[development] Proposal: Drupal University

[James Benstead]

I want there to be a set of free courses that people can work through to
learn about Drupal. Initially, at least, these "courses" would be a
reorganisation of existing material, kind of like the Drupal Cookbook.

I suppose the skill/experience element here is going to be working out what
the syllabus needs to be for each course. The courses can then point at
existing documentation, whether that's text or videos or whatever. If there
are gaps, we can write new documentation - so organising things in this way
also helps us work out what documentation we need.

I've posted to the Documentation list at
http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation - I guess that's the
best place to continue this discussion. Would be great if you could help.

2009/12/28 marcia wilbur <marcia.k.wilbur at gmail.com>

> I'm not sure which direction you are heading with this.
>
> Are you possibly considering video elements with the course design or text
> based courses?
>
> If you are talking about simply reorganizing, then it is just a matter of
> management of information, correct?
> If you are considering creating courseware or WBTs based on existing
> documentation that could take a little more time and talent.
> Either way, sounds like a good idea. I could help.
>
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 8:39 AM, James Benstead <james.benstead at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the comments.
>>
>> Drupal Dojo is great, when it's running - but it does seem to me that it
>> lacks a little organisation. What I am suggesting doesn't necessarily need
>> to be new documentation, per se, but instead *the organisation of
>> existing documentation under a useful structure*.
>>
>> Perhaps calling it Drupal University is a bit misleading as I don't forsee
>> there being any formal assessment or accreditation, but there would be
>> structured courses to work through. For example, "Drupal 101: Beginning
>> Drupal" which could teach complete newbies how to set up a core installation
>> on a local or remote server; or "Drupal 201: Basic Theming" which could
>> explain how .tpl.php files worked and how CSS works in Drupal.
>>
>> The Packt books are great, but they are short and sweet and they don't
>> offer an overall structure. Pro Drupal Development is superb and offers a
>> great structure, but it has its limitations: in short, *it's a book*.
>> First off, you have to buy it, for real money. I have no problem with people
>> making money out of open source software (especially when their work is as
>> brilliant as in the case of PDD), but I do think there should be a free,
>> "open source" alternative. If for no other reason, the cover price of PDD is
>> huge for developers in 2nd or 3rd world countries (i.e., the majority of the
>> population of the planet) and they should have an alternative. Secondly, you
>> can't interact with a book: having a structured set of web resources would
>> mean people could comment on and discuss the resources, kind of like
>> students do on a real university campus.
>>
>> I suppose the resource that gets closest to what I'm thinking is the
>> Drupal Cookbook - this could be Drupal 101. It fits my proposal because it
>> doesn't provide new documentation, but just organises what's already out
>> there. But more importantly, it answers the question, "I am at stage X in
>> learning Drupal, what should I do next?". Granted, it answers the simplest
>> version of this question, and for more advanced developers the answer well
>> may be multi-faceted - "if you want to specialise in X, go and learn Y" -
>> but it does crystallise what I'm proposing.
>>
>> Again, anyone got any more thoughts on this?
>>  --
>> Google Talk/Windows Live Messenger/AIM: james.benstead at gmail.com
>> Yahoo! Messenger/Twitter/IRC (Freenode): jim0203
>> Jabber: jim0203 at jabber.org // ICQ: 7088050
>> Skype: jimbenstead
>>
>>
>>
>> 2009/12/28 Yani <akayani at aapt.net.au>
>>
>> http://www.drupalbook.com/
>>>
>>> That looks like a good one. I'll make that my first D7 book.
>>>
>>> Yani
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: development-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:
>>> development-bounces at drupal.org]
>>>  On Behalf Of Andrew Schulman
>>> Sent: Monday, 28 December 2009 7:37 PM
>>> To: development at drupal.org
>>>  Subject: Re: [development] Proposal: Drupal University
>>>
>>> > Shell out some cash on books by Matt Butcher / Packit Publishing.
>>>
>>> The Packit books are fine as far as they go, but are usually short and
>>> basic.
>>> For a detailed look at Drupal's big picture, I highly recommend Pro
>>> Drupal
>>> Development, 2nd ed. by John VanDyk.  2nd ed. is for D6, but I see that a
>>> 3rd
>>> edition for D7 is due out in April.
>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20091228/ff106eec/attachment-0001.html