Drupal's Role in Higher Ed Tech

Drupal is a highly trusted platform in higher education technology, with 71% of universities using it. That figure may be higher as research by The Drop Times discovered that 80% of the top 100 universities worldwide use Drupal for at least one of their websites. This shows there is no disputing its popularity as a content management system (CMS) in higher education.

Drupal's popularity stems from its focus on assisting ambitious developers and its ability to cater to the needs of educational institutions looking for flexible solutions for managing their sites. Its open-source nature adds to its appeal, and its emphasis on continuous improvement and collaboration resonates well with the academic principles of learning, researching and progressing together.

In this article, we’ll explore how Drupal is great in higher education and delve into the core features and philosophies that make it the CMS of choice for so many institutions.

Why Is Drupal the Best Choice for Higher Education?

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Higher education institutions face unique challenges in managing their digital presence but Drupal stands as the ideal solution tailored to meet these complex needs. Here’s how:

Flexibility and Customization

Drupal's core design is modular, allowing users to add and remove features by installing and uninstalling modules and themes. This modularity enables extensive customization without altering the core code. There are over 51,000 modules available in the official repository, which can enhance existing functionalities or add new ones entirely.

Additionally, Drupal allows the creation of custom content types through modules like Flexinode, which lets users set up their own content types without touching a line of code. This flexibility is important for tailoring the CMS to unique higher ed needs, such as creating bespoke faculty directories, event calendars or comprehensive course catalogs.

Secure CMS

Drupal incorporates several built-in security features that make it a top choice for higher education institutions, such as:

• Database Encryption: Protects sensitive data by encrypting it within the database, preventing unauthorized access.
• Security Modules: Modules like the Security Review, Password Policy and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) enhance the security of Drupal sites by enforcing strong password policies, conducting security audits and adding additional layers of authentication.

Its open-source nature means that security is bolstered by a vigilant community of developers who regularly update and patch the system, ensuring that vulnerabilities are promptly addressed. 

Check out our Drupal security best practices for more detailed insights into Drupal's security features.

Accessibility Compliant

Ensuring accessibility is a legal requirement for educational institutions in the US. Drupal provides a framework to achieve and maintain accessibility compliance, including:

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• Semantic HTML5 elements and WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes to improve the accessibility of web content. These elements provide context and meaning to assistive technologies, making it easier for users with disabilities to navigate and understand the content.
• Adhering to the latest accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.1 AA and ATAG 2.0. This commitment ensures that both public-facing and author-facing interfaces are accessible, supporting the creation of accessible content by default.
• The Olivero theme, Drupal’s default front-end theme, is designed with accessibility in mind. It features clear focus states and high contrast modes and has been extensively tested for accessibility, including the National Federation for the Blind.
• Supporting atomic design principles, which involve breaking down web interfaces into smaller, reusable components. These components are designed to be inherently accessible, ensuring consistency and scalability in accessibility across the website.
• The TabbingManager helps manage the tab order of page elements, ensuring that keyboard-only users can navigate complex interfaces efficiently. This feature is crucial for users who cannot use a mouse.

Drupal's latest version, Olivero, offers compliance out of the box with WCAG AA standards, making it an excellent foundation for creating accessible websites. 

Multisite Functionality

Drupal's multisite functionality allows universities to manage multiple websites from a single codebase. This feature allows for a centralized IT team to efficiently oversee and maintain all sites while empowering individual departments to update and manage their specific content.

Integration

The open-source framework enables smooth integration with a wide range of third-party applications and systems. Universities can streamline their operations and workflows by connecting disparate systems into a cohesive ecosystem that enhances operational efficiency and user experience.

Usability and Permissions

Drupal provides a highly user-friendly CMS for educational institutions’ staff members, including non-technical users, to manage content. The CKEditor allows for easy content creation and editing, making it accessible for teachers and administrators to update course materials, announcements and other content without needing extensive technical knowledge

Also, given the diverse roles within a university, Drupal’s comprehensive role-based permission system ensures that users have appropriate access levels (such as Administrator, Authenticated User and Anonymous User). Website admins can fine-tune permissions to maintain security and operational integrity in an environment where multiple users interact with the system.

