Something I've been thinking about since DCDC. There was a discussion there about training materials and the urgent need that so many have for this. Many folks discussed their approach.

However, my thought is we allow folks to create projects for modules, themes, install profiles, etc. Why not courses? Source code control should work decently for course documents (probably better than for themes).

Cons:
Another (perhaps not well used) project type
CVS may scare some folks away (same as for themes really)

Pro:
Source code control would make it simpler for someone to publish a course to solve a certain type of training problem, while allow others to collaborate through updates and patches. But having one (or finite) maintainers allows for the "vision" of the course to be enforced and developed in a similar way that having module owners does.

One thought or question would be "why not just put that in docs"? Well, some have tried to put material that is more "course like" there. It just isn't a good fit. Courses are qualitatively different from documentation. And documentation is totally open so the "course developer" had no way to maintain control of their vision of the course and how it should be delivered.

I'm tagging this issue as documentation as I think the same folks who are interested in documentation efforts may also be interested in this idea.

Comments

bekasu’s picture

I agree with the concept of providing some type of curricula.

My thought was to provide a 16 week course that an instructor could use within their classroom. . 1) provides educational credit and 2) exposes Drupal to more folks.

Getting folks hooked early, could provide a stable resource of future contributors.

I was thinking of jr high, high school or college level courses rather than business, but i can see the need in business as well

winston’s picture

Thanks bekasu,

I definitely don't mean to limit this. Part of course development is to define the audience, pre-requisites, requirements for delivery, mode (if applicable), etc.

The most important part is to structure the material so the progression of topics is logical and aids the learning process.

In my experience, courses developed through the vision of one or two people generally come out much better than courses developed "by committee" which is why a project type is better than open documentation for formal course material.

Over time, and just as with module development, you would get competing and overlapping courses. And again, just as with modules, this would force a discussion of which approach(es) work best. It would also provide a basis for structured collaboration.

bekasu’s picture

I'm also thinking we should provide test questions for the curricula... doesn't have to be too onerous. I just want to remove objections to 'teaching' drupal. Make it easy for the folks to accept into their instructional efforts.

The module idea appeals to me.. I also find the documentation approach to be inappropriate for this initiative.

Has there been any discussion of Drupal accreditation testing... Drupal certified?

winston’s picture

There are discussions going on about Drupal accreditation testing and associated training. Acquia (and others I'm sure) are interested in this topic I believe.

Part of the reason for my proposal is in fact to bring course development into the open source of the drupal project rather than have it be something that private companies make their domain.

Of course there would be nothing to stop private companies from doing whatever they want - just as they currently develop private for pay themes and custom module development for their clients. However, an open source courseware alternative would be a boon to non-profits, educational organizations, drupal camp organizers/participants, etc.

bramface’s picture

I also see a course repository as a subdomain of DO.

The more local skilled Drupalers we have, the more evangelists we have, and the stronger the Drupal platform becomes...so it is in everyone's interest to make it easy to run local, affordable trainings. Every community college (or other college) should have a Drupal Club running weekly trainings and be able to start from square 1.

Organizers of training events and presenters of courses at those events should be paid for their prep and time, but there need to be much easier, lower cost one-day-training models than Do It With Drupal. If the courses themselves were open source and available, that would support such events.

Peter (Winston) and I ran courses at DrupalCampNYC 7 last weekend where students downloaded files and set up a development environment in preparation, then ran through steps together in sync. Peter called his an "Installfest" and I called mine a "Meatspace Kata" (http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-kata). He did vastly more preparation and had a much wider audience (his was "Drupal intro" and mine was "Making Features") but both of us got positive feedback.

I think having a repository of courses on DO would help anyone do this sort of thing.

One vision: I imagine college students in some far-flung places forming Drupal Clubs around the repository. Each week the club members prepare by downloading the materials for a given course (so there needs to be files and an outline - I threw something together at http://default.gamefacewebdesign.com/node/8). Then the presenter runs through the actual steps (http://default.gamefacewebdesign.com/node/12). And then the students post comments to the course about ways to improve it, and the course maintainer improves it.

