While CMS sites are relatively easy to use once created, I do want to note that initial installation and configuration will be more difficult than merely signing up for the LMS services provided by an institution. Most teachers will need some IT support and server space; otherwise, look for commercial website hosting that provides Cpanel and Fantastico interfaces for easy installment and management of an open source CMS. Once the software is installed, there is a learning curve for configuring and setting up a site. These applications are designed to build a wide range of Internet websites. The teacher as site administrator will have to make many decisions about what features to use and allow.
Nevertheless, the effort is worthwhile. Beyond the pedagogical benefits, once teachers have learned the basics, they can use the open source CMS to build a variety of Internet sites. Consider the following list of Drupal-powered websites:
- department and program websites (ICaP at Purdue, Purdue Professional Writing)
- professional organizations (Digital WPA)
- individual weblogs (CultureCat, The Where Project)
- community weblogs (Kairosnews, Interversity)
- institutional weblog initiatives (weblogs@upei)
- project sites and other academic communities (Purdue's OSDDP, Academic Commons)
As for me, after the spring of 2003 I switched from PostNuke to Drupal. Since then, I have assisted numerous other teachers in using Drupal in the classroom. The feedback from these teachers has been overwhelmingly in the positive. At the end of the fall of 2004, I conducted a workshop on Drupal for first semester teachers who had been using Blogger weblogs with their students. They reacted with delight at being introduced to weblogs on steroids. Because open source CMS's allow us to think out of the box, I've seen teachers do some interesting pedagogical things not likely to happen with proprietary LMS's. A teacher at Purdue who was teaching both first year writing and professional writing combined her two classes into one site. She found that the older, professional writing students took on a mentor role with the first year students, resulting in a unique, dynamic community of writers. Teachers who have previously maintained a static HTML webspace enjoy the ease with which pages can be quickly created or updated through the browser. And like me, after only one semester of teaching with an open source CMS, those with previous experience teaching with Blackboard and WebCT felt like they could never go back.
Learn more about open source content management systems:
- OpenSourceCMS has many demos available for open source weblogs, wikis, discussion board, LMS, and CMS applications.
- CMS Matrix provides a comparison tool for many different open source and proprietary CMS's.
- Those interested in or with questions about using Drupal in education should visit and post their thoughts to DrupalEd.