Learning standards: moodle to support DITA standard?

Learning standards: moodle to support DITA standard?

by Jürgen Beckstette -
Number of replies: 6

DITA is an OASIS-standard of an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing and delivering information. Its main application has so far been in technical publications. With the DITA version 1.2 released in December 2010 a new LEARNING AND TRAINING SPECIALIZATION has been published. It defines typical training content objects, such as learning objectives and assessments, as well as the relation between content objects on lower and higher levels (e.g.: a course). Read more on DITA -> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/LearningSubcommittee

I would expect that a broad support of this standard by Learning IT will support the exchange of data between the authoring process of courseware and the LMS - here especially for other but web-based training content, for which we already have SCORM and AICC standards.

Are there any plans in moodle to support the DITA Learning and Training Specialization?

 

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In reply to Jürgen Beckstette

Re: Learning standards: moodle to support DITA standard?

by Sam McCarthy -

Hi Jurgen,

Its a couple of years since you wrote this post, but I can't find any other discussion on DITA and Moodle.

I am interested in finding out more about how Moodle can fit in with an organisational move across to a single source publishing model, and the department leading the project are already talking DITA.

Can you, or anyone reading this, give me a pointer to where I can start to research it?

Many thanks,

Sam

 

 

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In reply to Sam McCarthy

Re: Learning standards: moodle to support DITA standard?

by Matteo Scaramuccia -

Hi Sam,
as you wrote we're talking about a single source publishing model i.e. Moodle should play with the "multiple output" part of the DITA end-to-end infrastructure.

A nice integration plan could be to investigate a repository plugin to connect Moodle to your DITA-based CCMS and copy/link those files being the result of the publishing stage in your CCMS. An example could be connecting Moodle to your CCMS via WebDAV, if supported by your CCMS. The supported output could be both single assets like PDF, DOCS as well as structured contents like a SCORM uncompressed package through its own imsmanifest.xml file.

AFAIK Moodle will never be able to read maps and create an output from there while it could be able, for some modules, to export data according with a DITA specialization.

HTH,
Matteo

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In reply to Sam McCarthy

DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization

by Frank Ralf -

Hi Sam,

A good starting point to learn more about DITA in a learning environment is DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization SC.

There's also some sample content:

"Sample content and readme for use with the DITA 1.2 schemas included with DITA Open Toolkit 1.5.

The sample content also includes a set of "starter-kit" DITA processing extensions to use with the DITA Open Toolkit 1.5 to process the learning content topics to XHTML, represent interactions with javascript, and prepare an imsmanifest.xml for use with a SCORM 2004 content package."

You could also have a look at the DITA Open Toolkit and its developer documentation. It shouldn't be too difficult to output DITA content in an XML format readable by Moodle. You might find some pointers at XML FAQ.

hth
Frank

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In reply to Frank Ralf

Re: DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization

by Patrick Leevers -

As programme director for an London University engineering department, I've gently promoted DITA for the last five years or so.  Although the department (alone in the university) also uses Moodle, it's taken me a while to see how interesting this discussion could become.  From experience, though, I'd like to sound a note of caution.

What Matteo Scaramuccia suggests is very close to where we are now.  I publish student information from a university CCMS to my desktop and re-route the result to Moodle, and this human intervention can surely be worked round. A significant issue is that most of our teaching content is mathematical, full maths support comes only with the DITA 1.3, DITA 1.3 is still just around the corner and our CCMS provider is a little slow to catch up. Meanwhile, most DITA teaching materials are written and published through Oxygen XML Editor, which provides a rich variety of output formats.

Where teaching is primarily face-to-face SCORM is a less useful format than WebHelp with Feedback, which promotes genuine student feedback (especially as we allow questions to be posed anonymously).  A recent presentation by Hal Trent pointed towards an interesting fusion of these formats, showing just how wide the range of possible outputs could be once your content is cast in modular, structured form.

Matteo says that "AFAIK Moodle will never be able to read maps and create an output from there".  Why not? If a lightweight CCMS (Drupal?) could be integrated, content could be uploaded in topic/map form and Moodle could use DITA-OT to construct whatever activities and resources you asked for. One of the core benefits of DITA is the ability to repurpose content from a common pool. Much of the fundamental content in programmes like ours is common between faculties and universities, and changes little with time.  The freedom to render in any format could save a lot of the effort wasted by academics converting a predecessor's course materials from one favourite page format (LaTeX? Word?) to another.

However, the technical communications world where DITA flourishes is one in which writers are used to working systematically in teams.  Academics just aren't like that.  A few of my colleagues are as excited as I am by DITA's possibilities.  For the rest DITA might be an easy sell if writing it was easy.  It's not that difficult, but in a world where Microsoft Office is still the benchmark and even the use of styles is unusual, asking authors to submit to a Document Type Description isn't going to be easy.

Pat Leevers

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In reply to Patrick Leevers

Re: DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization

by Matteo Scaramuccia -

Hi Patrick,
yes, DITA-OT can be triggered to build the content for sure and e.g. a repository plug-in could start such building at the very first request and than caching the output 'till something will change as well as it could build the content via cron, pre-populating that cache for performances reasons.

You could even think to create a filter that automatically launch your preferred web based DITA editor when clicking on a file map, that's a possibility too, still in Moodle.

What I meant in my post is that if you want to use DITA to re-purpose your content you already have the right SW in the market to create the required infrastructure - tools, versioning and operating procedures - to manage both the generation and the maintenance of this content out of Moodle and it is difficult - at least for me - to think about Moodle going in that direction, directly in the core code. There is IMHO the need to prove that this could be valuable (and easy to do) for most the Moodle adopters... and the way is to pass through plug-ins.

HTH,
Matteo

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In reply to Matteo Scaramuccia

Re: DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization

by Patrick Leevers -

Hi Matteo

This makes perfect sense to me.  I wish I had the skill set to contribute usefully myself, but in this field I'm limited to XSLT hacking. I guess the push is most likely to come from the big elearning providers, who do now seem to be taking DITA seriously... and least likely to come from the subject specialists.

Thanks

Patrick

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