Looking at the content models of <learningPreAssessmentRef> and < learningPostAssessmentRef> it looks like the original design assumed there would not be a need for substructure, which seems rather short sighted looking at it now. I can assure you that I never gave it a moment’s thought during the original L&T development I was involved in.
I assume the purpose of the keydef here is to bind a key to the objective topic so it can then be referenced in order to associate it with the assessment referenced. If so, putting it inside the learningPreAssessmentRef would be rather odd practice—I’d expect that you would have a separate branch in the map that organizes all the objectives independent of any use of them. But it wouldn’t actually matter where the keydef went.
Using topicsubject is an interesting idea but I think it’s too tightly bound to subject schemes, which incurs a lot of overhead. But I think it would make sense to have a similar object-specific reference that means “this objective is an objective of the parent topicref’s referenced resource”.
Note that simply allowing <topicref> within these two topicref types would then allow both keydef and topicsubject to be used (once the classification domain was integrated into your map types).
If the requirement is to be able to associate objective *topics* with other topics in order to establish an “objective of” relationship between the objective topic and the other topic (presumably a learning object or assessment of some kind), then in addition to something analogous to topicsubject, there are only three mechanisms available within the DITA (that I can think of):
- Relationship table rows where the relationship table represents an “objective of” relationship, e.g., the column that points to objectives is labeled “objective” and the column that points to learning objects is labeled “learning object”. It might also make sense to have a three-column row: learning object, objectives, and assessments.
- A subject scheme map that uses the generic relates-to relationship to relate the objective topic to the learning object or assessment topic
- From the learning object or assessment, a cross reference to the objective topic. A generic xref would be sufficient as long as the objective topic identifies itself as an objective, otherwise you’d want a specialized xref like “objectiveref” that makes it clear that this a relationship between a learning thing and its objectives.
I’m not a big fan of subject scheme maps—I think using relationship tables would be more natural and obvious.
I think the xref approach is required regardless (basically giving you a replacement for the current in-topic objective lists or maybe simply a way to augment those lists with L&T-defined links to the objectives defined elsewhere).
Cheers,
E.
--
Eliot Kimber
http://contrext.com
From: <dita-learningspec@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Amber Swope <amber@ditastrategies.com>
Date: Thursday, April 5, 2018 at 3:39 PM
To: DITA Learning Spec list <dita-learningspec@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [dita-learningspec] learning maps questions
I’m working with Dawn on documenting ways to associate learning objectives and was trying to associate learning objectives to references in learning maps.
I tried to associate an objective with an assessment topic. However, the <learningPreAssessmentRef> and <learningPostAssessmentRef> elements do not allow <keydef> or <topicsubject>. They only support <learningGroup> and <learningObject>. It turns out that none of the learning reference elements allow <keydef> or <topicsubject>. Does this mean that there is no way to associate objectives at the referenced topic level in a learning map other than using relationship tables?
Was this intentional? If not, can we address this? Are there any other elements that we should consider allowing within the specialized learning referencing elements?
Thanks and have a great day, A
