LW DITA and learning / education content

Dear LW DITA SC and DITA L&T members
-

Carlos Evia, Amber Swope, Scott Hudson
and I have been meeting occasionally over the last several months to discuss
LW DITA and use cases for learning, training, and education.

While we haven't covered all of the
use cases we identified, we've reached the point where we do have some
patterns to share in terms of content types and authoring needs, and some
insights to the level of support we need for content in the existing DITA
Learning and Training topics, maps, and domains.

We've discussed use cases for K-12 teachers
and students, for higher ed professors and teaching assistants, and for
corporate training roles. 

Content types
Here's the set of content types across
these use cases.
Lesson plans
Exercises
Quizzes
Slides
Reports
Multi-media
Text + Math
Websites
Tests
Assignments
Research papers
Proposals
Notes
PDF
EPUB (2nd to PDF)
Grading rubric
Feedback memos and reports
Theses and dissertations
Authoring tools
Here's the set of authoring tools /
technologies currently in use to create and deliver this content:

Google docs
MS Word, 
MS PowerPoint
MS Excel
Learning Management System (LMS) - "native"
authoring directly in the LMS. Specifics vary by LMS.
Text editor, such as Notepad, etc.
Camtasia
LaTeX - commonly used in higher ed for
theses and publication articles
Wikis
For higher-ed specifically -
Potentially big interest in LaTex and
Markdown
Word and Powerpoint and Excel
LMS - Sakai, Blackboard, D2L
DITA 1.2 L&T components - which
do we need to support?
Finally, here's my take on the set of
existing DITA 1.2/1.3 L&T components and priorities for support them
in LW DITA.

Topic types
learningAssessment - getting the most
use, to deliver test questions
learningOverview - in some use, but
as a container for generic sections
learningContent - in some use, but as
a container for generic sections
learningSummary - in some use, but as
a container for generic sections
learningPlan - no reported use
Maps
DITA 1.2 has the l&t map domain,
and DITA 1. introduces object and group map types.
SAP has the most developed use case
for these maps, for delivering training content.
My take is that for LW DITA, we do not
need specific L&T map support, though that's up for more discussion
and input.
Question-Answer Interactions domain
The interactions domain has gotten the
most use and interest. We need to determine an approach for addressing
this in LW DITA.
Here's the set of 1.2/1/3 interaction
types:

lcOpenQuestion - high use
lcTrueFalse - high use
lcSingleSelect - high use
lcMultiSelect - high use

lcMatching - less use
lcHotspot - less use
lcSequencing - less use
Common topic elements
Here's the elements used in common across
the Overview, Content, and Summary topics. The most important need is support
for lcObjectives. Of the other elements, all except lcDuration are generic
specializations of section (in other words, they're section with a new
element name - so perfect fit for an LW DITA section).
lcObjectives - The only element available
across all five of the L&T topic types; most important for LW DITA

lcIntro - section specialization
lcAudience - simple section specialization
lcDuration - needed, but probably not
as defined in the L&T specialization, which is based on data and difficult
to use.
lcPrereqs - simple section specialization
lcResources - simple section specialization
lcChallenge - simple section specialization
lcInstruction - simple section specialization
lcReview - simple section specialization
lcNextSteps - simple section specialization
lcSummary - simple section specialization
Learning Metadata Domain
DITA 1.2 also includes a learning data
domain, which provides a subset of the learning object metadata elements.
I am not aware of any use of these elements, but if we need any of them,
we can include them as an optional domain.

LRMI and Schema.org...
On learning metadata more generally
and K-12 specifically, we may want to track the activities around the Learning
Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) and the Google schema.org initiative.
LRMI has sponsorship from the US Dept of Ed, and uses extensions to schema.org
as way to inject learning metadata into web pages. We could certainly use
DITA subjectscheme classifications to inject schema.org markup into an
HTML page. 

See https://developers.google.com/structured-data/schema-organd http://www.lrmi.net/.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome!

For interested members of the L&T
SC - please consider joining the LW DITA SC and discussions. 

Thanks.

John
___________________________________
John Hunt
Senior Technical Content Architect 
IBM Enterprise Social Solutions | User Experience: Design and Information
Excellence