Re: Representing Sequences of Educational Exercises and Activities

Steve,
Phil,
All,

Thank you. On the related topics of 1EdTech technologies and computer adaptive testing, I found this: https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/cat/v1p0/impl .


As for the sketch (https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/153), I am exploring how to enable: (1) resources, e.g., digital books and textbooks, with exercises and activities in them, such that no local or remote service would be required to provide readers with adaptive or personalized item sequences, (2) resources which could optionally utilize one or more local or remote services, and (3) resources which would require access to one or more local or remote services to function. There are also to consider (4) resources which could operate while offline, storing educational data, expecting to connect to the Web at a later point.

One can envision learners being able to easily configure local and remote services with their operating systems, or once per digital book or textbook, and for all of the features – and those items in them – to subsequently just work.


With respect to intelligent tutoring system interoperability, new AI architectures appear to be visually processing learners' applications' screen contents (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvXZCocyU_M).

I am wondering about how to enable more features and capabilities from the item API side. For instance, via items' APIs, intelligent tutoring systems would be able to perform tasks including, but not limited to: (1) obtaining natural-language descriptions of items, their contents, their objectives, and more, from items' metadata, (2) pointing to and highlighting contents in items (e.g., in interactive 3D visualizations), and (3) advancing or rewinding some items to described, rendered keyframes.

I am also wondering about how applications (e.g., Web browsers), resources loaded in them, and/or items displayed in these resources might be able to signal to interoperating tutoring systems that, instead of homework, quizzes or exams were underway.


Best regards,
Adam

________________________________
From: Steve Midgley <steve@learningtapestry.com>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2024 9:00 AM
To: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com>
Cc: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>; public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org <public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Representing Sequences of Educational Exercises and Activities

Hi Adam,

I work with Phil on K12 OCX, and it's true that OCX doesn't currently anticipate dynamic content sequencing. We generally rely on a piece of technology we call a "loader" to read the OCX and inject it into an LMS or similar system. That loader could make instructional design decisions such as sequencing based on user-provided configuration - but this would still result in a statically loaded sequence of content into an LMS. I think primarily this is because I'm not aware of any LMS that can handle algorithmic adjustments to content sequencing..

I do think that if content sequence logic representations become important in OCX/loader contexts, it would be very interesting to provide a mechanism to include your Algorithm types in the OCX. I don't think that would be hard to achieve on the OCX side. We already provide mechanisms to inject free-standing assessment packages, as well as external learning tools (both of which many LMS can handle), so for systems that can handle Algorithms alongside content, it seems pretty do-able to package it in an OCX statement..

The problem right now (for me) is that I don't know what systems can support this kind of dynamic content sequencing. Guidance welcome on this!

I'd be happy to talk more about this if it's useful, and I'd guess Phil would too.. I'll certainly be interested to keep up with what you're developing over time..

Steve

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 6:21 PM Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com<mailto:adamsobieski@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Phil,
All,


Hello. One difference between the K12-OCX model [2][3] (as I currently understand it) and the proposed ideas [1] sketched for discussion is that the proposed ideas utilize JavaScript to enable dynamic sequences of items.

The proposed ideas [1] intend to enable expressiveness for content-authoring teams including and beyond static sequences of activities (e.g., arrays or ItemLists of Activities).

Instead of content authors having to manually write these JavaScript algorithms, software tools can be envisioned which would allow content authors to create and to use diagrams and visualizations. These software tools would then generate and output packages including JavaScript algorithms.

Brainstorming with respect to models, schemas, and ontologies, perhaps there could be included a new or existing model component, "Algorithm", representing a thing which schedules Activities for learners?

Happy to discuss the proposed ideas [1], K12-OCX [2][3], or both.


Best regards,
Adam


[1] https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/153


[2] https://k12ocx.github.io/k12ocx-specs/


[3] https://k12ocx.github.io/k12ocx-specs/manifest/structure.html


________________________________
From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk<mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2024 4:10 AM
To: public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org<mailto:public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org> <public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org<mailto:public-exercises-and-activities@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Representing Sequences of Educational Exercises and Activities


So sorry: this is the link I meant to include: https://k12ocx.github.io/k12ocx-specs/manifest/structure.html



On 15/05/2024 09:08, Phil Barker wrote:

Hi Adam, everyone, you might be interested in K12-OCX. It's about publishing curriculum and content materials in such a away that they can be reused, and has suggestions for metadata to describe ordered aggregations of content. Apologies that the formatting on that link is somewhat broken, but we will be doing further work on standardizing the spec soon, so now seems like an opportune time to mention it. Let me know if you're interested.


Phil



On 14/05/2024 21:43, Adam Sobieski wrote:
Educational Exercises and Activities Community Group,

Hello. I just opened a WICG issue with some ideas about representing sequences of educational exercises and activities in self-contained OCF-based archives and utilizing JavaScript to support dynamic client-side item scheduling.

https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/153


Hopefully these ideas are of some interest. I'm eager to improve upon the proposal using any comments, questions, or feedback. Thank you.


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski
http://www.phoster.com


--

Phil Barker<http://people.pjjk.net/phil>, http://people.pjjk.net/phil (he/him).
Cetis LLP<https://www.cetis.org.uk>: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.
PJJK Limited<https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning; information systems for education.

CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in England number OC399090
PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, number SC569282.
--

Phil Barker<http://people.pjjk.net/phil>, http://people.pjjk.net/phil (he/him).
Cetis LLP<https://www.cetis.org.uk>: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.
PJJK Limited<https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning; information systems for education.

CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in England number OC399090
PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, number SC569282.