Drupal, at its base installation, is a blank slate, a content management system that can be used to create a large variety of different websites. Thus, Drupal is preconfigured for creating a community site suitable for the online writing classroom, a highly configurable platform that better facilitiates community interaction and collaboration than is possible with proprietary course management systems. Educators will find that this distribution eliminates 95% of the work involved in setting up a Drupal site for a writing class, as well as containing some documentation materials which will reduce the learning curve for site administration.
It is not possible within the scope of this text to explain all Drupal configurations, modules, and features. Instead, the Drupal Site Configuration Guide is intended as a large FAQ that will guide you through some basic issues and answer some specific configuration questions which should get you started with your class site. As you become more comfortable with Drupal, it is certainly worthwhile to learn more -- so that you can take advantage of the flexibility and wide range of configuration options and additional features.
For much more detailed information on Drupal configuration and usage, consult the administration help section of this site and the extensive Drupal Handbook at drupal.org. Also be sure to read the help material available at the top of many of the administration pages.
This site configuration is built on Drupal 4.6 Before using this site, there are a few things you should know about and take care of firstGetting Started with This Installation
Drupal provides a few themes with the core installation and other contributed themes are available for download from Drupal, many of which are included with this distribution.
Under themes in the administration area, administrators can choose which themes to enable and designate the default theme for the site. If multiple themes are enabled, users will be able to choose their default them in their account section.
The themes section also offers various configuration options which affect the display and navigation for the site. Administrators can select these globally for all themes, or customize them on a per theme basis. For example, the global settings page contains the following options:
NOTE: Some Drupal themes are intended to be 2 column; others 3 column or 2. Some are fixed width; some flexible. Some work better in some older browsers than others. Thus, be sure to check each theme that you enable for your users to make certain that it is displaying correctly.
As evidenced by the range of themes in the example education sites and these other samples below, it's possible using HTML and CSS to greatly style your Drupal site using the extensive class and id naming conventions for various content components.
Modifying an existing theme
The easiest way to create a theme is to modify an existing one. To begin modifying an existing theme, create a new folder in your themes/ directory. Find the folder in the themes/ directory for the theme you wish to modify. Copy the contents of the folder into your new folder.
If you visit the create content link you'll see multiple content types configured for your use. In Drupal terms, each page in this guide, story or page is considered a basic content type known as a node. Thus, each of the various content types are particular types of nodes with specific functions and display characteristics:
See also the administration help in the Drupal handbook for nodes, stories, books, forums, blogs and pages
Because nodes are all basically very similar, much of the input interface is the same for stories, books, or pages chosen through the create content menu. For the purpose of introducing how to post on a Drupal site, this discussion will use Submit story as the example and cover many, but not all, of the choices offered through the interface.
Administrators can provide additional or change existing information for conztent posting:
The default home page for every Drupal site is the location where Stories appear when posted. However, a site administrator can choose to make any other section or page on the site the default home page.
To change the default, go to the general settings page. In the Default front page text field, change "node" to "blog"--for the Blogs page--or to "forum"--for the Forums. In fact, any page on the site, even a static page, can be made the home page by changing the default in this field.
Many content managementy systems and weblog application provide a means to categorize content. However, Drupal's taxonomy system allows the site administrator to create multiple sets of categories which can be applied to any, selective, or all node types.
Using terminology from information science, a category set is called a vocabulary, and an individual category within a vocabulary, a term.
For additional information about Drupal's taxonomy system, read more about it in the Drupal handbook.
Creating a vocabulary
In the categories configuration section of Drupal administration, select the add vocabulary tab. Then supply a
Creating a term
Once a vocabulary has been created, the administrator can add a nearly unlimited number of categories. Beside the vocabulary listing In the categories configuration section of Drupal administration, select the add term link. Note that the description and synonyms fields are optional.
Use the category block
Drupal provides a block in the block configuration area which will provide a listing of all categories with links to a display list of all nodes in that category.
The Drupal handbook on drupal.org was been created using the Drupal wiki-like collaborative book The collaborative book feature is well suited for creating structured multi-page hypertexts such as a site resource guides, manual, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and the like, allowing you to have chapters, sections, etc. Unlike a wiki, as each new page is added to a collaborative book, it is placed into a menu structure much like a table of contents. Book pages have navigation elements for moving through the text, such as the previous, up, and next elements visible at the bottom of each book page.
