Signamic asked me to create a new student website for them. This was a virtual learning environment (VLE) where students (and teachers) could log in and access all the information relating to their course. This project was a web education application. One of their key requirements was that it should be easy for teachers with little computer experience to use.
The main features of the website would be:
- Ability for users to choose different display colour schemes to make it accessible to those with visual impairments.
- Ability to create new courses
- Ability to register students for a course
- To include a course information page
- Ability for teachers to set assignments online
- Ability for teachers to upload resources for a course online
- Ability for students to upload homework online and for teachers to be able to comment on homework
- Ability for teachers to create course news items
- Ability for students to create messages for all the students of a particular course
- To include online student and teacher profile pages
I had looked at using an open source content management system built for use as a VLE (such as Moodle), but decided this more complicated than they needed, and to keep it simple it would be best to design a custom virtual learning environment using Drupal. By using Drupal I could customise every feature they wanted to match their needs and make it user friendly at the same time. I built the education website using the latest version (7.0) of Drupal. I included all the features they had asked for and made the website very easy to use for teachers and students. Most of the information for a course was available on one page.
It was so easy to use it was not even necessary to provide training to the staff once I had completed the project.
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