Looking More Closely at PostNuke

ENC 1102 Online

Overview of the class (see Course Policies and Course Calendar).

Note that the hypertext course policy and course calendar help to model multilinear hypertexts for students. Real hypertext writing versus the default folder setup of Blackboard.

Features

• First and foremost, PostNuke displays teacher and student content alike on the main page. Student text is buried deep within Blackboard.
• PostNuke pages not only load faster, but by making the site public, the important content on the main page can be accessed in seconds, making it more likely that teachers and students will visit and participate in the site more frequently.
• PostNuke can have various radically different looks merely by switching templates, which can be user selected.
• The most recent content is always available on the main page, with teaser descriptions for each weblog post. Teasers also entice readers to read the full text, where the comments are displayed. Some students in my class, have worked to write teasers which grab the attention of their peers, encouraging them to read more.
• One could make Blackboard behave more like a weblog by allowing students to create forums; however, Blackboard will not behave well with 20 or more new forums created every week. Most teachers use threads within a forum like weblog posts, allowing students to create them instead.
• Blackboard discussion forums quickly become unwieldy as more threads and posts are added. Weblogs only display the X most recent posts.
• PostNuke use colorful icons which represent administrator configured topic categories.
• PostNuke archives are easily accessible, both chronologically, by topic, and via search.
• The sections of text within the columns, the blocks, are configurable. They can be moved up or down, from the right to the left side. Note the main menu, RSS feeds, collections of links to other resources, and the user configurable block. The student blog links in the right hand column direct others to their personal sites. Other available blocks include Polls, Random Headlines, and Today's Big Story.
• PostNuke has a Who's Online block which lists participants on the site and incoming private messages.
• PostNuke has a recent comments block on the main page, inviting members to see who has been posting comments recently. Some students began to find that the comment subject line is a way to grab the reader's attention.
• A sophisticated permissions system which allows the administrator to control public/private access to all parts of the site base-on administrator defined groups.
• Finally, PostNuke is open source. Blackboard costs $$$.

Drawbacks of PostNuke

• At the time I began using PostNuke, grading and testing modules were not available. For most writing teachers, who don't often give tests and give fewer grades, this may be a minimal concern.
• PostNuke can be difficult to install and configure. It requires some technical expertise and the willingness to spend more time configuring the site once the software is installed, a trade off of having a more configurable piece of software. However, if enough teachers would choose one CMS and begin using it, we could become involved in the development. Any open source CMS could be developed so with a pre-set initial configuration tailored for teachers, reducing the initial configuration time for use.
• PostNuke will not be familiar to students who already know Blackboard, although it is more like other Internet community sites. Personally, I'm not convinced that having a consistent GUI experience across online course platforms is in students' best interest. We might promote better digital literacy by having a different look and feel to every class site.
• PostNuke permission features do not let students post stories automatically to the front page; instead, they enter a submission queue where approved by an administrator (the teacher).

The Future

By the mid point in this semester, both Terra and I agreed that PostNuke was the superior environment for teaching writing. We felt that our students' experience was equally positive. The only significant problem we had was not with PostNuke, but rather Blogger. Sometimes the Blogger server was down. Sometimes the free Blogspot hosting was down. Students lost their archives. For these reasons, we'll be using another open source CMS in the future which allows every user to have a weblog on the site: Drupal.

Nevertheless, it is possible that Blackboard could be developed to have some of the characteristics of PostNuke. For example, it could have

• a weblog community page instead of the current announcements page
• more robust permissions levels which could make some parts of the site public
• teacher configured blocks in the left column
• RSS feeds
• templating system for controlling the site skin
• student weblog pages

The question is not whether these things are possible, but whether the mindset that creates a virtual classroom space can adapt to thinking in terms more of Internet community.

Introduction and Rationale

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