Other collaborative book featuresFlexinode allows site administrators to create new node types in addition to the stories, blogs, polls, forums, etc. already available from Drupal. Once created, the administrator can configure the new node types using the content types cofiguration. The content types administration section allows the administrator to create new content types and add various field types to the content type definition.
Uses of flexinode: to create a wiki in a Drupal site, create a new content type "wiki" with a text area. Then enable the freelinking module which will allow users to create CamelCase titles which automatically generate new pages. Then set the "Default for new nodes" to the new content type you have created.
Drupal has a permission system which places users into roles/groups of users. A visitor who is not logged in is an anonymous user and a newly registered user is an authenticated user. An additional role has been added to this installation, an administrator which is given full access on the site. In the original account setup, the root super user account which was created first is not affected by the Drupal permission system.
Some configuration tips:
Note: The default registration permission settings on this site allows anyone to register. Before sharing this site publicly with others and immediately after having students register for the site in class, you should change this setting to at least require administrator moderation of new accounts.
Populating the course: Registration
Assuming that your site is public on the Internet, you probably don't want to leave registration permanently open for anyone on the Internet to join your course site. Leave registration open for the first day of class; then change the user registration setting to "Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required." This will allos students joining the course during the add/drop to register with your approval.
Recommended: if your site is public on the Internet, for privacy reasons, encourage students to use a screen name instead of their full names. This little bit of anonymity still puts the writing/writer at risk since the writing is public, but not the student.
Student personal information
Using the profile module, you can require students to provide information about themselves during registration or make some profile information optional. The module will also let you set some fields to " " allowing only the student and a teacher/administrator to see the content of that field on the user's account page. This feature is useful for having students provide personal information such as email address, full name, etc., so that it is not public to other students or the rest of the Internet.
Drupal page layout is very similar to many other websites: a header, a footer, a main content column down the center, and block columns down the side with links and other information. Blocks, then, are the small boxes of links, etc., you see in the left and/or right hand columns.
As an administrator, you can choose which blocks appear in the left or right and in what order (using weights) in the blocks configuration section. You can create and edit custom blocks such as the Sample Block which uses HTML. Each individual block can also be configured to show only on specific pages for for specific content types. There are also some other blocks included with the distribution which have not been enabled. Try them.
Note: Do not disable the Navigation Block or the User Login Block unless you are certain you know what you are doing. Without these, you'll have great difficulty logging on the site and administering it.
There are a few ways to create links for site navigation and to feature links to other Internet sites:
NOTE: Sometimes, it's not obvious as to the URL for a module's main page. Drupal builds module main page URL's from the module name as they are listed on the modules configuration page. For example, notice how the name is "forum"; the URL for the main forum page would then be http://example.com/forum.
Drupal provides a number of ways to find out who has been visiting the site and who has been posting content:
There are quite a few other modules listed on the module configuration page included with this distribution which have not so far been mentioned. Some are running; others are turned off. You can also load other contributed modules by downloading them from drupal.org and installing them yourself. Make sure that they are for Drupal 4.6 or they may not work.
Always remember that whenever you enable a module that has been turned off, you may need to set any permissions the module might have associated with it in order for users to have access to the module.
Once you've created a new module, to access it follow your site name with a slash and the name of the module listed in the module configuration area. For examples, look at the URL's present in the navigation header.
Consult the Modules and features section of the handbook for additional overviews of core and contributed modules.
Professional Organizations
Project Sites
Personal Weblogs
Community Weblogs
Department Websites
Institutional Weblog Projects
K-12
Class Sites
When implementing modules, blocks, and navigationn menus, consider usability and community formation.
Smaller/fewer community spaces may be better than more/larger ones
For example, consider 50 people in a local pub versus 50 people in a 10,000 sq. ft. night club. The pub with 50 people will like be the kind of inviting place which seems "happening," encouraging additional social interaction. The large night club with "only" 50 people seems empty, barren. Similarly, to better facilitate community formation in the classroom, enable fewer virtual spaces as opposed to many so that there is more visible interaction/discourse. It will be better to build your course around combining the story & blog or story & forum modules, or even only one of those if the amount of interaction online will be minimal, but typically not all three. Build a house just right for the number of occupants, not a mansion that would hold 10 times more.
So many modules--choose wisely
Because Drupal provides so many different modules, the initial temptation is to enable a majority of them imagining that they may be useful for the course at some point. However, the more modules, the more choices that students have to make in navigating the site and choosing what to do. Enable the modules that you want your students to have access to on a regular basis; you can always turn on others later in the course. . For example, if you don't plan on using the chat module until week 4 of your class, enable it then after students have gotten familiar with the features they need to use on a regular basis.
