This is to announce the redevelopment of phpEdu, a portal platform for educational instituitions, as a set of Drupal modules.
A couple of years ago, I started working on a CMS solution for managing educational isntituitions especially tertiary ones (colleges, polytechnics, universities etc). The result was a registered project on Sourceforge and a pre-alpha version.
However, for different reasons, development work slowed down in spite of interest in the application from different places. Due to the current situation in the CMS market, especially in the Open Source sector, a rethink of the entire phpEdu project became necessary. A solid CMS foundation was needed and Drupal was the perfect choice.
The aim of the project remains the same - to develop an Open Source application with the following key features/functionalities among others:
- admission
- course registration
- timetable
- attendance
- assignments
- quiz (practice, test and exam modes)
- academic records
- fees
- online courses
You may follow development work here: http://www.phpedu.org.uk
Comments
Great news
Hi, this is really welcome news. I've maintained that Drupal would do really well in a university environment (I'm developing a few academic website http://www.dominiklukes.net/drupalcon06) so it is good news that more people are interested in it from that environment. However, there seems to be quite a bit of fragmentation on the part of the education community. There are at least, 3 places I can think of, and in all of them the discussion tends to happen in spurts and then stall. There is:
* http://www.drupaed.org (for education in general)
* http://groups.drupal.org/drupaled-distro (for a distribution for education
* http://groups.drupal.org/language-learning-communities (for language learning)
There are also a few modules for testing and quizzes and a dictionary builder but none of them are too advanced. Nothing that would directly relate to the management of courses, etc. Hopefully, one day we'll achieve critical mass.
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com
Of fragments and spurts ...
Yes, you're absoloutelty correct. However, phpEdu has been in the works for some years now. It's only now it's being Drupalised.
phpEdu update - 1
Yes, work is progressing on the first beta release of phpEdu package for Drupal. Check out the recent updates to the demo/dev website: http://www.phpedu.org.uk. If you'd like to play around a bit (the Quizzes are highly recommended - multichoice, matching and gapfilling question types are supported), log in with the following details:
Username: test
Password: test
Ta!
This looks very interesting.
This looks very interesting. However, I couldn't find any quizzes to try - I tried several combinations and nothing. Could you recommend some that have data? Thanks.
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com
It worked for me. Just
It worked for me. Just leave the Level and Academic level as and fill in the bottom 2 options.
phpEdu Quiz
Ah, yes! Southpaw is very correct. For current testing purposes, leave the Academic programme and Level select options as . At the moment there aren't too many questions so filtering based on those two options won't work. But you can play around with the Question type and Total questions options.
Ta!
Great but...
Hi, I tried out the quiz and it worked just fine. What module are you using?
However, I'm mostly interested in exercises embedded in a running text or even essay questions. Years ago, I had software developed for this which I recently open sourced on http://tuit.glottalstart.com. I mention this not to toot my own horn but hoping somebody would take it and make some of the functionality work under Drupal.
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com
phpEdu Quiz
For quizzes: Quiz, Multichoice, Matching and Gapfilling modules.
Both the quiz and multichoice modules are more or less the same as the ones available for download on the modules page but modified to support practice and test modes among other features. Gapfilling and matching modules are being developed as part of phpEdu. More question types are in the works.
Just tried to check it out,
Just tried to check it out, but couldn't find a place to login, nor the quizzes...
Log in
The login box is on the right hand side - it's the default Garland theme. Once you've logged in (username: test password: test), the Quizzes link appears on the navigation menu.
Sweet!
This is great! Tried it out and I'm liking the looks of everything so far.
When do you plan on releasing the source? I have a client involved in the education sector, and have been looking for related drupal projects that would benefit them. I was considering starting a new project, but now that you've come up with this, why rewrite? In any case, I would certainly love to (and have reason to) develop for this.
Keep it up!
Also, I'm curious as to how
Also, I'm curious as to how you are structuring it. You mentioned earlier that it will be a package (I imagine a module) for Drupal? Is that right?
If so, perhaps it may make sense to add it to the Drupal module repository? That way you can open the source up to developers and take advantage of versioning, etc. Just a suggestion.
The plan ...
The plan is to release it as, shall we say, a Drupal distro and there's going to be a number of modules in the phpEdu package. Also, the idea is to have the first generally available beta version by June but the way things are going, it's likely to be a month or so earlier. Yes, other developers will be welcomed to jump in and do what the Open Source community is excellent at doing:-)
Check out the site in the next few days for the update to the demo site.
distro questions
Are you building it over 4.x or 5.x?
It's hard to comment without studying the architecture, so bear that in mind, and I apologize if I seem a little forward in asking the following questions when you haven't even released the beta :)
What do you feel the advantages of releasing as a distro, as opposed to a phpedu module, are? Wouldn't it be somewhat limiting to the end user, who would be stuck with the Drupal version of the current distro? Also, you would be responsible to maintain/update the entire distro.
Also, releasing it as a distro containing several modules would likely encourage people to take those modules and branch them off, creating both redundancy, and a disinclination to contribute back to their development, don't you think?
Anyway, not really criticizing, just curious as to your thoughts and motivations.
Very legitimate concerns
My use of the word 'distro' might not be very appropriate. phpEdu is being built over Drupal 5.x and the core modules are not modified so upgrading whenever new versions of Drupal come out should be straightforward. The point is, avoid hacking core or at the very least, do it in such a way that won't make upgrading your sites a big hassle. People are welcomed to just grab the phpEdu modules and use with their Drupal 5.x installation.
At the moment, there's an edu module, then quiz, with a modified version of the currently available multichoice module but I've added support for practice exercises. Also, there's gapfilling and matching. The other modules in the edu directory are dependent on it. I sincerely hope, developers will give something back to phpEdu. For one, you can't stop people from doing what they like with your code anyway - it's Open Source we're talking about. The Drupal community's great so no worries along that line.
This is a huge venture, and going with Drupal seems the logical way for success. For one, the core code's very modular and cleaner, so development's faster, and you've got the best of both worlds - the best CMS around and the 'best' educational management application you can find.
This is looking very interesting
We were just about to start looking at some options for this type of functionality -- what exactly does the edu module track? How much of this uses config options with various contrib modules, and how much of this is custom code you have developed?
Very nice work --
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Contrib modules ...
Yes, phpEdu uses a number of contrib modules such as views, activeselect, organic groups and private messaging. Other functionalities especailly those relating to educational management (course registration, e-learning/quiz, admission, assignments etc) are being developed from scratch (or better still, being ported from the old phpEdu).
phpEdu update
I've just updated the phpEdu development website and things are moving pretty fast towards a beta release within the next few weeks.
Modules featured include:
Coming soon:
Feel free to play around. Login as a student with any of these usernames - bambam, bebcik or becks. For lecturers, try Victor, lighter or acqua. All users have the same password: test
It's all at http://www.phpedu.org.uk