With more than 200 alumni spread across dozens of states and six countries, about 30 curriculum updates, 5 versions of Drupal taught over 2,000 hours of live(ly,) class sessions (by mostly Mike Anello aka @ultimike) over the past 15 years; DrupalEasy – with satisfaction, pride & great fulfillment – announces the conclusion of Drupal Career Online as a publicly offered career technical education program.
We thank our students, our scholarship sponsors, and the many mentors and internship hosts who over the last decade and a half have put their trust in us to help bring new talent into the Drupal Community and who have, and who continue to nurture our DrupalEasy Learning Community through our Office Hours, Show & Tell videos and Slack channel. We appreciate all of you, and look forward to continued office hours and new teaching opportunities that will continue to help enrich learning and grow the Drupal and DrupalEasy Learning Communities.
The decision to sunset the program now was really not such a difficult one to come to. It is reflective of the current transition of Drupal and Drupal CMS, the undeniable effects of AI on the web development industry, the conspicuous and worrisome decrease in new Drupal developers finding Drupal organically, and the time- and money-consuming requirements for licensure of the program through the Florida Department of Education that we had to undertake every year.
After taking into consideration all of these elements, especially the sharp drop in new/young developers seeking to embark on Drupal careers, it is a decision we make comfortably and without regret. We will of course miss it, as it was our initial foray into long-form programs, and one that set our trajectory into Drupal training and allowed us to meet hundreds of fantastic people, really get to know some amazing organizations, and helped us create life-long friendships.
We will continue to offer the full menu of course sections and customized versions to teams through our custom training programs that can be commissioned by organizations for teams or groups.
Drupal Career Online’s first session was presented in-person in Cocoa Village, Florida in 2011 as the Drupal Career Starter Program, an 8-week course developed by Mike Anello as part of the local workforce board’s efforts to retrain and retain IT professionals from the Kennedy Space Center and organizations around it that were affected by the conclusion of the Space Shuttle program. There were more than 200 applications for the first session which hosted 20 students.
Drupal Career Online Premier Class and workforce board sponsors 2011
The course was eventually expanded by several weeks, and to comply with state law, we became licensed as a career technical education program through the Florida Department of Education, Commission for Independent Education. After a few years, we moved to an online format to help us reach people outside of the region who were interested in learning Drupal. Over the life of our flagship program, we were asked to make presentations about its success at national and regional workforce conferences, to the State of Florida’s workforce board, regional workforce boards around the country and several organizations interested in its value as an example of a successful workforce development program.
Our graduates, who are all over the world, continue to surprise and impress us with their success as consultants, developers and project managers for key Drupal organizations, educational institutions and government; and some who consistently work as our subcontractors on consulting projects. DCO alumni include department directors, key Drupal contributors, DrupalCamp organizers and even an Aaron Winborn Award recipient!
As we continue with our transition to more advanced training programs in both long- and medium-length courses, workshops that meet the needs of event attendees and development teams, and our growing project coaching services; we will continue to offer custom versions of the foundational curriculum we have enriched over the past 15 years and that helped us build our business and reputation to internal teams and other commissioned training events.
Registration is open for the next online Professional Single Directory Components course, which begins July 13th, and also open for the Professional Module Development Course, which begins August 11. Stay tuned for a new mid-length course in responsible AI. Sign up for our DrupalEasy Newsletter to keep up with new courses, event workshops and schedules!
AI disclosure: AI was used to generate the Drupal Career Online alumni map based on actual data.
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