This is not Yahoo
Beware the tempation to create a Yahoo portal style configuration with tons of sidebar blocks and different sets of navigation elements since it can be difficult for the user to process that much information. Too many things vying for attention may often result in the more important being missed.
As mentioned elsewhere, it might be better not to use all three of these content modules on your Drupal class site. Regardless, for teachers using Drupal for the first time, it can be difficult to decide how to choose which modules to use and how to effectively use them.
Stories
Stories are generally used on the default home page of your Drupal site. Like the announcements page in Blackboard, teachers can use this to post announcments and information about assignments.
Students can also be given permissions to post to the front page; indeed, even permission to edit their posts after they have been published. Thus, the story module can be used as a group weblog where everyone from the class can post. Stories are useful for sharing group postings about projects or assigning a few individuals or a group each week to post a response for general discussion.
But consider the extent to which students will be required to post. For very active sites where all students are blogging new posts each week, the home page can become overwhelmed with constantly new content. Realize also that any other node type--blogs, forums, polls, etc.--can also be promoted to the front page. For very active blogging classes, it may be better to have students use the blog module, post to their individual blogs, and then selectively promote "feature blogs" that the teacher wishes to highlight for the rest of the class.
Forums
Drupal has traditional discusion forums where the teacher can create forum areas where students can post new topics, or the teacher can choose to be the only who may start new topic threads but allow students to reply.
Forums topic threads, like any other node type, can selectively be promoted to the front page, allowing the teacher to feature certain threads. Or in a class which uses forums exclusively, the teacher can choose to make the main forum page the default front page for the site.
In classes in which forums are used extensively, the teacher may want to enable the " New forum topics" or "Active forum topics" sidebar blocks.
Blogs
If the blog module is enabled and students are given permissions to use it, each student will automatically be able to keep their own blog space. This is a little different than forums since blogs are organized by user, not by topic (forum areas) created by the teacher. Blogs can be used for sharing drafts and receiving feedback (via the comment boards), keep a journal, post reading responses, etc. In fact, consider this as an online journal where everything can easily be shared with the class and the teacher can follow a student's progress in real time; with a print journal, the teacher would have to collect the journal in order to read it, and generally the practice is that the audience is that of the teacher and the writer, not the entire class.
In classes in which blogs are used extensively, the teacher may want to enable the "Recent blog posts " sidebar block.
Stories & blogs vs stories & forums
A good combination is to use stories & forums or stories & blogs together. As mentioned above, the teacher can then use stories for announcements and promote other items such as polls, interesting blog posts/forum threads that students have written, assignments from the collaborative book course materials, etc. As to whether to use blogs or forums in conjunction with stories, the best way to decide is if, as mentioned above, teachers want most student content organized by
NOTE: Teachers who
may find it easier to use stories and forums first rather than a completely blog-based approach. This will allow the teacher to become familiar with Drupal before also having to adapt their pedagogy to blogging.
Some other items which can be promoted to the front page
As mentioned above, the teacher can promote any post on the site to the home page (simply edit and choose the "promoted to front page" box). Important posts can also be made "sticky," keeping them at the top of the display until the "sticky" setting is changed.
Consider these uses
My experience teaching with Drupal (4.5) began this past semester with the course webite for my First-Year Writing Seminar at Boston College, but I've been using Drupal in a variety of contexts for the past year and a half or so. After investigating numerous CMS's, I settled on Drupal because it was flexible enough to handle many different projects, it had an active developer community (which included Rhet/Comp folks), and (more particularly) it had a WYSIWIG editor that worked on both a Mac and PC (the only one I could find at the time).
I began using Drupal after having designed course websites using Dreamweaver, WebCT, and another open source CMS called SiteFrame. It wasn't until Drupal came along that I felt I had a tool that allowed me experience course design and site design as an integrated whole. This time I wasn't shoe-horning my pedagogy into WebCT's mold or creating a monstrous hybrid out of various technologies. Instead, I was able to consider how the pedagogy for the course could be embedded more directly in the usability of the site.
To this end, I used such Drupal modules as books (for the syllabus and resources pages), file upload (for attaching readings), events (for the course schedule), comments (for peer workshopping), and members (for the classmate list and contact page). However, it was the flexinode module and Drupal categories system (in conjunction with taxonomy_access and taxonomy_dhtml) that really provided the chance to customize my site in ways that I previously could not have done.
