[Air-L] CMS for cross-dept/university project?

[Ronald E. Rice]

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 at comm.ucsb.edu; http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/rice.php; 
http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Werry" <cwerry at mail.sdsu.edu>
To: <air-l at 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
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