===With the official release of @getgrav 1.7 and the Grav Premium NextGen Editor, it seems like a great time to share a few highlights of the most recent release of my open source project Grav MultiCourse Hub🚀
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) January 4, 2021
First of all, Grav Open MultiCourse Hub is based on the fast and lightweight open source file-based CMS Grav, and is a way for tech-savvy or curious educators to get going faster with a pre-built set of pages & components. What might a Grav MultiCourse Hub look like? Here you go! pic.twitter.com/ThgrunnlFo
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
Another key aspect of the Grav MultiCourse Hub is that any page may be seamlessly embedded into your existing LMS, such as #CanvasLMS or #Moodle. At Simon Fraser University I use Canvas, and so here are what those same Grav Open MultiCourse Hub pages look like in that LMS👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/PF5x03pKRE
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
While Grav shares a lot with static site generators due to its file-based nature, it is in fact a dynamic CMS running on a Webserver with a modern version of PHP. As such, there is a very powerful & flexible Admin Panel that can be used to manage your site and edit page content👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/1m0I7mKNRp
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
Remember that Grav is a file-based CMS? Well, these files are most often written in Markdown. What is that? Markdown in a very popular markup language, simpler than HTML, which can be used to format content. Here, for example, are what two pages in Markdown might look like👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/SOynIwmYM6
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
While Markdown is fairly straightforward to learn, you don't need to know it anymore to edit Grav content thanks to the new Grav Premium NextGen Editor! With the NextGen Editor, you have a WYSIWYM editor where you can style content visually, and even easily modify Shortcodes👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/7adm91qwmu
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
However, with Markdown you open the optio of fully leveraging the file-based nature of Grav. For example, you can use the Git Sync Plugin for two-way sync of Grav pages to GitHub, where others can contribute to - and you can even then clone content to your desktop for editing👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/dzdfd7KGB8
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
Another key benefit of Grav is the support for modular content, that is content that is written/stored once that can be re-used on multiple pages of the site - which can be very useful for online course sites! Here is an example where some articles about 'Usability' are reused👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/inPtyVDTdY
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
BONUS TWEET #1: Moodle... oh yes, let's not forget about the open source LMS Moodle! Here's a few pages of a Moodle site seamlessly embedding some Grav Open MultiCourse Hub pages (so, ✓Markdown content with ✓auto sync to a GitHub repository for ✓collab and ✓desktop editing)👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/0pa112Lt99
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
BONUS TWEET #2: Interested in seeing a live university course partnering #CanvasLMS with Grav Open MultiCourse Hub? A design that's gotten very positive student feedback? And a design also shaped by student input? Then go visit my #SFU CMPT-363 course at https://t.co/9ooFhhXBDK pic.twitter.com/NkGQX9YfXi
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
But hey, here's some student quotes:
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 4, 2021
“Overall, love the Canvas implementation, made a huge difference”
“The Canvas site does an excellent job of presenting only the current week’s relevant assignments and readings on the Home page”
Not rocket science, just intentional design.
BONUS TWEET #3: It's 2021, so it goes without saying that the Grav Open MultiCourse Hub is also multi-device friendly👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/3jwKN3SC9V
— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 5, 2021