For instance, I created node types that reflected the four assignment types for the course:
Included with each node type were different categories that enabled content to show up in relevant sections of the site. Each entry in the course schedule provided a link the appropriate node type so it was clear how students should submit their assignments.
By customizing the mechanisms of content creation using flexinode and categories, I was forced to think hard about how my site design reinforced the overall design of the course, and I hoped the site would:
Looking back at the course, I now recogize problems with the pedagogy behind its design, but at least now I can't blame it as easily on the technology. However, I consider it a tribute to Drupal that I now can criticize my course site and my pedagogy as a single entity rather than as disparate elements.
By Jim Kalmbach
I have used Drupal in my web authoring class as a way to create a reflective space that frames the classroom http://eng351.cas.ilstu.edu/. My experience has been that students can get so engrossed in created web pages that they get trapped in a positive feed back loop. We need a reflective space to help us step away from the process.
One of my favorite features was setting the site to open to the blog page which aggregates everyone's work so that the students' most recent contributions were always in our faces. This worked greate when students needed to post discussion questions or urls.
Features that I also value in Drupal are the ability to create custom pages: the 'Student Webs' and 'Peer Groups' links are both custom pages that I tweaked throughout the semester and the custom blocks on the right of each page ("Surprize me!" and "408 Open hours") to keep these elements always visible.
I also set up a members page to share class information with students only. I used this page a good deal to locate student work.Our version of Drupal has a similar members page. Mine was more useful though because I included a recent posts link so I could just to right to students' work.
Finally, I used an older version of Drupal (4.2, we are using 4.6), one of the neatest new features of 4.6 is that students can now select their own theme for their personal blog. I am hoping this feature will help students take more ownership of their blog space, but I know that the real challenge will be to provide a clearer purpose for blogging in the class.
I have been using various versions of Drupal for the last two years, give or take a little bit. I use it just about every quarter to teach fyc and depending upon my teaching assignment, I also use it to teach various literature classes and occasionally an advanced composition class. Before coming to Drupal, I had been using WebCT and Blackboard and had also fiddled with some other Content Management Systems (CMS). No matter the class I teach, I provide the syllabus using the book function. Each compoenent of the syllabus is a page within the book. Here is my most recent example, one that needs revising should my summer class get enough students (If not, I'll be revising it for the fall, but not much, more like tweaking it): FYC Syllabus.
Along with using the book function, students post and respond to their writings in individual blogs. In the literature class (both online and f2f), students post journals to demonstrate that they have done the reading assignment. Peers are also expected to post responses and to carry on a discussion regarding the readings. This provides not just evidence that students have done the assigned readings, but it also alerts me to what needs discussing or explaining during class time.
In the FYC class, blogs are also used for reading journals and responding to essay drafts as well as posting snippets of their essay during various stages of the writing process. Often when discussing a topic, we will begin our discussion in a chat of some sort (usually a moo that can be logged). From there, students are asked to focus on specific ideas/topics raised in the chat and expound upon them in a way that addresses the assignment. After posting their thoughts, they read and respond to classmates thoughts. The next step may be looking at a specific element of the assignment, such as a thesis statement, and giving and getting feedback. As the instructor, I respond to as much of this student writing as possible, often during class time.
Finally, Stories are used to provide homepage directions for students. These could be special directions and/or advice for an assignment, a reminder of something that is due, or just about anything that may have either been neglected during class time or in need of elucidation.
Okay, so not finally. (Never believe me when you see me write "and finally," at least not the first time.) While I am able to put all of my course work on line in a low bandwidth intensive format and make it available to students, and I get to customize it as much as I care to and face few, if any, constrictions as to how the course will be constructed, I also get to control the pedagogy. This may appear to be no different than putting up static webpages, as much of the material does stay static over the course of a class. What makes drupal different is that I am able to clearly and concisely embed materials while still providing a clearly discernible and functional nagivation system, providing easy access to all course materials and easy access to interaction (motivating students to do it is something else again). What's most important is the way drupal enables the sort of collaboration I want to happen in my classes, collaboration aided and enhanced by technology. If I get students to do just one thing with technology, it's learn to collaborate with it, to engage each other through the machine, to make the machine and the technology work for them.
Overview of installation steps
Installing additional themes and contributed modules
Members of the Drupal community have provided additional modules and themes which can be installed in your Drupal site.
Additional Resources
See Getting Started for more information on Drupal webhosting, installation, setup, and upgrading.
The text of this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (2.0).