Posted by heather on December 18, 2008 at 5:30pm
Does anyone know of academic institutions offering classes or courses which cover Drupal?
Both face to face and/or online?
NB: Not courses using Drupal as a medium, rather: Drupal as the subject matter.
I would love to hear from lecturers who are planning courses, or who have taught Drupal in their courses. I would like to see examples, how they fit in to the existing academic programmes in their institutions, how they promote it, and what the outcomes have been.
Thank you!
Comments
Drupal classes in Szeged
Hi Heather,
I initiated Drupal classes at the University of Szeged. There is some sparce information available online at http://drupalcenter.hu/
We give alternating intro course and advanced (module development) courses. They are face to face, but in 2 day intense programs with a connected project work.
Ping me if you want to know more.
Check out our new company blog on http://www.pronovix.com/blog
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
Thank you, Kristoff for your
Thank you, Kristoff for your help- and your detailed information via email.
For anyone else following this topic, I am posting some links that are of interest.
Mind, this is only a fraction of what is out there. I'm just posting my own notes. I realise I am looking for courses offered in Universities, ITs or colleges as part of a certificate or degree programme- rather than private training courses.
I only found out today, that there is a 'Curriculum and training' group here on g.d.o.
http://groups.drupal.org/curriculum
University Drupal Course - wiki page on C&T group:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/16650 - Outline of a planned course
List of Drupal training services (started by Amazon)
http://drupal.org/node/313592
Drupal course SZTE fall 2007 (kvantomme's course mentioned above)
http://www.kvantomme.be/content/drupal-course-szte-september-2007
Drupal Courses: forum post- mentions delivery online (e-learning)
http://drupal.org/node/97525
Rutgers has courses which are 2-3 'sessions' long. Not sure what unit a session is.
An Introduction to the Drupal Content Management System(CMS)
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/4
Advanced Drupal Administration
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/7
Intro to Drupal Module Building
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/9
Drupal Author Level Training - course description at Oregon State University
http://oregonstate.edu/training/course_view.php?crse_id=135
"A slow-paced, interactive Drupal workshop focused on the needs of new Drupal users. Participants will learn about the Drupal environment at the Author level and build a basic web page."
Sandbox example from a Drupal Course at DERI, Galway Ireland
http://drupalcourse.deri.ie/
There were also some classes
There were also some classes offered at the University of Michigan -- I tried to find them to respond to this post, but wasn't able to -- more due to lack of time than anything else.
Also, last spring a teacher at a French uni pinged me re a course they were offering. I'll look that up and post back here.
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
Thanks for the leads
This is really helpful information, thank you Bill!
I see the course proposed by Paul Resnick:
http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/ at UMICH
Just adding notes to this thread, again, in case anyone else is interested.
Paul Resnick mentioned planning at Unis is slower than the open source world. Which is true, you have to plan way ahead. His comment here:
http://civicactions.com/DrupalBootCamp#comment-41
Quote: "Universities work a little slower than the open source world-- I'm proposing courses for January 2007. And my audience is actually going to include people with less programming background, but knowledge of usability, social psychology, the relationship between organizations and social collections, etc."
In winter 2007, he offered 'SI505: Drupal Boot Camp' as a pre=requisite to a larger course, which seems now to be taken care of in the larger CMS course: http://si631w08.cms.si.umich.edu/
I think it is interesting that the students work with 'real' clients.
http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/courses/winter07/SI631/#clients
http://si631w08.cms.si.umich.edu/?q=node/3 - pitch to prospective clients
This is exactly the kind of information I am looking for as I develop a proposal for a course to be taught at the IT where I lecture.
BCIT has a Drupal course in Vancouver
See http://www.bcit.ca/study/courses/comp1855
This is a technical college, where it is much easier and faster to get new courses approved.
I believe I heard once that the accreditation cycle for universities is 12 - 18 months.
I've always thought that a 3rd year course in "Open Source Development Methodologies", using Drupal / the Drupal community as a core example, would be excellent. Would cover group collaboration, open source licensing theory and practice, distributed version control, etc.
thanks, boris!
I agree with you- and I like the idea of it fitting into an advanced course- especially as open source development is becoming more and more important.
