning environment. We teach students to use the web to tell their stories. They create portfolios, publish project sites, and share digital humanities work. They build professional identities that travel with them beyond a single course or platform.
At the same time, many student-facing initiatives that may utilize WordPress as a tool have a different shared language and vocabulary for what, exactly, we’re teaching: Is it web design, digital writing, technology literacy, open pedagogy, or informational literacy, or all of the above? In practice, it is often a mix, and that makes it worth naming and learning from each other.
This online summit, hosted by WPCampus, the professional organization for WordPress in Higher Ed, centers student-facing programs, both long-standing and emerging. We’ll explore how educators and campus teams are teaching WordPress for authentic public work, and how newer pathways like the WordPress Credits are reframing WordPress not just as a tool students use, but an open source ecosystem that students can participate in and contribute to.
Why this matters now
WordPress remains a highly used web platform on the open web, which means “learning WordPress” often doubles as learning the web in a practical, career relevant way.
What participants will learn
- Defining outcomes: How campuses frame student WordPress initiatives and what they prioritize.
- Teaching models that scale: Mentorship, peer learning, and support structures that work across programs.
- Pathways beyond the classroom: how student move from course-based projects to portfolios, community contribution, and career development.
- Open source community engagement and sustainability: How student contributions feed into the larger WordPress ecosystem and help sustain open source projects.
The WPCampus community is always looking forward to planning the next event. Have an idea for a topic? Let us know!
Recent events
The WordPress Editor: Designing for Higher Ed Success
On Thursday, February 26, 2026, join WPCampus for a half-day virtual event that explores not just how to use the modern WordPress editing experience, but how to shape it to meet the complex needs of higher education on the modern WordPress editing experience.
- 10:00am – 11:00am EST – Keynote Panel: Building with FSE: Patterns, Blocks, and Governance
- This keynote will feature Joeleen Kennedy and Alexis Villegas, pro WordPress engineers from the Human Made team. They will explore how teams approach building real-world projects with the Full Site Editor, focusing on the decisions behind patterns, custom blocks, and governance. Rather than starting with implementation details, they’ll discuss why successful FSE projects begin by designing the editor experience itself—who it’s for, what they should be able to change, and how flexibility can be supported safely.
- 11:00am – 11:30am EST – Demo Session: Start Small: A Practical, Incremental Path from Shortcodes to Blocks
- Many institutions don’t move to the block editor all at once, and they don’t have to. Using a real-world example, Joeleen and Alexis will walk through a practical, low-risk way to begin adopting the block editor by transforming an existing shortcode into a server-rendered block. This talk is aimed at developers and technical teams who want to focus on incremental changes and move toward the block editor at their own pace, especially in environments where stability, governance, and long-term maintainability matter.
- 11:45am – 12:30pm EST – Panel: Customizing WordPress to Meet Higher Ed’s Needs (Without losing your mind)
- In the second half of the event, we’ll be joined by panelists Ed Beck, Kevin Grimley, and Mike Henderson for “Customizing WordPress to Meet Higher Ed’s Needs (Without Losing Your Mind)“. The session will start with 5-minute lightning talks as each panelist shares recent projects such as designing a theme for student needs, structuring site data to ensure cross-department consistency, and managing an institution-wide theme rollout smoothly. Following the lightning talks, we’ll move to a 30-minute moderated discussion including questions from the audience. This session will showcase some of the ways you can shape WordPress for higher education, with advice on approaching customization thoughtfully and effectively.
- 12:30pm – 1:00pm EST – WPCampus Afterhours: Trivia and hangout session
- We’ll round off the day with a half-hour hangout session, including a WordPress Trivia game hosted by Taylor Jadin. This will be a more casual less structured opportunity to meet people, have fun, and reflect and engage about the day’s presentations and topics.
November 6, 2025: The State of Accessibility in WordPress: From Insight to Action in Higher Ed
The WPCampus community hosted a two-hour online webinar on Thursday, November 6, exploring the current and future state of accessibility in WordPress through the lens of higher education.
We brought together accessibility leaders, developers, and governance practitioners for a series of sessions that connect insight to action: understanding where accessibility in WordPress stands today, how to build stronger governance structures, and what new tools are emerging to make accessibility testing more seamless and integrated.
Interview and Discussion with Joe Dolson
Hear from accessibility expert and core WordPress Accessibility team member, Joe Dolson, about progress in WordPress accessibility, key takeaways from WordPress Accessibility Day, and what higher education should prioritize to improve accessibility across their digital ecosystems. We’ll also discuss how higher ed can contribute to WordPress core accessibility initiatives.
Watch the video in our Learning Library
Lecture: Using Data to Support Enterprise Accessibility Governance
This session will explore real-world case studies and proposed approaches for supporting and enforcing accessibility governance in large-scale WordPress environments. Learn how data can guide enterprise accessibility efforts and help maintain consistent quality and compliance across distributed teams.
Watch the video in our Learning Library
Panel: Integrated Accessibility Testing Tools in WordPress
A conversation with developers and creators behind integrated accessibility testing plugins (testing that is designed to catch issues before they’re published). The panel will cover the wins and challenges of testing accessibility across multiple editors and workflows, tips on how to use these tools to stop accessibility issues before they’re published, and share ideas for the future of automated testing in WordPress.
Panelists:
- Amber Hinds, Founder and CEO, Equalize Digital (creators of Accessibility Checker)
- Steve Jones, CTO, Equalize Digital (creators of Accessibility Checker)
- John Jameson, Digital Accessibility Developer, Princeton University (creator of Editoria11y)
- Adam Chaboryk, IT Accessibility Specialist, Toronto Metropolitan University (creator of Sa11y)
Watch the video in our Learning Library
Recurring events
- WPCampus Board meetings
- Are held on the first and third Tuesday of each month from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.
- WPCampus Board meetings are open to the public.
WPCampus Google Calendar
A Google Calendar houses all of our community events.