During the month of February, I created a basic tutorial for getting started with the static exhibit site templates that make up CollectionBuilder for Vivero as my professional development activity for the month. This project was a great opportunity to delve further into CollectionBuilder and also think about how to present this tool to a novice audience. Throughout the process, I got to learn more about digital pedagogy by consulting relevant scholarship and evaluating the level of complexity that could be presented in a short training like this project. In many ways, this required me to think more creatively about what learning outcomes I should emphasize and what a student might be learning from an introductory training.
This meant that the training teaches students more about how to work with metadata and the files that make up the core of a CollectionBuilder site, rather than things like HTML and CSS, which make up the structure of the site. While I wish a training could delve in deeper, this emphasis reflects what skills are most important for building a foundation for learning more about static site builders and minimal computing in a short timeline.
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