I think there are many levels Drupal could suit; and many aspects of web development which could touch on Drupal as part of a larger programme. E.g., for those working on for those interested in web design- they could practice theme development for Drupal. For those interested in web development they could practice Module development. For those learning system administration they could learn installation/maintenance/performance tuning of Drupal.
There are also potential outcomes or benefits for the students, for which I have anecdotal evidence - but hoping to find more proof/data.
In some ways, I could see dropping Drupal into existing programmes, or developing a stand-alone set of modules which students would be able to take as electives or as online courses. I think the Rutgers model is close to what I was thinking. Your outline for course sounds excellent and comprehensive- and something to build towards.
Drupal jobs up 807% since April 07
These are the kinds of stats I need :)
This is only data from the US - but interesting! Thanks http://twitter.com/bertboerland for the info.
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-Joomla%2C+Drupal%2C+Typo3...
"Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, Dotnetnuke Job Trends"
"This graph displays the percentage of jobs that contain your search terms. Since April 2007, the following has occurred:"
I'm teaching Drupal in my
I'm teaching Drupal in my Writing for the Web course. The class is intended to be an introductory web design class. It's composed mostly of writing majors from my department. So we use Drupal during the first half of the class to build a prototype website so that they can demonstrate information best practices for building a website (then later we move on to HTML/CSS coding).
I'm running a web design
I'm running a web design club at lunch time and we are doing the same thing. I turned off some kids at the beginning because the installation process is a bit much, but other's are pleased to be building complex website relatively quickly. Definitely turned off all the kids when I tried starting with HTML + CSS last year.
ah! cool idea!
I like that you use Drupal as the baby-steps to making websites, and then move to 'code' later. I'm curious, do you install Drupal or use a multi-site installation? Or do you allow them blogs in an already constructed site? Or do they install from the ground up?
I like that your writing for the web course includes design/semantic markup, etc. That is important stuff. Are they web design majors, or is development a part of their degree in general... or are they non-majors?
And just a wave, Charlie, I remember you from Kairosnews! (I have the same username there too :)
Drupal in WRT 351: Writing for the Web
Sorry I'm so slow on replying to this. Good to see you, Heather :)
Here are some answers:
Because I'm too lazy to learn the current multi-site strategy (maybe next fall), I just make a template and copy it to each directory. Then students get the experience of the install.php page. It's the bare site (nothing configured) with a few extra contrib modules in addition to Drupal core. So they build from the bottom up from there. You can see the course website if you like (it's Drupal).
One thing we don't do any of is Drupal theming. Instead, I drop about 20 or so themes into their installation so that they can choose which one to use for their project.
The students are mostly Writing Department majors, mostly with a professional writing emphasis (occasionally some are creative writers). Others are Writing Department minors, and then we tend to get a few coming out of the Communications college. What's interesting about the makeup of the class is that they are on average about average in technological literacy for a college student. Sometimes about half of them have had our Document Design class in the major, which is actually a big help. But otherwise, they can use Google, Facebook, and email like every other college student, but are not generally technologically oriented. So I try to prepare them for the class at the beginning of the semester by telling them it will be like learning a foreign language :-)
Rutgers Drupal Courses
Rutgers is planning a series of drupal classes, however the links shown above must have been pulled from a search into our sandbox area. We expect the finalized courses to posted in the April-May timeframe. Thanks for mentioning us, and let us know if you have suggestions for the perfect Drupal series.
One in the works, talks given
I've given a few talks about Drupal to staff at Penn State. There are also tenative plans to roll Drupal into the curriculum of a Digital Arts certificate as part of a social networking / digital portfolio class.
Here's the link to the presentation if you'd like to watch what I went over in it: https://elearning.psu.edu/projects/talk-resources
After life calms down a bit I'd love to teach Drupal locally at PSU. Any interest in an online, collaborative teaching effort? I know I took an open source a year ago that was pretty neat w/ distributed instruction and I think Drupal edu people could really take it to the extreme between youtube, riffly, jing, and flickr (amoung the millions of other social networking / media sites we could use to communicate with students).
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Drupal Dojo
Have you heard about the Drupal Dojo? I think that's pretty similar to the online course you propose. There is currently a team working on dojo 2,0. Are you maybe interested in helping out?
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
Any additional information?
