Drupal in higher ed, a modular approach

I have plots & daydreams….

This room is about packed. Huh.

Sort of a vendor presentation from ImageX Media, their major emphasis is higher ed.

OpenEDU – not a ready-to-go product. (OpenScholar? OpenAcademy?) its features can be added on to other distributions, or can be used as a framework. (Portland State is their flagship client, met one of their devs this morning.) Multi-site: can do in a variety of ways, will come back to that. It can be used ala carte or as a set.

framework/features that “complement marketing initiatives” — “enroll, engage, retain” — ah, so they get that!

(fwiw, looks like OpenAcademy is focused on a department website model, which totally doesn’t work for us.)

“surfing the tension between control and freedom”

maintaining core brand while allowing unique identity of individual units.

multisite with full template customization, or a flexible site-wide theme with consistent elements, configurable options. options they can pick while working on a page.

it sort of looks like the panel layout picker. I like that A LOT.

content sharing options. (we could move all the non-academic users from WP into Drupal) — created a stand-alone syndication server for that sharing. innnnteresting. gets at the “picker” idea that I’ve been worrying over with embedding offering descriptions, news, events, profiles.

single sign-on – integrates with CAS. nice. is that related to the one that Dave works on? can then apply additional roles/permissions and have that spread out among other sites, and also granularity site-to-site.

oh, this is a very talky presentation. getting restless. time for knitting?

is this only available through them, with their services? (as the guy next to me has in his notes: “giant sales pitch…but not a bad one”)

modules they’ve released or are releasing: single sign-on, openedu helper, programs & courses, link block

they’re working on getting a shareable enhanced administration toolset. which is good, because that is what I see as the biggest stumbling block.

alfresco document management — plays nicely with drupal?

probably should not be trying to learn a new technique (knitting) while in a presentation. I just got restless. :\

their syndication setup is based on Services module. innnnteresting. loads images from the syndication server/site, not locally to the client (dept, whatever) site. clever clever clever.

I bet it would be crazy spendy to have them come get us switched over to Drupal. wonder what all our options are.

looking at the afternoon’s sessions. might see what the BoFs are for the first two after lunch; I know what I want for the last one.