Talking Drupal #488 - Drupal Open University

Feb 10, 2025

Jean-Paul Vosmeer, Founder and COO of React Online and initiator of the Drupal Open University initiative, discusses the vital role of Drupal in academia. He shares insights on how the initiative aims to integrate Drupal into higher education, empowering students with real-world skills. The conversation highlights developing standardized educational materials and engaging the community for resources. Vosmeer also addresses the challenges faced by newcomers and the roadmap for future collaborations that will keep Drupal relevant in tech education.

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ANECDOTE

Drupal in Reykjavik University

Jean-Paul Vosmeer visited Hilmar (Drupal Viking) after hearing about his unique approach to teaching Drupal.
Hilmar integrated Drupal into Reykjavik University's curriculum by focusing on open source and PHP.

INSIGHT

Importance of Drupal in Education

Students rarely encounter Drupal in educational settings, limiting their exposure to its capabilities and community.
Introducing Drupal in classrooms can foster a new generation of developers and promote open-source principles.

ANECDOTE

Drupal's Credit System

Drupal's robust credit system allows students to showcase concrete contributions, unlike generic coding projects.
This system enables students to highlight diverse skills based on their interests, making them stand out to potential employers.

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Today we are talking about The open university initiative, Drupal in academia, and Fostering Drupal Education with guest Jean-Paul Vosmeer. We’ll also cover Artisan as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/488

Topics

What is the Drupal Open University Initiative
How did this initiative start
Why is it important to get Drupal into Universities and Classrooms
What stage is the initiative at
Is Drupal currently in any universities
Is it better to approach schools or professors directly
How is the curriculum being developed
What are the main differences between this initiative and resources like Drupalize.me, Drupal at your fingertips, or Drupal TB
What is next on the roadmap
Where does Drupal CMS fit in
Where does the initiative need help
How can someone get involved

Resources

Guests

Jean-Paul Vosmeer - reactonline.nl jpvos

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted to use the Drupal UI to configure numerous aspects of your Drupal site’s look and feel? There’s a theme for that.
Module name/project name:
- Artisan
Brief history
- How old: created in Sep 2024 by alejandro cabarcos though recent releases are by crzdev, both of metadrop
- Versions available: 1.3.8, which support Drupal 10 and 11
Maintainership
- Actively maintained, release in the last week
- Security coverage
- Documentation: no, but a lengthy README that includes developer notes
- Number of open issues: 7 open issues, 5 of which are bugs, but 3 are postponed
Usage stats:
- 170 sites
Module features and usage
- After installing the theme, there is a drush command to generate a subtheme, or you can manually duplicate an included starterkit. You also need to run a couple of npm commands to pull in all the front end libraries, and build the CSS files
- Once you set the subtheme as your site default, you can customize a variety of ways the site looks, including the fonts and weights to use for heading and default text, the colour and padding of various elements, border weights, border radius, and more.
- The customizations are grouped into tabs. The base tab includes a colour palette, base font, and link styling. Additional tabs include page layout, header, responsive, and footer, also breadcrumb, headings, display headings, buttons, forms, and components
- Artisan also provides a toggle to expose extra customization options for dark mode, so if you want your site to give users the option to switch back and forth between normal and dark, this is extremely powerful, but does make for some very long configuration pages
- You can create and save presets, for easy creation of reusable palettes
- There is also a companion Artisan Styleguide module that provides a page that previews the theme style applied to an extensive list of elements
- Last year I was considering making a more configurable subtheme of Olivero for the Event Platform initiative, so I was excited to read about Artisan in a metadrop blog post we’ll include in the show notes