Any additional information? I'd definitely be interested in looking into it at the very least to see what other people are doing. I have a whole bunch of students that work for us that could be interested in taking it as an independent study through our campus if it's that type of an online program.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
online Drupal course
hehe, that means we have yet another use case for the Dojo =D
actually it is a cool idea to actually make it an online course...
Are you part of the documentation list? We had a discussion on resources for Drupal yesterday on IRC.
I posted a write up of how this could work at http://groups.drupal.org/node/19036
I'll also post the link to the development mailinglist.
---
I blog at http://www.pronovix.com/blog
and Tweet at http://twitter.com/kvantomme
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
I'm not on that list, how do
I'm not on that list, how do I join it? I'd love to get involved with this over the summer when my schedule starts to be freed up to work on stuff like this.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
you can join the list
you can join the list here:
http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/documentation
and see archives, etc; esp the convo about collecting resources:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2009-February/thread.html
More info here:
http://groups.drupal.org/documentation-team
collaborative teaching effort- update
I do want to contribute to Dojo 2,0. I've been keeping my eye on developments there. At the moment, my plate is full with work so my efforts on d.o have been curtailed a bit. I suppose I'm trying to bring the two together :)
I think there could be great opportunities for collaboration. I'm come a bit further in the process since my original post, mainly it has to do with me learning about the workings of the Academic Council in my institution and how to prepare proposals for new courses, or fit into existing courses.
To share a little bit of the context I am working in: I am lecturing in a third-level Institute of Technology here in Ireland (IT Sligo). We have experience delivering online & blended courses in some departments- using a mix of face to face; synchronous (Breeze) & asynchronous (Moodle) learning environments.
I lecturer in Communications, Programming and Webdesign at Level 6 & 7 (not sure what it is called in the US? Associates & Bachelor's level? I am trying to develop either a 5 or 10 credit module (US = course/class?) or a qualification in which Drupal features strongly. I can't develop a "Drupal Modue" per se, but I can make a module on Content Management Systems where students are exposed to several, and Drupal is the focus. I can't make a module on "Installing, Performance Tuning & Testing Drupal" but I could make a course for systems administrators where several systems are tested & Drupal features strongly.
I think there are commercial opportunities for people to get private training in Drupal online. I suppose I'm focusing more on people who want or need to develop not only skills but qualifications as well.
Does that make sense?
One part of the proposal I'm developing is to bring in external lecturers. There is simply not enough expertise in my Institution, and those Drupal developers who I do know in Ireland are so massively busy (hence the need for more Drupallers!). So I will be looking outside my Institution and abroad.
Meanwhile, we, in the Drupal Ireland User Group are working hard on Drupal promotion events in Ireland. (Drupal Dublin meet-up in Nov, and the DrupalCamp in Galway upcoming in April).
So I wrote the intial question to see what existing approaches there are. I suspect I haven't even scratched the surface yet, there must be many more institutions teaching Drupal??
Meanwhile, I'm researching ideas for the learning outcomes of the course, which I want to include skills for contribution and participation in and OSS community. To that end I'll be conducting some research: "Crowd-Sourcing a Syllabus" as I titled my abstract.
One of the data sources will be interviews conducted at a OSS BarCamp; another will be a survey (hopefully some people from Drupal.org can participate) and also Seesmic.com The video interviews as data can also be used as teaching materials later on,. (woot!)
http://www.ossbarcamp.com/speakers/#comment-267
low contribution entry barrier
If we want to do this Drupal teacher course thing then it would be cool if you could chime in, with some specification ideas. In the early phases we probably don't need that much big chuncks of time, and later for the implementation I think we should go for development sprints.
I also have limited time, so I'm all for productive ways to do this.
I blog at http://www.pronovix.com/blog
and Tweet at http://twitter.com/kvantomme
--
Check out more of my writing on our blog and my Twitter account.
bussy with teaching
I'm running two courses related to Drupal.
The first is called "Web Service Development for Business", where business people with no background on coding, learn to create a Drupal module to use it to mashup applications and create an online service. Sadly the course text is lagging behind.
Here is a description of the course: http://www.mixel.be/node/55
I'm also using the Drupal database for SQL exercises in another course, that part of my side is best developed (but not without errors, got to clean it up).
Here are the SQL exercises: http://mosi.vub.ac.be/webdev/?q=node/622
How to find out about Drupal classes at the University level?
