RE: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

I agree, Rick’s proposal seems exactly right to me. One nuance (which in effect we dealt with in IDPF days): the profile of EPUB (if there is one) should be called EPUB for Education, enabling IMS to take ownership of the EDUPUB name for _extending_ the spec (am I right in using that word?) for their functionality.

The reason I raise that last question is that we should be clear whether the W3C needs to in any way bless a profile of EPUB. My expectation has always been that a profile of EPUB in no way creates a publication that is not still a valid EPUB. But once we say “okay, IMS or XYZ, do your own thing for your vertical,” there is the possibility that they will diverge in a way that results in an invalid EPUB. As it is, we have not control or oversight on that. I’m fine with trusting IMS to do the right thing, but this sets a precedent for basically any XYZ to do what they want. Which of course they can do anyway. . . . ;)

--Bill

P.S. I did have the same concern that Paul did: not losing the education-specific vocabulary that we had in EDUPUB/EPUB for Education that has not made it into the EPUB Structural Semantics.

Bill Kasdorf

VP and Principal Consultant | Apex CoVantage

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From: Paul Belfanti [mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com]
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2017 9:47 AM
To: Johnson, Rick; public-publishingbg@w3.org
Subject: Re: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal

Rick,

This plan seems practical. The only thing that’s unclear to me is what happens to the expanded semantics associated with education content. Will that be fully deprecated, and if so, how do we account for the structural needs of the edu segment?

Thanks,

Paul
—
Paul Belfanti
Vice President, Production, Manufacturing & Content Architecture
(w) 978.639.3536
(m) 201.783.4884


From: Rick Johnson <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>>
Date: Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 12:48 PM
To: "public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>" <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Subject: EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) proposal
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 12:49 PM

All,

For discussion on Tuesday’s business group call:

After discussions among the steering committee, and with the community group chairs, and with IMS Global board members and staff, I would like to make this proposal for a path forward for the EPUB for Education (EDUPUB) specification:

EDUPUB/EPUB for Education Proposal
(referencing the current draft at http://www.idpf.org/epub/profiles/edu/spec/ )

Consolidate work around the EPUB 3.1 specification:
All accessibility work, the ‘Education Document Models’ (section 3), Annotations (section 9), Navigation (section 7), and the inclusion of scriptable components (section 5) or distributable objects (section 10) are the purview of, and stated to align with the W3C work on EPUB and future iterations of EPUB.  In short, we tell people to use EPUB 3.1, and future versions for these items.  The work done for EDUPUB is deprecated in favor of EPUB 3.1 and future versions.  This includes the ‘Content Structure’ details in section 4 (in essence, the content structure details and associated metadata defined in Accessibility 1.0 are all that will be made normative).

The ‘Publication Metadata’ (section 8 and the related vocabulary)) have value to be made normative for educational use, and should be given to the CG to finalize as a set of specifications for educational use of EPUB 3.1.  Attention should be given to harmonizing this work with other W3C investigations, such as is illustrated in the comment at https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/846#issuecomment-290399200.  Where it makes sense, these can be rolled into a 3.1.x release. Special care should be drawn to the deprecation of epub type and the move to role in a 3.1.x release.

Dealing with (section 6) outcome results flowing back to a grade book, and integration with educational systems needing interoperability (such as LTI) are not the purview of a horizontally focused organization (like the W3C), and should be given over to a vertically focused organization (like IMS Global) to standardize any needed best practices and certification procedures.  We should allow them to have the freedom to use the EDUPUB name for that set of specifications, if they so desire.



-Rick


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