E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

After the diversions of the last few days, I will now return to my discussion on developing e-learning content using an open environment. As discussed in a previous post, we can say that there are certain unresolved philosophical matters surrounding the notion of open environments; I will return to these presently. However, the gratis / libre debate should not preclude you from taking advantage of the range of ‘open’ and ‘free’ tools to develop an effective e-learning solution.

As a reminder, here are the categories of tools I recommend to implement this open development environment:

• Content Creation Tools
• Media Creation and Integration: OSS Tools
• Media Creation and Integration: Proprietary Tools
• Content Delivery Platform
• Optional Proprietary Tools

Click here for the detailed list of the tools themselves.

While the tools themselves are a disparate group, their common characteristic is that they are XML-based. This, in theory at least, means that either the applications or their outputs are interoperable, and this creates the foundation for the “openness” that we seek.

Now read on…

Over the next few days, I will outline in detail the ‘toolkit’ used in this content development environment, before discussing pedagogical approaches and implementation processes. As the focus here is on developing e-learning in a specific environment, I am making the assumption that the learning content has already been developed, as learning content development and instructional design per se is not the topic being investigated.

The Powerhouse: DocBook and XXE
XMLmind XML Editor (XXE) is the central component in my open authoring environment. It is a ‘nearly WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that uses CSS to control the layout and style of DocBook XML (or XHTML) content. However, the document author does not see the tags; rather, the application UI is more reminiscent of a word processor interface (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Screenshot of XMLmind XML Editor

The content author edits the structured XML document by adding elements, setting attributes, selecting, cutting, pasting, etc. and the editor automatically applies the appropriate styles. The style is an interpretation of the DocBook DTD to simplify identification of the formatting elements without the need to understand all the XML tags.

Note, however, these styles are not linked to how the content is rendered. The final look and feel of the document is controlled by CSS stylesheets.

XXE supports the following features:

• Converts to XSLT-FO format then to PDF format
• Converts to HTML format
• Produces metadata files to support SCORM
• Checks spelling
• Checks that a document conforms to the DTD
• Checks that a document conforms to relevant documentation conventions
• Documents can be rendered as a number of separate files
• Controls look and feel centrally

Transformations are applied to the XXE-authored XML using Formatting Objects Processor. Formatting Objects Processor (FOP) is driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO). It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output.

Output formats currently supported include:

• Portable Document Format (PDF)
• Printer Command Language (PCL)
• PostScript (PS)
• Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG)
• eXtensible Markup Language XML (area tree representation)
• Print
• Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT)
• MapInfo Interchange Format (MIF)
• Text File (TXT)

The primary output target is PDF (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Screenshot of PDF file generated from XXE via XSL-FO

Other outputs include HTML pages (see Figure 3) and help files.

These outputs were generated from the command-line. Depending upon the level of expertise in your organization, you may decide to use a GUI shell to enable users to generate the outputs.

Figure 4 Screenshot of XSL-FO command line interface

References:

DocBook.org: http://www.docbook.org/

XMLMind XML Editor: http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/
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