Hello all,
I'm helping a technical university that is interested in teaching Drupal development courses to its students. What's the best way to find information about classes being offered at different places (distance and face-to-face), sample course structures and the like?
Thanks in advance,
Leo
Montgomery College, MD offering CMS/ Drupal Class
To become a Drupal expert in a semester, sign up for the Montgomery College, MD CA 274 (Titled: Web CMS & Content Strategy). This class focuses on making students a Drupal expert.
IT 610: Web Development with CMS using Drupal - Spring 2013
I will start teaching Graduate Students IT 610: Web Development with Content Management System on January 27th, 2014. Its a full semester elective course for Masters students and using blended learning method. Online and face-to-face meetings.
The course cover concepts of web computing, the layered web architecture and web site structure. It introduces the creation of simple and complex, dynamic, interactive and fully functional websites using Drupal Content Management Systems (CMS). Students will install and modify Drupal themes, create efficient site navigation using menus, and organize a site using community modules like boxes, views, context, core blocks, nodes, custom content types and fields, and debug site using Drupal’s community contributed development module. The course project is for each student to design and implement an effective corporate web site for a fictitious company in a remote server environment.
Course Structure so far
I will be creating a website specific for the course and each student will post their final website project online. Stay tuned for more information. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please feel free to add here.
Tamba Lamin
tamba@tambalamin.me
Tell us more...
Sounds great!
Where are you offering this course?
Are you using ELMS?
How are you going to structure OG?
Do you have sandboxes setup for each student?
Will you be hosting those on an internal server or using an outside service?
Will you be covering GIT and Drush as well?
Please do keep us posted.
Blackboard will be used to
Blackboard will be used to post videos, course content, lab manual, and to discuss one topic each week. A Video lecture will be posted each week demonstrating specific tasks base on the outline. A lab manual is also going to be prepared with step by step instructions for each task they will be required to learn. For those who like Linux, an Ubuntu Server Virtual Machine configured to run Drupal will be available for download and use. The DEV environment is multi-site Drupal 7. Default site will be course site and each student will have a site using a sub-domain of the course site. Most important, common and required contrib and custom modules and themes will be installed for them in /sites/all and they will be able to install any other modules and themes they like and believe will help them accomplish the final individual project. The final project is to develop a corporate website. The project will be delivered in three phases. Alpha, Beta and final. After each phase, I will review the site with them, provide feedback, give them partial grade for that part and let them continue to the next phase. Each student will have FTP access to their sites folder only. This way they can only add or delete modules and themes or files in their sites folder. The environment will be made public at the end of the semester and I will share it here. The videos will also be aggregated and shared. I will talk about GIT and Drush a little but it will not be covered to much details. They will not be required to use it as this is more or less an intro course though its for graduate students. I intend to create a more advanced course for developers and that will include GIT and Drush in details.
Tamba Lamin
tamba@tambalamin.me
Sounds great! It would be
Sounds great! It would be wonderful if you will continue to publish periodic updates and pointers to elements you are contributing back to the community. When you are up for it, I'd be happy to pull together a Dojo webinar so that you can present your work and perhaps later in the course we can get a couple of your students to do a follow-up and present their work. If there are ways I or others can help, please don't hesitate to reach out. Let's chat...
Amazing!
Wow that sounds amazing - wish I'd had a similar course when I was a student!
My first thought is are you able to film it at all? I have a video camera and a decent mic and would be happy to ship it anywhere.
Have you heard of the open Drupal curriculum a few of the uk people are working on? Sounds like a match to me...
Thanks for the compliments.
Thanks for the compliments. Not sure if University will want to try that right now but its on course as the course progress and becomes fully integrated into the university system. Do you have a link for the Open Drupal Curriculum work in UK? I will love to take a look and see what's going on. Let me try a google search.
Tamba Lamin
tamba@tambalamin.me
I just checked it out and
I just checked it out and found https://gitorious.org/drupal-open-curriculum. It seems like the focus is on Drupal 6 and for self study or stand up training. To make life easy for those after me, I have created https://github.com/click2tman/drupal-open-curricullum were I will post the curriculum used this semester and continue updating as we continue. Anyone teaching CMS or Drupal at a North America University can add to the project as well. Thanks again for the info.
Tamba Lamin
tamba@tambalamin.me
opendrupal
Here you go: https://groups.drupal.org/opendrupal