We use Basecamp for collaboration and project management -- it's not very expensive, and you don't have to get involved in any design or management or maintenance (which will always generate unexpected expenses), though of course you do have to learn the features. There's lots of useful features, including some more detailed project management features such as linking deadlines and reminders with automated postings, shared editing via a writeboard, file uploads, emails to all or selected subsets, multiple projects with different or overlapping members, some simple indexing, customization of logo, etc. --------------------------------------------------------------- Ronald E. Rice Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication Dept. Communication, 4127 Social Sciences & Media Studies Co-Director, Carsey-Wolf Center International Communication Association President, 2006-2007 University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020 805-893-8696; f: 805-893-7102 rrice@comm.ucsb.edu; http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/rice.php; http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Werry" <cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 12:48 PM Subject: [Air-L] CMS for cross-dept/university project?
Hi,
Was hoping someone on the list might be able to offer some advice on CMS choice.
We have a common book program on campus. The writing program and some departments teach the same book in order to foster conversation and community. There is interest in expanding this so 4 or 5 other universities/colleges in the area also participate.
Folks on our campus want to set up a CMS to help make this happen. I'm trying to help with some of the planning. They want a CMS that can be used to coordinate events and speakers, upload shared teaching resources, and perhaps leverage some social media tools to build community. But nobody involved has much technical expertise, and...I'm not sure they really know what they want to do with the site.
Early on I showed them some drupal sites, but some of our partners weren't too familiar with this, and at that point we didn't have any tech people to help with drupal. So the conversation turned to Wordpress...I showed them more model sites, including CUNY's Academic Commons, which they really liked. But of course a group of developers put a lot of effort into this. So it would be no simple feat to attempt something similar.
We now have one developer, and as it turns out she's most familiar with drupal - although she can also build Wordpress sites.
So my question is, does anyone have any recommendations? Perhaps some model sites or distributions of drupal? (Has anyone tried openscholar - I suspect it may be too focused on building individual faculty sites). Or a Wordpress site that fits the bill?
One final thought. The folks running this do have some money, so if you've been involved in a customization of drupal or Wordpress which could be reworked and re-themed by our developer, they might be willing to pay for 'consulting' etc.
I'm interested in this main because I'd like to see such platforms created for our writing program, in order to support some of the work we do across departments and with outside groups.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Chris _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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