Point me to the right group if this is the wrong place to ask.

I've got a year to design and build an online course in
elementary programming, to a 2-year (tribal school) college audience.
I want use php or perhaps ruby/rails, and gradually work towards
teaching how to generate html from code according to runtime conditions.

They will all need individual file system spaces and website spaces.
I'd rather *not* set them up in ~username/public_html spaces, because
that complicates file path issues when writing code.

I know how to setup apache2 for virtual hosting, but what I really want
is what shared host services offer: /pathtohome/username/ file system
accounts that include a symbolic link to a virtual DOCUMENT_ROOT they
can write to.

How and where do I learn how to set that up?