OpenEDU Schools

Description

OpenEDU Schools is a set of modules and features which implement the following content types and relationships:

In each case, OpenEDU provides the following content types that may be associated with (related to) the content types above.

• Blog
• Event
• Discussion Forum
• News
• Webform

When associating content to a school context it will be necessary to use an organic group.  By doing so and utilizing the Syndication and Social Share features, you may distribute any or all content associated with a school context via RSS feed, JSON feed and cross-posting to over 40 social media sites.  Please review the administration section for instructions.

Administration

The first step in configuring OpenEDU is to define the University's organizational structure within the OpenEDU Schools module.  This structure forms the foundation for things such as site organization, site navigation, content governance and content syndication.  OpenEDU offers a number of means of configuring the web ecosystem including:

• Single-themed site.  All schools, departments, programs, etc. will share a common information architecture and a common theme but which may maintain customized content workflows. 
• Multi-themed site.  Each school, department and program may have its own theme (or variation on a primary theme), its own information architecture and its own customized content workflow. 
• Multi-site.  A multi-site implementation deploys a central OpenEDU server to handle service registration and discovery (syndication, notification, API) and distributed servers to deploy unique implementations. 

This section will consider basic configuration of a multi-themed OpenEDU installation:

Creating the OpenEDU School Structure

Schools

After installation, login as administrator and navigate to /admin/openedu/schools.  This path may also be accessed by clicking on OpenEDU | Schools from the main Administrator menu.

Please note, while it is possible to create and edit the OpenEDU schools structure through /admin/content, this approach is not recommended as the author lacks the context provided by the OpenEDU dashboard.

Click Add a School.

Complete the school info tab. 

Click on School Personalization tab.

Set GROUP field to true to establish this school as an Organic Group.  By doing so you will be able to:

• assign a URL to the school (example: schoolofengineering.example.edu or www.example.ca/schoolofengineering)
• select a unique theme (or use the site-wide theme)
• create and maintain custom roles and privileges for content governance, content workflow and content distribution
• create and publish virtually any sort of content grouped with the school (news, blogs, publications, events, etc.).
• Integrate a central identity provider (e.g. LDAP, etc.) to consume and assign roles and permissions within the group

If you want a persistent URL (see https://www.drupal.org/project/purl) to be directed to this school (and to be used as the base url for all content associated with this school), complete the Domain Or Path field.  Assigning a domain assumes that you've properly configured your DNS entries to route traffic to your Drupal server.  Alternatively, you may leave this blank.  The school will be displayed along the URL Path setting assigned. 

You may select a theme to be associated with all of the content within the school group (and which is accessed by the persistent URL you set in the step above). This feature allows for a school to deploy its unique branded theme within the context of a larger cohesive brand.

Departments and Programs

Departments and programs are content types which may be associated with a school.  Each may be used to provide context to the University.  For example, the schoolofengineering.example.edu may operate 5 departments (e.g. molecular engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, bio engineering and student services) with each of these offering a separate repository of content and services.  When creating a department or program, it is necessary to determine whether content created within the OG context of the department or program will be shared with other OG groups.  The Group Info tab allows you to specify which other OG groups may have administer and/or distribute content created within the department or program.  By associating a Department or Program with another group, content may be curated and distributed through the associated group's RSS syndication feed

Example:  associating all departments with the school group will allow the school to present a news and events feed that contains data from all departments and programs so linked

Courses and Sections

A course is a content type describing an individual course.  Course may be delivered through (related to) 0-n schools, departments or programs.   A course may have 0-n sections.  A course section is defined as a course taught at a time by a faculty member.  Content (events, media files, blogs, forums, etc.) may be associated with a course section which may effective create an online community for registered course section attendees.

Before adding courses, you must create the vocabulary for Course Level.  Visit /admin/structure/taxonomy/course_level to do so.