This document discusses how Drupal can help address challenges facing higher education institutions. It provides 7 case studies of universities that have implemented Drupal solutions to address problems related to finances, competition, accessibility, globalization, regulations, and technology. The case studies describe the universities, problems addressed, Drupal solutions implemented, and lessons learned. Overall, the document argues that Drupal can help higher ed institutions with finances, competition, accessibility, being globally focused, standardization, and evolving technologies. It provides examples of Drupal implementations for content management, flagship websites, intranets, learning management systems, and more.

1. Drupal and Higher Education
David Diers | Developer
Four Kitchens, LLC
@beautyhammer

2. Today on Drupal and Higher Ed
Challenges: Higher Education
Drupal Can Help: Applied solutions, 7 case studies
Drupal Can Help: Resources and Lessons learned

3. Winter is coming (for higher ed)
Finances Over budget, under funded
Increased Competition Students, faculty, resources
Education for All Diversity and accessibility
Globalization Global education competition
Regulations and Reporting New responsibilities, increased disclosure
Evaluating Governance Identifying efficiencies
Technology Upgrades needed across the board,
greater student and faculty expectations.
Highlights from „Making the Grade‟ Deloitte 2011 & „Key Issues Facing HE‟ Huron Consulting 2012
http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-Canada/Local%20Assets/Documents/ca_en_ps_making-the-grade-2011_041811.pdf
http://www.huronconsultinggroup.com/library/KeyIssuesFacingHE2012.pd

4. DRUPAL
A powerful
and flexible
open source
Content
Management
Framework, a
community, a
movement.

5. Drupal can help higher ed
Finances
Increased Competition
 Better Web Products
Education for All
 Financial Advantages
Globalization
Regulations and Reporting  Best of Competition and
Reviewing Governance Cooperation
Technology
Resources  Globally Focused
Evolving Technologies
Leadership engagement  Standardization and
Standardization
Shared Competency

6. “But you don‟t have to take my
word for it”: Case Studies
Drupal as Unit CMS (cofa.utexas.edu)
Drupal as Flagship (duke.edu)
Drupal as Intranet (csumb.edu)
Drupal as LMS (psu.edu)
Drupal as University Wide Solution (yale.edu)
Drupal as OOTB software (berkeley.edu)
Drupal as Lingua Franca (stanford.edu)

7. Case Studies Methodology
Reached out to University or Implementing Teams
Phone Interviews with a standard series of
questions as a starting point.
Specifically business drivers, technical drivers,
and lessons learned while implementing.

8. Case Study Presentation
For each study, we‟ll establish the University
context in terms of overall size, team-size, and
infrastructure style.
Look at the business and technical problems that
each team was facing.
We‟ll look at the solution and talk about the ways
each solution meets those needs.
At the end of all of the case studies we‟ll take a
look at lessons learned

9. Case Study: Drupal as Unit CMS
College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin
Campus Size: ~51,000 students
Public or Private: Public
Central or Distributed Admin Central + Distributed
IT:
Campus Drupal
Adoption: Low to Moderate
Hosting: Central and Department
Case Study Team 3 FTEs
Size:
Internal or Vendor
Team: Internal

10. Case Study: Drupal as Unit CMS
The problem:
Aging College site needed redesign
Developer maintenance was high
Switch from moderation model
Highly idiosyncratic custom code base

11. The Solution:

12. The Solution:

13. The Solution:

14. Case Study: Drupal as Unit CMS
The Solution: http://www.utexas.edu/finearts/
Drupal based site
Improved contributor workflows (SSO based)
Contributors were now stewards
Quality of site improved
Increased in house Drupal expertise (up to 10
department and subject sites)
Moved hosting to Central

15. Case Study: Drupal as Flagship
www.duke.edu sites, Duke University
Campus Size: ~14,700
Public or Private: Private
Central or Distributed
IT: Central + Distributed
Campus Drupal
Adoption: Moderately High
Hosting: Central
Case Study Team
Size: 6 FTEs
Internal or Vendor Internal
Team:

16. Case Study: Drupal as
Flagship
The problem:
Aging sites in custom Java CMS
Lacked simplicity and flexibility
Did not meet clients‟ content needs
Lacked campus integration points

17. The Solution:

18. The Solution:

19. The Solution:

20. Case Study: Drupal as
Flagship
The Solution: http://duke.edu
Drupal based main site
Launched audience, and subject sites (multi and
single sites)
Drew in disparate campus content
Was flexible and extendible
Custom static caching publishing solution
Increased Drupal use on campus

