Want to provide students and course facilitators a better online experience but still want or need to use the existing institutional LMS? Faced with this exact challenge, Paul Hibbitts started to develop a set of components in 2016 for the modern Grav Content Management System (
getgrav.org) to partner with his institution's LMS (Canvas). Grav leverages forward-looking standards such as Markdown for platform-independent content and enables Git-based (i.e. GitHub, GitLab, GitBook, etc.) collaborative workflows, both which naturally also supports the 5 Rs of Open Educational Resources. In addition, the ability to use GitHub Desktop (
desktop.github.com) for mirroring Git-based content to one’s own computer for backup and editing with the tools of your choice not only brings peace of mind but also a highly efficient workflow.
Paul has also been very fortunate to have the opportunity to iteratively develop his Grav CMS projects for use with his 3rd year CMPT-363 User Interface Design (
canvas.sfu.ca/courses/38847) class at Simon Fraser University, where students provided ongoing input and feedback. The Grav CMS, as well as Paul’s custom components, are freely available as open source software (l
earn.hibbittsdesign.org and on
GitHub) for other tech-savvy educators to use and build upon.
In this session, Paul will give an overview of the Grav CMS and highlight when it is an appealing alternative to many traditional CMSs, including WordPress. He will also explore the Grav Open Course Hub project and demonstrate how they can benefit tech-savvy educators and students - both inside and outside of their institutional LMS. If time permits, he will also introduce several other Open-related Grav Projects, including Open Publishing Space, Learn2 with Git Sync, H5P Shortcode and the Hypothesis Plugin.
