Collaborative exercises designed for study groups to work on together. These challenges promote teamwork, peer learning, and collective growth.
- All group members participate in planning and execution
- Work together on a shared branch or multiple coordinated PRs
- Review each other's contributions within the group
- Complete as a team - everyone contributes meaningfully
Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate
Time: 2-3 hours
Group Size: 2-4 people
Objective: Collaboratively improve a documentation file.
Setup:
- Choose a doc that needs work (facilitator can suggest)
- Divide sections among group members
- Each person creates a branch
- Coordinate to avoid conflicts
Tasks:
- Fix all accessibility issues (headings, links, alt text)
- Improve clarity and completeness
- Add helpful examples
- Update table of contents
- Cross-review each other's sections
Deliverables:
- Each member opens a PR for their section
- Group reviews all PRs before merging
- Final coordinated merge
What You'll Learn:
- Parallel collaboration strategies
- Avoiding merge conflicts
- Coordinated review process
- Consistent style across contributors
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time: Ongoing (1 hour per round)
Group Size: 3-6 people
Objective: Create a structured peer review rotation.
Setup:
- Each person opens a PR for a challenge
- Reviews are assigned in a circle pattern:
- Person A reviews Person B
- Person B reviews Person C
- Person C reviews Person A
Process:
- Round 1: Everyone opens their PR
- Round 2: Everyone reviews their assigned PR thoroughly
- Round 3: Original authors respond to feedback
- Round 4: Reviewers approve or request more changes
- Round 5: Final merges and celebration
Requirements:
- Reviews must be comprehensive (use accessibility checklist)
- Feedback must be constructive and kind
- Authors must respond thoughtfully
- Everyone merges within agreed timeline
What You'll Learn:
- Systematic review processes
- Giving and receiving feedback gracefully
- Time management in review
- Identifying patterns across PRs
Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced
Time: 3-4 hours
Group Size: 3-5 people
Objective: Each person becomes an expert on one accessibility topic and teaches the group.
Topics to Choose From:
- Heading hierarchy and document structure
- Link text and navigation
- Image alt text
- Color contrast and visual design
- Keyboard navigation
- Screen reader testing
- ARIA labels and landmarks
- Form accessibility
- Table structure
- Focus management
Process:
- Week 1: Each person picks a topic and researches
- Week 2: Everyone creates a mini-lesson (documented)
- Week 3: Each person presents (async in issue thread is fine)
- Week 4: Group applies all topics in a collaborative audit
Deliverables:
- Each person creates documentation for their topic
- Group conducts joint accessibility audit
- Issues filed for problems found
- At least one challenge completed applying each topic
What You'll Learn:
- Deep diving into specific topics
- Teaching skills
- Comprehensive accessibility understanding
- Practical application of multiple concepts
Difficulty: Advanced-Expert
Time: 4-6 hours over 1-2 weeks
Group Size: 2-4 people
Objective: Design, document, and test 2-3 new challenges for future students.
Process:
- Brainstorm: What skills are missing from current challenges?
- Design: Each person designs one challenge
- Learning objective
- Clear instructions
- Example solution
- Success criteria
- Peer Review: Group reviews each proposed challenge
- Refinement: Improve based on feedback
- Testing: Have someone outside group attempt challenge
- Documentation: Add to challenge list with full details
Deliverables:
- 2-3 new, tested challenges
- Complete documentation
- Issues created for challenges
- Sample solutions (hidden file)
What You'll Learn:
- Instructional design
- Writing clear instructions
- Appropriate scoping
- Creating evaluation criteria
Difficulty: Advanced-Expert
Time: 6-8 hours over 2 weeks
Group Size: 3-5 people
Objective: Conduct comprehensive accessibility audit of entire workshop repository.
Division of Labor:
- Person A: Chapters 1-6
- Person B: Chapters 7-10
- Person C: Chapters 11-16 & Appendices
- Person D: Learning-room and meta docs
- Everyone: Cross-check each other's findings
Checklist Per File:
- Heading hierarchy correct?
- Link text descriptive?
- Images have alt text?
- Code samples accessible?
- Tables have headers?
- Color not sole indicator?
- Clear instructions?
- Consistent formatting?
Deliverables:
- Individual audit reports per section
- Combined master report
- Issues filed for each problem found
- Prioritization (must-fix, should-fix, nice-to-have)
- Fix recommendations
What You'll Learn:
- Systematic audit methodology
- Issue triage and prioritization
- Large-scale project organization
- Professional accessibility workflow
Difficulty: All levels
Time: Ongoing (1-2 weeks)
Group Size: 3-6 people
Objective: Create a mentorship chain where each person mentors the next.
