In the Winter Semester (begins in January of 2012 through early May) I will be teaching a 15-week course at GVSU called Advanced Writing for the World Wide Web. (WRT 380-6). It is a course designed for writing majors and minors, but it is also popular with students in advertising, computer science, journalism, business, and other areas).
The course will meet once a week on Wednesday nights from 6:00-8:50 on the Allendale campus in one of the computer labs.
This course may be of interest to non-degree seeking students who want to learn more about how to build in and work with content management systems, particularly Drupal. Non-degree seeking students do not need special permission to enroll, but if any special permissions are needed, I am happy to help if I can. Tuition costs obviously apply--and I believe current tuition is 410 per credit hour for this 3-credit course ($1200-some total? so you would need to check on the cost).
We'll be working from the ground up in the Drupal CMS platform. Drupal, as you probably already know, is one of the leading open source content management system web platforms. We'll begin the semester by setting up a site on a shared host, creating a MySQL database for the site, and then building away for a small business or nonprofit in ways that will help students become familiar with creating dynamic content in this database-driven web platform.
We'll learn how to create "views" and other dynamic content displays. We'll learn our way around Drupal--its menu structures, blocks, node types, and permission structures. And, most of all, we'll learn best practices for creating content and writing in the web environment. This is not a course in computer programming, PHP, or module development. The approach here is really that of a writer, content strategist, or web manager. In other words, we will be learning how to build and configure a Drupal website, but our utlimate focus is on the creation of content
We can learn how to set up e-commerce or other features you may be interested in learning. Most of all, we'll focus on good content management strategies, usability testing, and basic principles of design. We will not be using writing or hacking any PHP code, but we will work quite a bit with CSS in ways that will help you build and customize themes that control how a web site displays information.
There is certainly a freelance upside in developing these Drupal website development skills! Perhaps your workplace or organization will support this continuing education opportunity.
If you have any questions, please let me know. The class size is limited to 18, so if you want in this class, you should get enrolled now. I will probably not be giving any closed class permits.
Dan Royer
Professor of Writing
Grand Valley State University