[documentation] Proposal: Drupal University

Sat Jan 2 03:27:06 UTC 2010

Posted to g.d.o at http://groups.drupal.org/node/42236
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2010/1/1 Ariane Khachatourians <arianekhachatourians at gmail.com>

> Jim -
>
> I would definitely start with talking to others who have been working on
> curriculum stuff to make sure you're not duplicating efforts. And also, if
> you are expecting core dev types to contribute, you had better get them on
> side *before* starting.
>
> Hopefully once you post on the Curriculum and Training group, you will get
> some more feedback from others.
>
> Ariane
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 7:17 AM, James Benstead <james.benstead at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I'd not really thought about the curricula being used outside of people
>> studying on their own and teaching themselves, but I suppose it could be
>> used as the basis for training companies to teach from.
>>
>> And yes, consensus is essential. At the moment I'm thinking that we could
>> maybe convince a few Drupal rockstars to advise on their areas of expertise:
>> so Angie Byron could help with a "contributing to Drupal" module, Larry
>> Garfield could help with "Databases in Drupal", etc. This wouldn't be
>> essential, and their word wouldn't need to be taken as gospel, but if it
>> worked I think it could be a great shortcut. The community could then reach
>> consensus based on that.
>>
>> --Jim
>>
>> 2009/12/29 Ryan Price <liberatr at gmail.com>
>>
>> Acquia has been talking about setting up an "official" Drupal curriculum
>>> for years... they were calling it Yellow Jersey.
>>>
>>> The "standard" seems to be one company decides what is official, but
>>> that's not how Drupal seems to do it.
>>>
>>> In order to get something like this taught at a college (as a seminar),
>>> or to get the numerous Drupal Training companies out there to adopt it, I
>>> would want some sort of consensus from somewhere. Even if the opinion was
>>> not a popular opinion, it would still be out there. Education (in my
>>> opinion) needs to have a particular stance, and be geared toward a certain
>>> audience, etc. If you try to be everything to everyone, it's not very
>>> effective.
>>>
>>> I speak on behalf of one of those Drupal Training companies. If someone
>>> handed us a curriculum, we would probably teach it, and be happy to do so.
>>> Then we would have fewer things to compete with. Instead of the situation we
>>> have now, it's only one question for our students: get it in person, or
>>> self-taught?
>>>
>>>     Peace,
>>> Ryan Price
>>> DrupalEasy.com
>>> rprice at ryanpricemedia.com
>>> @liberatr
>>> 407-484-8528
>>>
>>>  FloridaCreatives.com
>>> Orlando Happy Hour: 18th @ Crooked Bayou
>>> Next Likemind: Jan 15th @ Drunken Monkey
>>>
>>> FL DrupalCamp: Feb 20th + 21st
>>> http://2010.fldrupalcamp.org -- @fldrupalcamp
>>>
>>> On Dec 28, 2009, at 5:10 PM, James Benstead wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Ariane,
>>>
>>> I like the w3schools tutorials, but my focus here is really to provide
>>> courses which brings together material which may already exist. What I've
>>> found most useful in my formal education is not lectures or tuition per se,
>>> but having access to professors who you can go to and say "I know X, Y and Z
>>> - I think I want to get to work in specialism A - what should I learn next?
>>> How is best to learn it?" This saves a lot of time and I think some
>>> unassessed courses, possibly put together by Drupal rockstars, could fill
>>> this gap.
>>>
>>> It wouldn't be as good as having access to a real human being, but it
>>> would provide a framework for people to learn in.
>>>
>>> Maybe Drupalversity is the way to go in terms of the name?
>>>
>>> And yes, Drupalversity would do a different job to that done by the
>>> handbook. In my view, any handbook should be a point of reference for people
>>> who already broadly know what they are doing but want to clarify something.
>>> It shouldn't be used for "from scratch" education.
>>>
>>> The Curriculum and Training group certainly sounds like a good place for
>>> this - will leave it a day or so on this list to see who else "bites", then
>>> transfer to there.
>>>
>>> The way I'm seeing this is that it's a set of course types - 100 courses
>>> for beginners (101 Beginning Drupal, 102 Drupal Modules, 103 Input Filters,
>>> etc), 200 courses for themers, 300 courses for site builders, 400 courses
>>> for module developers, 500 courses for core developers, etc. Each course
>>> type is made up of courses. Each course could be as simple as a textual
>>> narrative with links, like the Drupal Cookbook at
>>> http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/tutorials/beginners-cookbook.
>>> In this sense it is different to tutorials and the handbook, but I would
>>> have links on relevant handbook pages saying "you may like to look at course
>>> 403 in Drupalversity", or similar.
>>>
>>> -J.
>>>
>>> 2009/12/28 Ariane Khachatourians <arianekhachatourians at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>> Hi James -
>>>>
>>>> Are you thinking more specifically like online tutorials, something like
>>>> what they have at http://w3schools.com/ ?
>>>>
>>>> I do have to say, I think using the term "University" is probably not
>>>> going to sit quite right, but you could always make it a play on that like
>>>> UDrupal or Drupalversity or something...
>>>>
>>>> Overall, I think it would be useful to have some kind of more structured
>>>> "courses" online. That would also relieve some pressure off the handbook to
>>>> fill every how-to need that exists.  But the IA for it would really have to
>>>> be well thought out so that it's not just duplicating efforts.
>>>>
>>>> Also, be sure you have a large enough interested group to actually
>>>> sustain that amount of documentation, as it would be quite significant.  I'd
>>>> highly suggest that you post this to the Curriculum and Training g.d.o group
>>>> http://groups.drupal.org/curriculum so that others who would be
>>>> interested in maintaining such a thing will catch wind of it.  (It's one of
>>>> these situations where it's unfortunate that we can't post to the docs group
>>>> and cross-post the discussion there.)
>>>>
>>>> One question to discuss though: would it necessarily be better to have
>>>> this sort of content divided from the rest of the handbook? Or would it be
>>>> useful/feasible for each section to contain tutorials? For instance, the
>>>> theming section to have as a top level section "Tutorials" and then a list
>>>> of various ones.
>>>>
>>>> Interesting ideas...
>>>>
>>>> Ariane
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 8:20 AM, James Benstead <
>>>> james.benstead at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've been errantly discussing the idea of setting up a structured set
>>>>> of Drupal courses on the dev list for a little while. Hopefully my most
>>>>> recent post to their will make sense out of context. Thoughts?
>>>>>
>>>>>  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.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Google Talk/Windows Live Messenger/AIM: james.benstead at gmail.com
>>>>> Yahoo! Messenger/Twitter/IRC (Freenode): jim0203
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>>>>> Skype: jimbenstead
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
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