Structure:
- Most experienced → Intermediate → Beginner
- Each person is both mentor AND mentee (except ends of chain)
Process:
- Beginner starts a challenge with Intermediate as reviewer
- Intermediate mentors Beginner while doing their own challenge
- Advanced mentors Intermediate while doing their own challenge
- Everyone learns from teaching AND from being taught
Requirements:
- Upper levels must explain WHY, not just WHAT
- Each person reflects on what they learned from both roles
- Group discusses mentoring experiences at the end
Deliverables:
- Each person completes a challenge
- Each person provides thorough mentorship
- Group retrospective document
What You'll Learn:
- Teaching reinforces learning
- Perspective-taking
- Explaining concepts at different levels
- Value of mentorship culture
Difficulty: Advanced-Expert
Time: 6-10 hours over 2 weeks
Group Size: 3-5 people
Objective: Create a complete, accessible onboarding experience for new workshop participants.
Components:
- Welcome documentation
- Setup guide with screen reader instructions
- First contribution walkthrough
- Video or visual guides (with transcripts/captions)
- Keyboard shortcut reference
- Troubleshooting FAQ
Division:
- Each person owns 1-2 components
- Everyone reviews all components
- Final integration and testing with actual new user
Accessibility Requirements:
- All headings perfect
- All images have alt text
- All videos have transcripts
- Keyboard-friendly
- Screen reader tested
- Clear, jargon-free language
Deliverables:
- Complete onboarding docs
- Integration into workshop
- Test results from new user
- Improvement suggestions document
What You'll Learn:
- Complete user flow design
- Accessibility at scale
- User testing methodology
- Empathy for different learning styles
Choose the Right Challenge:
- Match group's average skill level
- Consider time availability
- Pick topics everyone is interested in
Plan Together:
- Set clear timeline with milestones
- Divide tasks fairly
- Decide communication method (issue thread, other?)
- Establish decision-making process
Set Expectations:
- How quickly will you respond to each other?
- What times are you available?
- How will you handle disagreements?
- What counts as "complete"?
Communication:
- Use your study group issue thread
- Tag people when you need their input
- Give updates on your progress
- Ask for help early if stuck
Collaboration:
- Review each other's work promptly
- Be generous with feedback
- Celebrate each other's wins
- Support through difficulties
Coordination:
- Avoid merge conflicts with clear task division
- Pull latest changes before starting work
- Coordinate timing of PRs
- Test integrated result
Celebrate!
- Tag everyone in completion comment
- Share what you achieved
- Post about progress milestones
Reflect:
- What went well?
- What was challenging?
- What would you do differently?
- What did you learn about collaboration?
Document:
- Update your personal learning notes
- Share tips with other groups
- Suggest improvements to the challenge
Complete group challenges to earn special badges:
- Team Player: Completed 1 group challenge
- Collaborator: Completed 3 group challenges
- Community Leader: Completed 5+ group challenges
Someone not participating:
- Check in privately first (life happens!)
- Restructure tasks if needed
- Ask facilitator for help if pattern continues
Merge conflicts:
- Prevented by clear task division
- Use separate files/sections when possible
- Git conflict resolution practice is valuable learning!
Disagreements on approach:
- Both perspectives likely valid
- Focus on user benefit
- Ask facilitator to mediate if needed
- Document decision reasoning
Timeline slipping:
- Reassess scope
- Ask for extension if good reason
- Split into phases (complete part 1, then part 2)
- Learn from it for next time
- Comment in your study group issue
- Tag your facilitator
- Request additional time if needed
- Ask for scope adjustment if too ambitious
Have an idea for a group challenge?
Open an issue including:
- Challenge title and objective
- Recommended group size
- Estimated time
- Difficulty level
- What you'll learn
- Detailed process/steps
- Deliverables
- Label:
group-challenge-proposal
Facilitators will review and may add it to the list!
Learning Benefits:
- See diverse approaches to same problem
- Learn by teaching others
- Build confidence through peer support
- Experience real-world collaboration
Social Benefits:
- Build relationships in community
- Practice communication skills
- Develop empathy and patience
- Create supportive learning environment
Professional Benefits:
- Mirror real software team dynamics
- Practice code review on team setting
- Learn conflict resolution
- Build portfolio of collaborative work
- Culture & Etiquette - Working well with others
- Working with PRs - Collaboration workflows
- Merge Conflicts - Handling conflicts
- Automation Guide - How bot supports group work
Group challenges designed to build collaboration skills and community connections. We learn better together!