Proof of Concept

I already have a success story of sorts. I have 'drupalized' a set of exercises designed to accompany a textbook. Originally, these exercises were served up as a self-help option, but as is so often the case, students simply failed to take advantage of these services. Deployed within Drupal, it is easy to log student use and award points. This has made a dramatic, astonishing difference. Not only do students visit the pages, they perform the activities over and over. We have had a host of minor technical glitches in this first semester use of the Drupal version of the site, but overall the site has been a stunning success, and I expect it to do better and better as we learn from our mistakes and get the kinks worked out.

The take home message from this little experiment is depressing, but good to know. Providing great online eLearning resources for students is pretty darned ineffective unless you can force them to use those resources. Drupal provides a way to enforce usage. It is not the only way, and not a particularly easy way, as compared against the better LMS's, but Drupal is a good choice under any of the following conditions:

• You have no access to an LMS
• Your LMS does not track page use
• Your content generates data of a type that can not be stored in your LMS's database.