On the need for open teaching on the JamStack

Abstract

Typical university Learning Management Systems (LMSs) place an enrolment paywall between students and the content within a unit. This has the effect not only of preventing access from potential students, but also of locking past students out from accessing updated materials as the subject develops over subsequent years to their enrolment. In this and many regards, the mechanisms by which academics can produce and publish content face limitations that open source software documentation sites do not. This provocation paper describes some of these limitations and gives an overview of the JamStack – common techniques that have developed within the software development community that allow convenient self-publishing of sites and materials. The paper then gives a brief introduction to Doctacular: a course-oriented static site generator that is under development (but already used for two live sites) to bring JamStack-style publishing to academic course materials