Drupal Classes or Courses at 3rd level/Uni/College, online or face to face?

Hi Heather,

I initiated Drupal classes at the University of Szeged. There is some sparce information available online at http://drupalcenter.hu/

We give alternating intro course and advanced (module development) courses. They are face to face, but in 2 day intense programs with a connected project work.

Ping me if you want to know more.

Check out our new company blog on http://www.pronovix.com/blog

Thank you, Kristoff for your help- and your detailed information via email.

For anyone else following this topic, I am posting some links that are of interest.

Mind, this is only a fraction of what is out there. I'm just posting my own notes. I realise I am looking for courses offered in Universities, ITs or colleges as part of a certificate or degree programme- rather than private training courses.

I only found out today, that there is a 'Curriculum and training' group here on g.d.o.
http://groups.drupal.org/curriculum
University Drupal Course - wiki page on C&T group:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/16650 - Outline of a planned course

List of Drupal training services (started by Amazon)
http://drupal.org/node/313592

Drupal course SZTE fall 2007 (kvantomme's course mentioned above)
http://www.kvantomme.be/content/drupal-course-szte-september-2007

Drupal Courses: forum post- mentions delivery online (e-learning)
http://drupal.org/node/97525

Rutgers has courses which are 2-3 'sessions' long. Not sure what unit a session is.
An Introduction to the Drupal Content Management System(CMS)
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/4
Advanced Drupal Administration
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/7
Intro to Drupal Module Building
http://rate.rutgers.edu/?q=node/9

Drupal Author Level Training - course description at Oregon State University
http://oregonstate.edu/training/course_view.php?crse_id=135
"A slow-paced, interactive Drupal workshop focused on the needs of new Drupal users. Participants will learn about the Drupal environment at the Author level and build a basic web page."

Sandbox example from a Drupal Course at DERI, Galway Ireland
http://drupalcourse.deri.ie/

There were also some classes offered at the University of Michigan -- I tried to find them to respond to this post, but wasn't able to -- more due to lack of time than anything else.

Also, last spring a teacher at a French uni pinged me re a course they were offering. I'll look that up and post back here.

FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education

This is really helpful information, thank you Bill!

I see the course proposed by Paul Resnick:
http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/ at UMICH

Just adding notes to this thread, again, in case anyone else is interested.

Paul Resnick mentioned planning at Unis is slower than the open source world. Which is true, you have to plan way ahead. His comment here:
http://civicactions.com/DrupalBootCamp#comment-41

Quote: "Universities work a little slower than the open source world-- I'm proposing courses for January 2007. And my audience is actually going to include people with less programming background, but knowledge of usability, social psychology, the relationship between organizations and social collections, etc."

In winter 2007, he offered 'SI505: Drupal Boot Camp' as a pre=requisite to a larger course, which seems now to be taken care of in the larger CMS course: http://si631w08.cms.si.umich.edu/

I think it is interesting that the students work with 'real' clients.
http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/courses/winter07/SI631/#clients
http://si631w08.cms.si.umich.edu/?q=node/3 - pitch to prospective clients

This is exactly the kind of information I am looking for as I develop a proposal for a course to be taught at the IT where I lecture.

See http://www.bcit.ca/study/courses/comp1855

This is a technical college, where it is much easier and faster to get new courses approved.

I believe I heard once that the accreditation cycle for universities is 12 - 18 months.

I've always thought that a 3rd year course in "Open Source Development Methodologies", using Drupal / the Drupal community as a core example, would be excellent. Would cover group collaboration, open source licensing theory and practice, distributed version control, etc.

I agree with you- and I like the idea of it fitting into an advanced course- especially as open source development is becoming more and more important.

I think there are many levels Drupal could suit; and many aspects of web development which could touch on Drupal as part of a larger programme. E.g., for those working on for those interested in web design- they could practice theme development for Drupal. For those interested in web development they could practice Module development. For those learning system administration they could learn installation/maintenance/performance tuning of Drupal.

There are also potential outcomes or benefits for the students, for which I have anecdotal evidence - but hoping to find more proof/data.

• Job opportunities;
• Experience working within an open-source community is an essential skill;
• Learning-to-learn skills;
• Diversity of experience, Students need experience with a wide variety of systems.

In some ways, I could see dropping Drupal into existing programmes, or developing a stand-alone set of modules which students would be able to take as electives or as online courses. I think the Rutgers model is close to what I was thinking. Your outline for course sounds excellent and comprehensive- and something to build towards.

These are the kinds of stats I need :)

This is only data from the US - but interesting! Thanks http://twitter.com/bertboerland for the info.

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-Joomla%2C+Drupal%2C+Typo3...

"Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, Dotnetnuke Job Trends"

"This graph displays the percentage of jobs that contain your search terms. Since April 2007, the following has occurred:"

• Joomla jobs increased 504%
• Drupal jobs increased 807%
• Typo3 jobs increased 193%
• Dotnetnuke jobs increased 42%

I'm teaching Drupal in my Writing for the Web course. The class is intended to be an introductory web design class. It's composed mostly of writing majors from my department. So we use Drupal during the first half of the class to build a prototype website so that they can demonstrate information best practices for building a website (then later we move on to HTML/CSS coding).

