Using Drupal to Transform Education

btopro's picture
Tue, 01/01/2013 - 23:05 -- btopro

Drupal usage in education is exploding. It seems every week I hear about an awesome new project to help bridge technology gaps in education being filled by a Drupal-based solution. I am in the unique position of being a Drupal developed embedded in education with the ability to do two things:

  • Work exclusively on Drupal based projects
  • Contribute back everything that is developed for the ELMS Initiative

In this presentation I'll highlight a technology that I think will transform education and the learning management system (LMS) market known as LTI. LTI stands for learning tools interoperability and it is being increasingly adopted by major LMS vendors. LTI will allow for LMS mash-ups in which you push and pull users between systems without the need for multiple accounts to be remembered. The best part is that this can already be done in Drupal using the LTI Tool Provider module.

While in the future LTI is spec'ed to handle much more then just the user-push, this is the piece I will be focusing on in this presentation. I'll be demonstrating this technology implementation in the context of the Course Information System (CIS) and Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) distributions as well as discuss how we are planning to implement LTI to allow for hands-off Drupal site creation / management.

Even though this talk is marked intermediate, the only real requirement is that you've used an LMS before and hoped it could be more! Some of the implementation concepts will be more for advanced developers, while the goals sought to be achieved are for empowering beginners / requiring no knowledge of Drupal for someone to use it's awesome power. All are welcome!

Track: 
Site Building & Case Studies
Experience level: 
Intermediate
Speaker(s): 
btopro
Session Time Slot(s):