Gutenberg: A Training Platform for RSEs

Gutenberg is an interactive training platform developed by RSEs for delivering training in software engineering and research computing related topics to researchers, students and other RSEs. It is built with a modern web stack, featuring a dynamic Next.js frontend and a robust API-driven backend. Gutenberg is open-sourced and permissively licensed, making it easy to adapt, extend, and deploy. 

This walkthrough will introduce the core components of the system and demonstrate how it can support material authors, learners and instructors. 

1. Authors develop course content purely in Markdown, with the addition of some custom callouts, to be stored in one or more separate Git repositories, allowing easy version control and collaboration. The platform renders this material into navigable courses with embedded challenges, code blocks, comment threads, and other multimedia content.

2. Learners can browse available courses, enroll in them, and track their progress. Challenges let learners test their understanding, while embedded comment threads provide space for discussion and clarification both amongst peers and with instructors.

3. Instructors and admins have access to an extended interface where they can design and schedule events, monitor learner progress, see feedback, and respond to and resolve questions and comments.

We'll also briefly walk through how to set up and deploy your own Gutenberg instance. With configuration options and a containerized setup, it's easy to run a local or hosted version for your own or shared training materials, whether you're working individually or as part of a team.

Development of Gutenberg and the creation of training material was carried out under the UNIVERSE-HPC project, funded through the SPF ExCALIBUR programme under grant number EP/W035731/1