By: Heather James
Are you interested in learning Drupal? Are you a Drupal trainer or screencaster? We'd love to hear from you about your own learning experience and how you found your way through Drupal.
Please share your feedback on the "Drupal Skill Sets" concept map. At the top of the page you'll see a list of questions to which we'd like to hear your answers. Next, you'll see the concept map, a visual overview. At the bottom, you can see summaries and definitions of the terms in the map.
He's humble, but I feel it needs to be said, Johan Falk of NodeOne has done a stellar job of mediating a conversation in bike-shed infested waters to tease out a clear, concise concept map of "Drupal skill sets". I'd also like to thank the collaborators who helped define the structure.
Focusing the conversation
The community has been working hard for over a year now to mediate an open curriculum. Earlier attempts perhaps went to quickly to syllabus, lesson plans, learning materials, and teaching approach... After all, curriculum is a tricky word. In some contexts curriculum comprises all of those things.
We learned we cannot bite off more than we can chew. This is a very big ball to roll up, and we need to start small.
We learned, for our purposes, a high level definition is best. We've chosen to define curriculum as "skill sets comprising a course of study". We're de-coupling curriculum from the syllabi, lesson plans and learning materials. This helps focus the effort and lay the foundation for future collaboration.
In Drupal terms, we're defining the "core" at this point. We're standardizing on a shared understanding of the main skill sets for Drupal.
What's next?
There are many exciting ideas for how this structure can be developed and applied. This "core" will allow educators, trainers, screencasters and blog posters to collaborate and communicate in better ways. This concept map will help Drupal learners way-find through their experience and help them see "where do I go next?" This will also create opportunities for both free and commercial materials and training to emerge and grow from this structure.
Even the taxonomy itself will help Drupal learners find the most relevant resources for learning Drupal. Imagine if blogged tutorials were tagged with specific skill sets covered; imagine if a service like Tutr.tv tagged their aggregated library of Drupal videos with the same skill sets. Learners would be able to find the most relevant content more quickly.
We are excited about implementation ideas too. Please check out the background information on the Curriculum and Training group.
