Initial goals:

1. Develop a general top-level design for structured, intent-based authoring of learning content with good learning architecture, following DITA principles and best practices. Such a design would build on past work on topic-based content, reusable learning objects, and the learning content types needed to support them. Some specifics of a DITA design for learning content include:

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Notes from meetings:

• Starting point: IBM pilot specializations and DB2 course content
• Discussion of Cisco/Clark model and reusable learning objects
  Identifies five core content types - Concept, Fact, Procedure, Process, Principle - and combines them with Overview, Summary, Practice, Assessment as the basis for an RLO - reusable learning object.
• Clark futher breaks out learning objects as made up of instructional objects and information objects.
• Combining the pilot specialization and the Clark/Cisco model gets us to this picture.

1) John Hunt and Bob Bernard articles on a DITA specialization design and content pilot.
My starting point on this topic, published last summer, on IBM developerWorks.

        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita9a/
        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita9b/

2) CISCO Systems Reusable Object Strategy
One of the seminal white papers on reusable learning objects from CISCO. Identifies five core content types - Concept, Fact, Procedure, Process, Principle - and combines them with Overview, Summary, Practice, Assessment as the basis for an RLO - reusable learning object.

        http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/ibs/solutions/learning/whitepapers/el_cisco_rio.pdf

3) Reusable Learning Objects- What does the future hold? by Peder Jacobsen (LTI Newsline, 2001)
Provides a readable overview of RLOs and XML-based technologies.

        http://www.ltimagazine.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=5043

4) Thinking XML: Learning Objects Metadata by Uche Obguji (developerWorks, 2003)
A very useful summary of the SCORM-standard Learning Object Metadata (LOM), how to represent it with XML, and connection to RDF.

        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think21.html

5) Course Generation Based on HTN Planning by Carsten Ullrich
A technically dense, but very interesting approach to applying hierarchical task analysis to planning and describing learning objects, and how to apply to different learning needs and goals.

        http://www.activemath.org/publications/Ullrich-CourseGenerationHTN-ABIS-2005.pdf

Suggests a general approach for describing the structure of learning "tasks" as a "structured sequence of learning objects that help the learner to understand the content goal." An HTN for teaching a concept includes content to introduce, develop, practice, connect, and reflect.

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This page contains information about the work of the OASIS DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization Subcommittee (at http://www.oasis-open.org).

The DITA OASIS Standard builds content reuse into the authoring process, defining an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web.

The standard is advanced through an open process by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, a group that encourages new participation from developers and users.

- DITA 101
- Why DITA?

See Portuguese translation of this page.

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The purpose of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (DITA TC) is to define and maintain the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and to promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies.

Review the list of organizations that participate in the DITA TC.

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