21. Case Study: Drupal as
Flagship
http://doteduguru.com/id4828-how-duke-university-
is-using-drupal.html

22. Case Study: Drupal as Intranet
myCSUMB, California State University Monterey Bay
Campus Size: ~5,100
Public or Private: Public
Central or Distributed
IT: Central IT
Campus Drupal
Adoption: Very High
Hosting: Central
Case Study Team
Size: 3 FTEs
Internal or Vendor
Team: Internal

23. Case Study: Drupal as Intranet
The problem:
Existing vendor intranet had usability issues
The recently adopted Google Apps needed sso
and collaboration integration
Peoplesoft SIS integration needed
Replacement needs depth to handle many
advanced and university specific use cases.
Limited developer resources

24. The Solution:

25. The Solution:

26. The Solution:

27. Case Study: Drupal as Intranet
The Solution: MyCSUMB – an Intranet in Drupal built with the
Open Atrium distribution
Highly customizable student focused intranet.
#1 visited on campus, #2 is myscumb/students
Organic Groups for Apps collaboration with hand-rolled SSO
Utilized Drupal expertise and comfort of IT Team
Restful API to Peoplesoft for better user facing SIS
Integrated OLARK Support
http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/sessions/open-atrium-dot-
edu-open-atrium-campus-intranet

28. Case Study: Drupal as LMS
ELMS, Penn State University
Campus Size: ~45,200
Public or Private: Public
Central or Distributed
IT: Central & Distributed IT
Campus Drupal Moderate, growing
Adoption:
Hosting: Central Hosting
Case Study Team
Size: 2 FTEs
Internal or Vendor Internal
Team:

29. Case Study: Drupal as LMS
The problem:
Space limitations of LMS hamstrung portfolio
based courses
It‟s not that LMS is broken industry wide, but
content IS broken in LMS.
Cost, usability and LMS competitive flattening are
driving interest in open source LMS products.
Solution needed to integrate with existing LMS

30. The Solution:

31. The Solution:

32. The Solution:

33. Case Study: Drupal as LMS
The Solution: ELMS
Drupal based Learning Management System distribution
Sidecars the LMS
Follows a fragmentation approach – Drupal does best.
Includes Open Studio
Used by many colleges on PSU and system campuses

34. Case Study: Drupal as LMS
http://btopro.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/structured
-anarchy/
http://btopro.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/decouplin
g-for-maximal-impact/
http://drupal.org/project/elms |
http://www.youtube.com/user/psuelms

35. Case Study: Drupal as web publishing
Yale.edu sites, Yale University
Campus Size: ~11,600
Public or Private: Private
Central or Distributed
IT: Central IT
Campus Drupal
Adoption: High
Hosting: Central
Case Study Team
Size: 7-8 FTEs
Internal or Vendor Vendor - Four Kitchens
Team:

36. Case Study: Drupal as web
publishing
The problem:
Yale sought to standardize on a CMS for about 7-8 yrs,
finally selected Drupal, now what?
Yale needed training
Needed hosting and deployment to conform to existing
skillsets
Needed to hide back-end complexity from front end users
Needed SSO
Wanted to standardize and reclaim efficiency
Needed to scale (1000s of sites) and be flexible

37. The Solution:

38. The Solution:

39. Central Request Moderation

40. Case Study: Drupal as web
publishing
The Solution: http://yale.edu http://drupal.yale.edu
University wide Drupal solution with a sustainable and secure
provisioning, deployment and site maintenance infrastructure
system
Integrated
SSO Integration
Features based functionality packages – deployed via Drush
Brand standardization and customization
Leveraged existing skills for deployment and hosting
Flexible code based workflow to deploy, rollback, and reuse
Have weekly Drupal Drop In training session to assist campus
knowledge.

