Comments on work document - not so sure about embedding topics

Hi, I sent this to John a few weeks ago, I'm finally sending it to you guys. I'm doing a lot of travelling and am unable to attend most meetings, but feel free to contact me by email if you have comments about this.

Question related to proposal 1 and 2.

I'm not getting the specialization for learning content. Shouldn't that be just regular topics that can be ordered in map instead of embedded into a learning object? My concern is for reuse in reference guide vs training guide. If learning topics exist because we need to add some elements to regular topics, can't we just propose to add these elements to all topic types? Adding elements, unless we make them mandatory should not bring up any backward compatibilty issues.

I do agree with the framework topics. These topics are interesting to the learning process and would probably not contain anything 'informational' in nature, they just provide context for the learing environment. I can easily imagine that some of them can be created automatically (overview, summary, assessment), at least in part, from content in the core topics. That could be possible if topics are built correctly, with a learning short description, for example.

What I don't like is the idea of the bucket topic where other topics are 'embedded'. What is the added value of this bucket? Doesn't it limit reuse opportunities with non-learning based documents? Isn't it better to add required learning elements to all basic topic types (as non-mandatory for backward compatibility). This way topics created for learning can be reused for other types of documents by hiding the learning specific stuff in processing. And vice versa. If the 'bucket' is for organizational purposes only, why don't we just have a section our map model that could become a 'learning content section/chapter/module/whatever name we want to give it' where topics are are referenced with the standard topicref mechanism?.

I already have a specialization for exercises, if you guys would like to use it to get started, I'd be happy to provide it.

I'm still not totally getting SCORM and how it integrates with DITA. I see it as an extra layer on top of topics and maps... I'm going give all my trust to those who understand it better than me :-)

It is my impression that training requires more linearity than reference guides. People need to understand how different tasks are linked to each other, and how they can be put together in order to perform metatasks. (Different between system task and user task, where the user task may require performing 2 or more system tasks in a specific order.). I'm not sure we have anything to answer that issue. Maybe that is what the learning content specialization is tying to answer?

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