Learning with CMSs

Working on the web is a connected multi-disciplinary profession, though traditional curricula in formal education compartmentalize knowledge and give students little exposure to professional practice.

Open source content management systems and their communities such as Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress provide an ideal situation for learning. Educators are finding ways to integrate these communities into their curricula, and students are getting exposure to values and practices essential for their future careers. How are they doing it? What’s going on in these communities?

What are we gonna do? We’ll start by looking at the open source projects & a comparison of the code and their communities. Then we’ll see examples of educators using these in their curricula, and share practices ourselves.

Who is this for? Educators new to and experienced in this area; web developers from these communities interested in learning.

Why? The outcomes from this workshop will help educators step into these communities and include open source in their courses. As well, we can communicate back to the communities, and find ways to improve the in-roads.

Let’s collaborate to identify:

• Models and in-roads for new comers.
  
• What learning outcomes arise from participating in open source CMS projects?
• What assessment methods are appropriate?
• What people are doing to help learners within those communities?