CMF_in_Education

How to Adapt CMF in Educational Communities

Warning: This is UNDER CONSTRUCTION, in fact, it is more like an Experiment underway; please join in this research/reflection

Questions - Should each course be given its own CMF portal?

Tentative Procedure

create CMF folder somewhere
ReDirection: simplify the URL access to the portal
create an exUserFolder (to replace the default acl_users folder) and define CMF_Roles
work on the default CMFskin - (the portal's look and feel)
add appropriate CMFobjects
add XML_Syndication (educational news/resources from other sites)
fine tune the WorkFlow
browse through zopelabs for good recipes to add to this CMF
program missing components CMF_programming
Distribute a CMF_User_Quide to your users

Advantages of using CMF in Education Setting

the management of passwords, logins is sub-contracted to CMF itself; the only work left is to assign teacher, student and assistant roles after people have created an account for themselves.
the desktop paradigm is even simpler than for regular zope. This is another time saver when dealing with students new to zope and especially if the course is not about zope itself.
the default workflow system seems particularly suited to the drafts / final paper / mark workflow of traditional marking of assignments/essays
new workflows could be programmed for other educational flowcharts
everything is customizable

Disadvantages

Another layer of complexity in an already very complexity-rich environment which means another thing to master for the system admins,
more demand for more features from the users (especially when they realize that everything is customizable and workflows are programmable)

Resources