I like that you use Drupal as the baby-steps to making websites, and then move to 'code' later. I'm curious, do you install Drupal or use a multi-site installation? Or do you allow them blogs in an already constructed site? Or do they install from the ground up?

I like that your writing for the web course includes design/semantic markup, etc. That is important stuff. Are they web design majors, or is development a part of their degree in general... or are they non-majors?

And just a wave, Charlie, I remember you from Kairosnews! (I have the same username there too :)

Rutgers is planning a series of drupal classes, however the links shown above must have been pulled from a search into our sandbox area. We expect the finalized courses to posted in the April-May timeframe. Thanks for mentioning us, and let us know if you have suggestions for the perfect Drupal series.

I've given a few talks about Drupal to staff at Penn State. There are also tenative plans to roll Drupal into the curriculum of a Digital Arts certificate as part of a social networking / digital portfolio class.

Here's the link to the presentation if you'd like to watch what I went over in it: https://elearning.psu.edu/projects/talk-resources

After life calms down a bit I'd love to teach Drupal locally at PSU. Any interest in an online, collaborative teaching effort? I know I took an open source a year ago that was pretty neat w/ distributed instruction and I think Drupal edu people could really take it to the extreme between youtube, riffly, jing, and flickr (amoung the millions of other social networking / media sites we could use to communicate with students).

"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro

http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/

Have you heard about the Drupal Dojo? I think that's pretty similar to the online course you propose. There is currently a team working on dojo 2,0. Are you maybe interested in helping out?

I do want to contribute to Dojo 2,0. I've been keeping my eye on developments there. At the moment, my plate is full with work so my efforts on d.o have been curtailed a bit. I suppose I'm trying to bring the two together :)

I think there could be great opportunities for collaboration. I'm come a bit further in the process since my original post, mainly it has to do with me learning about the workings of the Academic Council in my institution and how to prepare proposals for new courses, or fit into existing courses.

To share a little bit of the context I am working in: I am lecturing in a third-level Institute of Technology here in Ireland (IT Sligo). We have experience delivering online & blended courses in some departments- using a mix of face to face; synchronous (Breeze) & asynchronous (Moodle) learning environments.

I lecturer in Communications, Programming and Webdesign at Level 6 & 7 (not sure what it is called in the US? Associates & Bachelor's level? I am trying to develop either a 5 or 10 credit module (US = course/class?) or a qualification in which Drupal features strongly. I can't develop a "Drupal Modue" per se, but I can make a module on Content Management Systems where students are exposed to several, and Drupal is the focus. I can't make a module on "Installing, Performance Tuning & Testing Drupal" but I could make a course for systems administrators where several systems are tested & Drupal features strongly.

I think there are commercial opportunities for people to get private training in Drupal online. I suppose I'm focusing more on people who want or need to develop not only skills but qualifications as well.

Does that make sense?

One part of the proposal I'm developing is to bring in external lecturers. There is simply not enough expertise in my Institution, and those Drupal developers who I do know in Ireland are so massively busy (hence the need for more Drupallers!). So I will be looking outside my Institution and abroad.

Meanwhile, we, in the Drupal Ireland User Group are working hard on Drupal promotion events in Ireland. (Drupal Dublin meet-up in Nov, and the DrupalCamp in Galway upcoming in April).

So I wrote the intial question to see what existing approaches there are. I suspect I haven't even scratched the surface yet, there must be many more institutions teaching Drupal??

Meanwhile, I'm researching ideas for the learning outcomes of the course, which I want to include skills for contribution and participation in and OSS community. To that end I'll be conducting some research: "Crowd-Sourcing a Syllabus" as I titled my abstract.

One of the data sources will be interviews conducted at a OSS BarCamp; another will be a survey (hopefully some people from Drupal.org can participate) and also Seesmic.com The video interviews as data can also be used as teaching materials later on,. (woot!)
http://www.ossbarcamp.com/speakers/#comment-267

"Perhaps educators have designed training courses which tend to focus too much on tools, IDEs, languages, syntax and techniques. There are however essential social and analytical skills required of a skilled web developer and life-long learner; as well necessary attitudes to act as a good citizen in an open source community, with the required give and take.

My question is: What are those skills and attitudes? In what ways to skillful users of open source software find solution to their problems? In what ways to developers using open-source programming languages continuously improve upon their abilities and knowledge?

"

I'm running two courses related to Drupal.

The first is called "Web Service Development for Business", where business people with no background on coding, learn to create a Drupal module to use it to mashup applications and create an online service. Sadly the course text is lagging behind.

Here is a description of the course: http://www.mixel.be/node/55

I'm also using the Drupal database for SQL exercises in another course, that part of my side is best developed (but not without errors, got to clean it up).

Here are the SQL exercises: http://mosi.vub.ac.be/webdev/?q=node/622