Scorm 2.01 experiment on oer  (Page 3/3)

For those issues where this proposal is not intended to provide a complete solution, DITA responds as follows:

• d) Implications of service-orientated approaches

  A key factor in supporting this objective in the context of the issues outlined in this paper is that ofstoring and managing content in repositories (possibly multiple repositories) and then delivering that content to a variety of applications on demand. DITA isa structured content standard and so would allow for dynamic transformation according to the application requesting the content. DITA’s support for singlesource publishing provides useful support for service-orientated approaches. The complete solution would go beyond what DITA is able to provide and includerepository and content management issues, authentication and authorization, etc which are issues beyond the scope of SCORM and this White Paper.

• g) Accommodation of new approaches to LET

  It is important to separate the content issues from those of instructional design, application functionality anda host of other issues that need to be resolved in order to provide holistic solutions for new approaches to learning, education and training. DITA canprovide a single sourcing approach that allows a variety of different applications that contribute different functionality in response to theserequirements to use/reuse common content for different learning approaches. This is only part of the solution that needs to be provided, however, would representan advance on what has been available previously. The concept is that of providing stores of content that may be accessed through applications that offerthe appropriate functionalities to support a desired approach to learning or training.

• h) Metadata, CORDRA and syndication

  DITA provides a useful and robust approach to metadata, however, there are idiosyncrasies that relate to theoriginal design of DITA that would most likely require some modification. Some of these issues have already been raised in the DITA Technical Committee andwould benefit from input from the learning communities if DITA were adoptedwithin SCORM 2.0. Even in the short term, the ability to more easily provide a richer and more relevant metadata approach for learning content in DITA woulddeliver some immediate benefits. The DITA Learning Specialization already supports all of the IEEE LOM fields. An holistic approach to a content strategytogether with metadata that is embedded (and later also associated) in the learning content would also better support automated extraction of metadata fromthe content and registration requirements within CORDRA federations and may contribute to enabling various forms of content syndication. Again, adoption ofDITA is not a panacea for metadata issues. It would be assistive in the short term and with further participation from LET communities would be improved overtime.

A complete model for SCORM 2.0 would require the inclusion of other standards and approaches to complete the functionalities as determined by the final requirements set.This proposal limits its approach to the content issues. There is nothing evident in this approach that would result in problems associated with satisfaction of whateverelse SCORM 2.0 requires.