Getting Started with BuddyPress Courseware
September 8, 2010 in Description
[If you're here as a student in one of my courses, as long as you've gone through the registration process, you should be able to access the group site for either ANTH 326 (Peoples & Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa) or SOCI/ANTH 441 (Material Culture). Feel free to contact me directly if you have questions.]
It’s a new academic year and I’ve decided to start using BuddyPress Courseware which, as the name may suggest, is a BuddyPress plugin which adds course management features. In fact, I’ve been thinking about “BuddyPress as a course management system” for a little while and I’m really glad that we’re getting closer to this goal.
This summer, Stas Sușcov did a lot of work on this Courseware plugin and documented the whole process through a WordPress-based microblog. A usable version of the plugin was released recently and the full handbook is now available.
This semester, I’m using Courseware in parallel with Moodle in my two upper-level coursers. I’ll be teaching intro courses next semester and I’m hoping to either shift much of the activity away from Moodle or integrate the two in some way.
I perceive a number of advantages with using WordPress/BuddyPress as a platform for learning and teaching. For instance, WordPress in general is remarkably easy to use and manage, which is clearly an advantage in learning contexts (I want the learning to focus on other things besides the tools we use!). And WordPress has plenty of very useful plugins and themes which make it very flexible. having content in WordPress makes it easy to repurpose and redistribute (for instance, through blog publishing). BuddyPress itself adds a number of “social features” to WordPress in a seamless and simple way. And, contrary to tools and services owned by commercial entities (like Facebook and Twitter), outside interests don’t have any control on (or way to get into) individual BuddyPress and WordPress installations.
More than, say, Ning or Facebook, such group sites built on WordPress and BuddyPress can create a more nurturing environment, focused on learning and collaborative. More than, say, Moodle and Blackboard, these same group sites can enable collaboration between different groups as well as allow students to build and manage their own “content.”
I still enjoy Moodle but the “social features” envisioned as part of Moodle 2.0 seem to have either disappeared or became less interesting. Sakai 3 might end up having them but I can’t test it. As I’ve been doing a fair amount of work with WordPress in the past little while, BuddyPress seemed like a logical soclution, especially now that the Courseware plugin is really taking shape.
As I’m getting started with BuddyPress Courseware, I’ll probably have plenty to say. Chances are that I’ll post things on my personal blog here on LearningTwo.
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Alex