Drupal Camp Wisconsin 2012 presentation about using Drupal in education and learning from use-cases in the ELMS project.

1. State of Drupal in Education
Btopro
btopro.com
btopro.net/post/wisconsin

2. Thank you Sponsors!

3. Goals of this class
• See where Drupal fits in edu
• See how edu fits in Drupal
• Tell PSU’s Drupal story
• How to join the community
• Laugh

4. btopro
• Drupal in Education crazy person
• contrib/distro dev
• “the ELMS guy”
• Tempered Radical

5. Philosophy
• Content separate from communication
• Abstract code to leverage/build community
• Fragment LMS to increase system quality
• Accessible ~ Usable are king
• Search Structured Anarchy

6. State of Education
• Tight budgets
• More expected with less
• Innovate under pressure (how!?)
• Outside forces seeking to transform
• M.O.O.C. , Badges, edtech, Coursera
• Can’t roll out services faster then startups

7. Edtech funding infusion
• $88.5 million in 2009
• $171.8 million in 2011
• $105 million in ½ of 2012
• Opportunity for Drupal vendors
Source: http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/venture-
capital-funding-for-ed-tech-at-unprecedented-levels-expected-
to-rise/

8. So why work IN education?

9. Build better systems w/
• A whiteboard, cheese curds, and
Drupal!

10. “Everybody’s doing it”
• 26% of all Edu sites are drupal
• 71 of top 100 universities use drupal!
Source: http://www.acquia.com/drupal-solutions/education

11. Just 1 story of the 71

12. My Context (2007)
• 1 unit, 1 developer
• No central Drupal support
• Static HTML / custom JS
• Multiple home grown CMSs
• A few open/closed products

13. Felt like Context (1997?)
• 1 unit, 1 webmaster
• Drupal CMS!
• Static HTML
• Home home grown CMS
• A few closed products

14. Start of my Drupal journey
Way of managing student submissions
outside LMS

15. Learning Curve
http://athousandnodes.com/article/drupal-learning-curve

16. Eye bleeding

17. Digging a deeper hole
“hey you know this is actually for
content right?” – btopro (2008)

18. Yet more Learning Curve
http://athousandnodes.com/article/drupal-learning-curve

19. Hence..

20. Why so hard though?
• Drupal is not a CMS
• Drupal is a CMF
The disconnect is that Drupal is not a Content Management
System (CMS), nor has it been one for some time. Drupal is a
Content Management Framework (CMF), from which you can
build a CMS tailored specifically for your needs.
- Larry “Vest” Garfield
http://www.palantir.net/blog/drupal-not-cms

21. Car analogy
Stock
Tuned

22. Cat Making Factory (CMF)#

23. Add modules

24. Cat & Module System (CMS)

25. Gamer CMS

26. =Lite-bright CMS

27. Cyclopes Blanket CMS

28. STOP… *giggle* angry CMS

29. Non-cat CMS uses
• Course content separate from Delivery (ELMS D5
2008, D6 2009)
• Engaging student art communities (Open Studio
2010)
• Document sharing intranets (Open Atrium 2010)
• Accessibility, copyright, transcription automation
(ELMS Media 2011)
• And yes, front facing, normal, websites

30. Philosophy

31. ELMS: ICMS

32. ELMS: ICMS

33. ELMS: ICMS

34. ELMS: ICMS (distro)

35. ELMS: CLE

36. ELMS: Media (distro)

37. Drupal CMS

38. Today from ELMS
• Drupal for all projects
• ELMS, entirely on drupal.org
• 3 distros
• 17 modules, 26 features
• 16 themes

39. Don’t fail like I had to
• Need to stop hacking Drupal core to scale (D5)
• Need to stop hacking Drupal contrib to scale (D6)
• Need to contribute all code possible
• All of ELMS is GPL
• Need to fragment code for people to care
• code base works in atrium / any drupal site
• Need to package on drupal.org / work exclusively
there going forward

40. Transparency / Community
• Organic collaboration examples:
• Outline Designer
• Spaces OG Clone
• Regions
• Profiler Builder
• Hidden Nodes
• Abstraction to solve greater need
• Kit compliancy for features

41. Today @ PSU
• DC-PSU 2011 - 110 showed up
• No central support needed
• All colleges participating

42. Going forward @ PSU
• D.P.E. community 8-10 active members
• Psu.edu going drupal!!!
• DCPSU12 - 90 site builder / 68 developer

43. And so Today

44. Contribute
• Distributions
• Drupal as LMS
• Education tag on d.o.
• http://drupal.org/node/1688262
• EduDu
• Drupal in education unconference

45. Distributions for edu
• ELMS (micro-sites) ß Bias
• Commons (organizations)
• Open Atrium (intranet / LMS?)
• Julio / Open Academy / Open
Edu (department site)
• Open Scholar (faculty sites)

46. Distributions fit with..
• Future: Informal learning networks
• Sustainable / infrastructure investment
• End of one-size-fits-all LMS
• Suite of tools approach to LMS design
• Fragmented solutions instead of single
point of obsolescence
• Vendors Take note!

47. Suite of tools: Ulmus
• Core ELMS UX / architecture
• A Distribution for making distros
• Help review the architecture /
provide feedback / join forces!
• Active collaboration underway!

48. EduDu
• Informal agreement of individuals
• Kit compliant features dev
• Fserver for non-gpl distributing
• Promote each other’s work
• Edudu_kickstart distro

49. Drupal Education Unconf
• Drupalcon Denver 2012
• Drupalcon Portland
• Monday May 20th, 2013
• Follow Funnymonkey.com

50. Other engagement
• Issue queues
• Groups.drupal.org
• IRC: #drupal-edu
• Go form and tell your drupal story

51. Disrupt today, empower tomorrow