Obviously http://drupaldojo.com/ was a start for this kind of repository, but it makes sense to give these materials the credibility of peer review and the authority of the DA by putting them on DO with a version control system.

In the meantime, I'm exploring with Gus over at http://drupalkata.com/ what such a repository might look like, and we'll likely throw something up as an example repository with version control at some point not too far from now, defining what the course content type and associated media files might be.

-Bram

gusaus’s picture

This is a good idea. As Bram mentions we could start assembling this offsite to establish a proof of concept. Winston already has some issues on http://drupalkata.com/ and we can configure the site to accommodate. If it proves to be valuable to the community, d.o. implementation would be even more likely.

arianek’s picture

I realize this is completely the opposite of the sort of comment you will find useful, but I have to ask (I'm assuming that a course is like a tutorial or set of tutorials?) if you can elaborate some more on why this shouldn't be part of the main documentation project? Source control isn't exactly necessary for this sort of thing (you always have access to revisions), so I'm not sure I see a strong rationale for splitting it out. On one hand it may be easier to organize having course "maintainers" but on the other hand, that may discourage having more collaboration on them.

This came to my attention from a recent Doc Team mailing list thread (see http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2009-December/006790.html) as someone else has interest in setting up tutorials/courses and was looking for input. You may want to get in touch.

light-blue’s picture

Arianek has a good point. Why not "modularize" courseware? In other words, why not complement existing documentation with something like a "tutorial" or "class" or "quiz"? Given enough of those, courseware developers could tailor-make "courses" or "classes" comprised of documentation and its related tutorials.

jim0203’s picture

I was the guy who posted what Ariane's linked to in #7. We've continued the discussion on the docs list and I'll be moving it to g.d.o shortly (Curriculum group). What I'm looking to do is described on the docs list. Ping me if you're interested in the project.

winston’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed

Responding (belatedly) to #7 and #8. Please note that I decided to go ahead and start this project somewhere else. Please see http://gitorious.org/drupal-open-curriculum/pages/Home and http://gitorious.org/drupal-open-curriculum.

Responding to Arianek "why this shouldn't be part of the main documentation project"...

Simply put curriculum is not the same as documentation. Please note the large number of published books on Drupal. Also note the now many companies offering Drupal training. You could just as easily ask them - "why write books and courses instead of just writing whatever you were going to write on the documentation page?". The answer is books != courses != documentation.

I see a course as a progressive learning document designed to educate a student from a specific "point A" of knowledge to a specific "point B". Usually designed for in person deliver, may also be designed for self study. Best when designed by one person or a very small group of individuals with a specific vision. I honestly see course development as much more like module development. Just as a module needs a maintainer to enforce what functionality it will have and which commits will be accepted, so too a course needs a maintainer to maintain adherence to the goal and purpose of the course and decide which improvements to the course maintain fidelity to those goals.

Responding to light-blue "Why not 'modularize' courseware?"...

To be honest I think this concepts of developing bits and pieces and then assembling them like LEGO to make a course is a failed strategy in course design. Personally I don't think it works. Many may disagree with that. I really don't care to argue the point in detail. My opinion is based on 20 years specifically in the technical training industry creating courses, delivering training, and managing training so it is unlikely to change.

To finish this out, when I found out Drupal was moving to git I decided to drop this issue for now and start a Drupal Open Curriculum project on Git somewhere else (I chose Gitorious). So that is where I am right now (see above links). I still think this idea has merit, however I'm marking it "postponed" as I don't think it is worth taking up again till after the Git migration occurs.

mlncn’s picture

Status: Postponed » Active
scottrigby’s picture

Crossposting a more recent issue in contrib #1513530: Integrate Course API into Drupal Learn distro

dashohoxha’s picture

I have started a project for creating and editing simple DocBook documents on Drupal:
https://drupal.org/node/2069447
I think that it may be useful for developing course materials.

mlhess’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Fixed

Sounds like this is taken care of elsewhere.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.