41. Case Study: Drupal as web
publishing
http://groups.drupal.org/node/68603
http://fourkitchens.com/projects/yale-university

42. Case Study: Drupal as OOTB
Open Academy, The University of California Berkeley
Campus Size: ~35,800
Public or Private: Public
Central or
Central & Distributed IT:
Distributed IT:
Campus Drupal Dominant Product of Choice
Adoption: Central & Vendor
Hosting:
Vendor – Chapter III &
Internal or Vendor Pantheon
Team:

43. Case Study: Drupal as OOTB
The problem:
Provost level initiative to reduce cost.
Internalized at central IT as:
Reducing spending on hosting
Reduce spending on apps.
Offer cost savings in level of effort
Custom Drupal often incurred high costs

44. The Solution:

45. The Solution:

46. The Solution:

47. Case Study: Drupal as OOTB
The Solution: Open Academy + Pantheon hosting http://oa.dev:8888/
Drupal based academic specific distribution paired with off-site best of
breed Drupal hosting.
Open Academy is built strong out of the box –Launched 100 sites in
just 5 months
Meets many academic specfic use cases by design
Reduces barriers in creation, content contribution, extension, and
maintenance.
Strong contributor experience built on Integration, extendibility and
easy prototyping
In addition to cost savings it provides standardization in presentation
and branding
Responsive

48. Case Study: Drupal as OOTB
http://drupal.org/project/openacademy
http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/sessions/op
en-academy-higher-education-drupal-product-
departmental-websites

49. Case Study: Drupal as Lingua Franca
Drupal adoption at Stanford University
Campus Size: ~15,300
Public or Private: Private
Central or Distributed
IT: Central & Some Distribution
Campus Drupal
Adoption: Platform of Choice
Hosting: Central, & Vendor
Case Study Team
Size: n/a
Internal or Vendor n/a
Team:

50. Case Study: Drupal as Lingua
Franca
What Happened: Seven Steps to Drupal
1. Campus mySQL
2. Establish user helping user precedent
3. Central IT will follow its customers
4. Centralized Training (starting w/ advanced)
5. Centralized theme helped lower design costs and
increased standardization
6. Drupal Events
7. Web Auth Integration
https://techcommons.stanford.edu/node/131

51. Drupal Adoption Gone Wild!!!

52. Drupal Community

53. Case Study: Drupal as Lingua
Franca
Working with Vendors:
5 years ago – vendor relationships was wild west!
Zach Chandler used his 10% time to set up a Drupal
consultancy inside.
Selection became rigorous
Found he could create understanding about Stanford
systems
Advocates for Stanford 100% but also consultants
Eventually– a new unit was formed, Stanford web services-
Zach views his job as understanding the industry and
projects and pairing those projects.

54. Just a drop in the bucket.
What can we learn from all of this?
Saw something you liked? Need Drupal
Resources?

55. Lessons Learned
Building Drupal Communities
Go the extra mile – give a penny, take a penny
Prepare to be an advocate/trainer
Building Drupal Sites
Launching your institutions‟ site? Make sure it is
not your first rodeo.
Plan for long term support, don‟t give someone
else your nightmares

56. Lessons Learned
Building Drupal Sites (cont.)
Use the right tool (mycsumb)
Drupal is like a painting, distros are like sculptures.
Choose simple first
Don‟t be psychic about usability
Coding
Highly abstract for re-use
Show people what the site does immediately
Bring out site building beauty (by coding)
Follow community trends, you‟ll thank me.

57. Lessons Learned
Web Projects
Is your client really your client?
Identify how to decouple
Selling Drupal to Campus
Consider the TCO of Open Source
This is an open source platform with enterprise
support
Take a look at what your peers are doing

58. Lessons Learned
Selling Drupal to Campus
In Drupal – apps beget sites beget apps beget...
Open source may not be free, but yeah, neither
are vendor products

59. The more you know…*
We are more alike than different
“All you have to do is call” -Call your peers. No,
really.
Drupal is a community of zero to hero – give it
away, it all comes back
Win by ROI Cost, Win by usability, Win by making
sense
Success breeds Success (and comfort)

60. Drupal .edu Resources
Campus: Drupal User Group, Drupal mailing list, and
your fellow Drupal implementers
Local: Look for or start a Drupal User Group, Drupal
Dojo
National: Drupalcamps, & Drupalcon
Sites: Drupal.org and Groups.Drupal.org (.edu
unconsortium)
IRC #drupal-edu channel
Your peer institutions – give them a call, they probably
won‟t bite (*not true during football season)

61. You‟ve been a lovely audience
Thank you to:
Kevin Miller, Jeremy Cumbo, Sarah Heath, Zach
Chandler, Matt Cheney, Ryn Nasser, Bryan
Ollendyke, Vincent Massaro
Questions, comments, follow ups:
david.diers@fourkitchens.com
Twitter: @beautyhammer