Content Management System for Canvas

[treynolds5]

Good morning everyone,

I wanted to ask for some input from other institutions to see if anyone has had any success working with any specific CMS within Canvas. Our institution is looking at different Content Management Systems that can be easily integrated within Canvas LMS and might meet some of the following criteria: 

Learning Object Repository

   - Externally stored

   - Presented "cleanly" within Canvas

   - Easily Managed

Curriculum Authoring

   -Manageable .CSS

   -WYSIWYG Editor (based on the .CSS)

   -Interactive features- HTML 5.0 Editor

Seamless LMS Integration with Canvas

   -Using the "External URL" features in Canvas

   -User can't tell that it's externally managed

Thanks,

Tyler Reynolds

[awilliams]

Take a look at Cidi Labs Design Tools. This is the best solution for the criteria you've mentioned that I've found.

[treynolds5]

Adam,

I will certainly take a look at this CMS. Thank you very much for your recommendation! Does your institution currently use Cidi Labs Design Tools within Canvas? If so, I would love to hear any feedback you might have about this CMS.

[awilliams]

Yes, we just set up the tools in December and we've redesigned a number of courses for the Spring 2017 term. So far just our support folks (me and 2 part-timers) are using the tools, but we are working hard to develop a roll-out strategy for faculty use. The "tools" are actually a package of 3 tools, and the Multi-Tool and Image Upload tool can easily be used by faculty with little training, but the Content Editor tool is quite a bit more powerful, thus more difficult to train. Luckily there are user guides built in.

[treynolds5]

This is definitely very helpful information. Is the content externally stored by cidi labs or is the content still stored in Canvas?

[awilliams]

All content is stored within your instance of Canvas (except for a few of the stock photos which you probably want to replace anyway, even though they work just fine for us stored externally.) The entire set of tools uses a Canvas course to store your boiler-plate content, be they images, page templates, learning outcomes, or institutional standards and policies. Much of the configuration is also done within this special Canvas course. It's really quite slick.

[joseph_allen]

Is CidiLabs a content management system or is it a development tool?  I think in an example of the former, you could make a change that would propogate through all content in all courses.  We're looking for that type of capability. 

[stephanie_pope]

We just got approval for Elucidat! We are pumped about it! Very similar to Cidi Labs mentioned.

[mathnot]

Hi Stephanie,

Can you tell me some more on Elucidat on Canvas. As we use Canvas too at our University im quite interested in your thoughts about Elucidat when used on Canvas.

Kind regards,

Math Notermans

[paul]

I've been using the Grav CMS in partnership with Canvas, and have released an open source project called Grav Open Course Hub for others to do the same. You can read more about my experiences in the GitLab blog post "Enabling an open and collaborative course environment with GitLab and the Grav CMS" and view a recent Canvas course with content embedded via Grav at CMPT-363 E100.

Happy to answer any questions etc.

[royanin]

Reviving this thread from long ago: Is there any new solution for managing course content on Canvas?