comments about the Learning Design topic design

[john_hunt@us.ibm.com]

Dear OASIS DITA learning content sub-committee

First, I want to express my deep thanks
to Kevin Ruess, Susan Wooldridge, Wayne Gafford, Leslie Lucas, Nina Deibler
for all your good work and input on the Learning Design topic design.

Kevin attended our June 7 meeting, and
took us through an excellent overview and discussion of the design plan
for this topic type. I've also spoken with several other SC members about
it. See document here - http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-learningspec/download.php/24256/learning_plan_model_may_30-final.doc.
Meeting minutes here - http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-learningspec/download.php/24320/learningSCmeeting070607.txt

I want to make a few comments, and encourage
others to respond and reply, so we can have a good open discussion about
how to incorporate this content into our DITA design for learning content.

First, a lot of this addresses metadata,
most of which we have available already in all DITA topics and maps from
the core DITA prolog/metadata.
(See Chapter 9 in the DITA 1.1 Language
Specification for details - http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/24319/ditaref-type.pdf

I suggest that we look first at core
DITA metadata for Project elements and Audience. For anything not already
covered, I suggest adding it as specialized prolog/metadata in learningBase,
which makes it available for use in all of the learning types, including
the learningDesign type. 

Any other pieces of content that's really
metadata in the Learning Design, I would suggest adding as specializations
of <data> in the learningDesign prolog/metadata, as well.

We need to coordinate metadata decisions
with our IEEE LOM discussions - see http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita-learningspec/download.php/24174/Metadata%20Model%20Comparison.xls

Once we address metadata coverage, then
my question is, what content buckets do we want to provide for describing
a Learning Design? 

Here's my take, as a straw-man discussion
starter.
 - lcOrganizationalNeeds
 - lcWorkEnvNeeds
 - lcTaskAnalysis
 - lcGapAnalysis
 - lcLearningStrategies (to cover
the Interventions)
   - possibly additional para.cnt-level
specializations to provide more detailed structures for describing the
learning strategies
 - lcTechnical, if there is additional
description to provide beyond the metadata we include by specialization
in the prolog

These are all specializations of generic
section.

I've posted some additional detail on
my strawman design outline for this topic in the wiki, here - http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/LearningContent/LearningInstructionalDesignTopicType.

I encourage your additional comments
and discussion. 

John
___________________________________
John Hunt
Lotus Education Development
Chair, OASIS DITA learning and training content sub-committee
IBM Software Group/Lotus Software
john_hunt@us.ibm.com