I've recruited two other faculty members to test the MT courseware this quarter, and we're in the process of locating and squashing various bugs. Turns out I made a number of things more difficult than I needed to, so I'm streamlining as I go.
Nevertheless, initial results are encouraging. Students are using the comment feature--not just on entries where they're required to post (like "Introductions"), but also on other entries, like the assigned readings. I have a good feeling about all this.
I expect that by the end of this quarter, I'll have a better version of the courseware available, complete with documentation. As one of my colleagues said, right now it isn't plug-and-play, it's more like plug-and-shock.
However, now that the initial configuration headaches have eased, it is remarkably easy to maintain and add to the site. And MT's templating features make it easy to repurpose information--for example, putting the "instructor information" in the syllabus as well as the sidebar.
One thing I'm considering is finding a student next quarter to help me write an installer of some kind for implementing the courseware in a more automated way. It may only be doable in a mySQL backend environment...I'm not sure yet. But it would be nice for folks not to have to go in and do all the template creation and category addition by hand.
Yeah - I'd love to use something like this, but haven't the time (now, anyway) to figure out all the templates and plugins... An installer, or simplification of some sort, would be brilliant!
We’ll be waiting wagerly to hear how this turns out. I would be thrilled to adopt a courseware mod of MT at Seabury; perhaps if you don’t build an installer, you can offer very thorough, step by step documentation?
I'll be following your progress as I'm working with MT right now for my ENGL courses as well as learning blogs for my students.
It'd be great to have some sort of resource for using MT as courseware, with templates etc. I've trying to figure out a way to clone blogs, but there doesn't seem to be a simple way, anyways, I'll be putting up the templates etc. at my blog as things start working. [the course website itself is only on the internal network for the time being].
It'll be great to read about what other people are doing with weblogging software.