Student Impact

Showcase the top graduating students of the Educational Initiatives program, ranked by their real WordPress.org contribution impact.

Description

Student Impact displays a "quick showcase" of your highest-impact graduating students on a page (e.g. Stories). Each student is ranked by a weighted composite that leads with impact and contributions; hours is only a minor factor (never the top criterion):

• Recent impact (weight 45%) — the weighted 12-month contribution score from their profiles.wordpress.org page (high-impact work such as commits, releases, approved translations and props counts 3× routine activity).
• Contributions (weight 45%) — total contributions over the last 12 months.
• Time commitment (weight 10%) — logged program hours (from Airtable), used only as a gentle tiebreaker.

Data is synced live:

1. Graduate students are read from the Airtable Students table (status = Graduate).
2. Each is matched (by email) to the Students Reports table for their WordPress profile URL and logged hours.
3. Each WordPress.org profile is read to capture the impact metrics and avatar.
4. The composite ranking is computed and the top N are stored for display.

The plugin provides two displays, each available as a block and a shortcode:

1. Student Stories — the ranked top-N showcase (default 50).

• Block: Student Stories.
• Shortcode: [student_impact count="50" columns="3" title="Student Stories"]
• Visitors can filter by contribution area (Polyglots, Support, Documentation, etc.) using the filter bar above the grid.

2. Graduate Stats — class-wide totals across all graduates (not just the top N): number of graduates, summed impact, summed contributions, summed hours.

• Block: Graduate Stats.
• Shortcode: [student_impact_stats title="Class Impact"]

Configuration

Go to the Student Stories menu in the WP-Admin sidebar:

• Paste your Airtable Personal Access Token (use a token scoped to read-only access to just this base).
• Confirm the Base ID, table ids and the status value ("Graduate").
• Set how many students to showcase (default 50).
• Click Sync now. A daily background sync also runs automatically.

On activation the plugin seeds a bundled snapshot so the showcase works immediately, before the first live sync completes.

How students are selected and ranked

Who qualifies — a student is shown only if ALL of these are true:

1. They are in the Airtable Students table with Status = "Graduate".
2. They match (by email) a row in the Students Reports table.
3. That report has a usable WordPress.org profile (profiles.wordpress.org/user).

Graduates without a WordPress.org profile are excluded from the showcase, but are still counted in the Graduate Stats totals (headcount and hours).

Which data comes from where:

• Name, email, Graduate status — Airtable Students table.
• WordPress profile URL, Hours, contribution Team — Airtable Students Reports (Hours = the highest value across the student's reports).
• Recent impact score, Contributions, high-impact count, "active" flag — scraped live from the student's profiles.wordpress.org "Recent impact" panel (last 12 months). Impact is WordPress's own weighted score: high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) counts 3x routine activity.
• Avatar — Gravatar on the WordPress.org profile.

How they are ranked (order on the page) — a composite score, each signal scaled against the cohort's top value:

• Recent impact — 45%
• Contributions — 45%
• Hours — 10% (minor tiebreaker only)

Ties break by impact, then contributions, so hours never decides the top spots. The highest-scoring top N (default 50) are shown, ranked #1 downward.

Card labels:

• Rank badge (#1–#3 use the highlighted "medal" style).
• "Active now" — made at least 1 contribution in the last 90 days.
• "N high-impact" — high-impact contributions in the last 12 months.
• Team badge — the student's main contribution area (also the filter groups).

Freshness — data syncs live from Airtable + WordPress.org (daily, plus a manual "Sync now"). A bundled snapshot is shown until the first sync runs.

Shortcode attributes

[student_impact]

• count — number of students to show (0 = all synced). Default 0.
• columns — grid columns, 2–4. Default 3.
• title — section heading.
• subtitle — section subheading.
• filters — show the contribution-area filter bar (yes/no). Default yes.

[student_impact_stats]

• title — section heading. Default "Class Impact".
• subtitle — section subheading.
• note — show the "across N graduates" footnote (yes/no). Default yes.
• layout — grid (cards) or inline (compact horizontal strip for headers/footers). Default grid.

Legacy aliases (kept working for pages built with earlier versions): [education_student_stories] and [ei_student_stories] = the showcase; [education_graduate_stats] = the stats block. Same attributes as above.

Changelog

1.6.1

• Backward compatibility: the previous shortcodes still work as aliases, so pages built with an earlier version keep rendering after the rename — [education_student_stories] and [ei_student_stories] map to the showcase, and [education_graduate_stats] maps to the stats block.

1.6.0

• Renamed the plugin to "Student Impact". Full re-slug: folder, text domain and asset handles → student-impact; prefixes → si/SI; CSS → si-; blocks → student-impact/showcase and student-impact/stats; shortcodes → [student_impact] and [student_impact_stats].

1.5.4

• Made the student profile photos larger on the showcase cards (88px → 116px).

1.5.3

• Documented the selection and ranking rules: a new "How students are selected and ranked" section here, and a collapsible help panel on the admin screen.

1.5.2

• Removed the "Current Job" line (e.g. "Student", "Studentessa", "Estudiante") from the showcase cards. This field is no longer scraped or displayed.

1.5.1

• Fixed: WordPress.org profile scraping read every student's impact and contributions as 0 (so Graduate Stats totals and the showcase ranking lost those signals after a live sync). The profile's impact panel packs the number and its label into adjacent tags with no whitespace; the flattener now inserts a space between tags so the parser matches. Re-run "Sync now" after updating.

1.5.0

• Reweighted the showcase ranking so impact and contributions are the dominant criteria (45% each) and hours is only a minor tiebreaker (10%) — students are no longer ranked primarily by hours. Refreshed the bundled snapshot to match.

1.4.0

• Graduate Stats now supports a layout option: the default "grid" of cards, or a compact "inline" horizontal strip suited to page headers and footers. Selectable in the block sidebar or via the shortcode layout attribute.

1.3.0

• Added a Graduate Stats block and [student_impact_stats] shortcode showing class-wide totals across all graduates: number of graduates, summed impact, summed contributions, and summed hours. Totals are computed over the full cohort during each sync (not just the top-N showcase).

1.2.0

• Renamed the plugin to "Student Impact".
• Moved the admin screen from Settings to its own top-level "Student Stories" item in the WP-Admin sidebar.

1.1.0

• Added a contribution-area filter bar (Polyglots, Support, Documentation, …) above the showcase, with per-area counts. Toggle via the block setting or the shortcode filters attribute.
• Increased the default showcase size to 50 students; refreshed the bundled snapshot to the top 50.

1.0.0

• Initial release: live Airtable + WordPress.org sync, ranking engine, Student Stories block and [student_impact] shortcode, admin settings with manual and daily sync.