Community Support

With one of the most vibrant and active communities in the tech world, Drupal is continuously improving, ensuring that institutions benefit from the latest innovations and best practices in CMS technology. The collective expertise and collaborative spirit provide a solid foundation for any institution looking to enhance its digital strategy.

Taking it to the Next Level: Drupal on Pantheon

Having explored the various reasons why Drupal is a favored CMS for higher education institutions, it's clear that its capabilities are extensive. However, Drupal's full potential can be unlocked when paired with a powerful hosting and management platform like Pantheon. By partnering with Pantheon, universities can elevate their Drupal experience, ensuring their digital presence is secure, agile and highly effective.

Pantheon is designed to optimize Drupal's functionality, making it an ideal platform for higher education institutions that require reliability and scalability. Here’s how:

• Ease of Use: With our separate environments for Dev, Test and Live, updates can be applied easily and without disrupting the live site, ensuring that the digital experience delivered to students and faculty remains uninterrupted. This Multidev feature allows team members to fork the entire stack (code, database and files) and work in isolated environments.

• Centralized Control and Efficient Collaboration: Pantheon’s dashboard offers a centralized control panel that simplifies the management of multiple Drupal sites. This is particularly advantageous for universities that operate several sites across different departments. Changes and updates can be reviewed and deployed without the typical bottlenecks in decentralized environments, fostering a more dynamic and responsive web management process.

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• Automated Backups: Pantheon provides automated backups with Autopilot. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to restore previous versions of your site, which is essential for maintaining data integrity and continuity. This proactive approach to backups ensures that recovery is swift even under any circumstances.
• Advanced Security: The platform's security measures are designed to thwart potential cyber threats and protect the university’s digital assets. This level of security is critical, especially considering the sensitive nature of the data handled by higher education institutions.
• Collaborative Workflow Systems: Pantheon also enhances Drupal's natural collaborative environment by providing a suite of tools designed for teams. These tools facilitate a smooth workflow for developers, content creators and site administrators, allowing everyone to work concurrently without stepping on each other’s toes. 

Pantheon in Action: Franklin College

The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia successfully modernized its web presence by partnering with Pantheon. 

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The College's Web Services team consolidated 118 websites onto Drupal, implementing a standardized theme that maintains brand consistency while allowing for departmental customization. This move resolved longstanding issues with disparate systems, inconsistent branding and inefficient management.

“With Pantheon technology, we’ve created a well-governed, economy-of-scale web platform that allows us to centralize code and theme assets and provide security support for all our sites,” said Stephanie Lynn, Senior IT Manager at the Franklin College. 

Pantheon's platform dramatically improved deployment speeds, reducing security updates from three days to just 90 minutes. The transition to Pantheon resulted in a 46% increase in monthly site traffic and a 31% improvement in page load speeds. 

The streamlined process freed up resources, allowing the team to focus on new projects, including the ambitious digitization of the Georgia Museum of Natural History's vast collection of over seven million specimens.

We’ll make hundreds of thousands of items searchable, indexable and browsable in one massive collection by the time we’re done. This is what we’re able to focus on now that Drupal hosting and website maintenance is so much easier with Pantheon.”

- Stephanie Lynn, Senior IT Manager, Franklin College

Discover How Drupal Can Transform Your Institution's Digital Strategy

Higher ed institutions face challenges that must be mitigated – effectively managing multiple departmental websites, ensuring consistent high performance during peak application and enrollment periods, and maintaining stringent security and compliance standards. Each of these tasks requires a digital solution capable of adapting to the dynamic needs of an academic environment.

Drupal was designed to cater to the multifaceted demands of higher education institutions by offering flexible, secure and scalable solutions. Whether it's handling the surge of traffic during registration periods or integrating various academic and administrative functions, Drupal provides a solid foundation that adapts and grows with your institution.

Taking Drupal’s capabilities a step further, Pantheon enhances its features, making it even more appealing for higher education. With Pantheon, institutions can manage up to 1,000 sites from a single dashboard, ensuring streamlined operations across various departments. The platform guarantees high uptime, which is crucial during high-demand periods and adheres to the highest standards of security and compliance, safeguarding sensitive information against potential cyber threats.

Are you ready to see how Drupal, enhanced by Pantheon, can revolutionize your institution's digital strategy? Watch our free webinar to discover the benefits of Drupal for higher education in detail!