Content Management Systems (CMS) are traditionally at the heart of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). Instructional material is authored in the context of a set of provided tools, with the material hosted in a conventional database and served on demand by the platform. Static site generators represent a useful compliment to this approach. In this context, the material is authored in a variety of modes, with a focus on tools such as Markdown and related notations for compose content. This material is assembled offline, with the workflows sufficiently flexible to match appropriate authoring tools to the nature of the material. Once the material is ready, a ‘site generation’ process is engaged. This transforms the content from it source format into standard Html5. This generated content can then be absorbed into the VLE and published according its facilities.
This approach has a number of distinguishing features. The ‘source material’ is fully decoupled from the published version – and can be evolved, managed and shared in a considerably more flexible manner. Joint authorship and sharing can be easily supported in convention file sharing networks (Dropbox etc..). However, if the authors are familiar with configuration management systems, then material can be versioned and shared via powerful version management and sharing platforms such as Github. This offers many of the benefits of software project management to tuition material – turbo charging the potential for sharing, collaboration and re-purposing.
Another significant advantage is in publishing – a full CMS is not needed for the material to be hosted. Essentially, the only requirement is for a standard web server. In this context, the material can be hosted in a variety of platforms – many at very low cost or completely free. This offers a considerably broader range of options that being bound to a specific CMS/VLE pair, allowing the material to take advantage of emerging platforms and services. Because the authoring is decoupled from both hosting and the CMS, innovations can be introduced directly into the generator – for example enhanced responsiveness, or different themes, without an upgrade required in the VLE/CMS.
Static Site Generators are a major growth area in web content authoring and hosting technologies – with dozens of different styles of generator in use around the world. At WIT we have evaluated the best of breed of these generators and developed our own system, which we have called Tutors. This is oriented towards the style of tuition typical in Computer Science education – with core material consisting of a mix of slides, videos and detailed step-by-step instructions (usually called labs). The tutors system follows a simple folder/file set of conventions and uses markdown as the primary lab/instructional format. When combined with external chat, video and file management services – the tutors system has delivered a comprehensive, flexible and attractive experience. Tutors has been at the heart of a range of modules in WIT for some years now, and is the primary platform for a complete programme in Computer Science.
