Adapt Learning Community: Editor Flow

(edit, initial files didn't upload)

Hi Everyone,

Three pictures in two files for you to peruse and comment on.

The first one, Content Production Workflow is a clarification of how we work, and where we see the initial scope of the editing tool. It's high-level and is missing some steps (like asset collection), but serves to demonstrate our assumption that the editing tool project's initial focus is to appear at the end of the content production chain. My expectation is that the future roadmap will encompass more and more from the left of this flow.

The second and third pictures show the flow of content through the system. Again, very high level and simplified.

I've used the word "story" in place of the Module-Topic-Page flow in the top picture, and I'm being loose with my meaning of block (it probably maps to an article in the adapt output format). My choice of story fits with my previous comment elsewhere about a standalone piece of learning, but can easily change to a more suitable term.

The lower picture is a first attempt to understand the publish chain. There was a lot of detail on another thread about grunt, npm, bower, etc. and I wanted to understand what that would involve from the authoring tool. I expect to replace that diagram with a more detailed view when the process becomes clearer.

I'd really appreciate your comments on these, in particular:

Is the scope envisaged in diagram 1 correct?
is the workflow outlined in diagram 1 consistent with everyone's approach? - I'm aware that there's more than one way to do e-learning.
have I missed anything from diagram 2? - and is there anything here that assumes a module not found in the architecture diagram on this post: https://community.adaptlearning.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10

Thanks,

Ryan

Adapt_Process_v02.pdf

Hi Ryan,

In response to diagram 1: I've included my own diagram of our internal production process for creating Adapt courses. Obviously this shows a wider process and one where the course build is a manual undertaking. In my diagram the authoring tool would primarily replace the BUILD phase, along with what is termed Style Page 101 and the SCORM wrap activity. That said, I could also imagine designers rapid prototyping their courses using the authoring environment and a vanilla theme and getting something over to clients quite early on therefore forgoing the more typical wireframe scopes and word based scripts.

With regards to the the authoring editing diagram, I think I'd need to know more about how the 'create project outline' process will work before I could comment.

I don't have any specific views on the publishing process but seems sensible enough to me.

Cheers,

Paul

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Thanks Paul, this is really useful.

I'm not clear myself on the "create project outline" step yet... My current thinking is that it is similar to the storyboarding step (which is outside of Adapt), and essentially involves creating the high-level structure of the course. I suspect it's similar to the Pre-Build work (in the green box) on your diagram.

Could you define what the 101 is? I know it's been mentioned several times, but I don't think I've had a clear definition of what it is and how it fits with the Authoring Environment.

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Adapt_Process_v02.pdf

Hi Ryan,

Sorry for the delay, I wasn't in the office yesterday.

I see, so its a first stab at a high level structure for the various pages before populating with content? On a related note, I'd be really interested in having an ability to quickly produce courses with only headline content in to begin with (and associated references back to the source material). This would replace the scope delivery in the process diagram. It wouldn't be appropriate every time but we find with some clients that they don't really engage with the projects until they have something tangible to play with. Putting flesh on the bones of this scope skeleton would be a really useful approach sometimes.

With regards to Page 101. It when we build a page that contains all the dummy components and then apply styling to see how it all hangs together. We also use it as an opportunity to check any new or non-standard functionality is behaving as expected. We then use this as an internal review point before proceeding the main build.

I guess with regards to the authoring environment much of this would be just by selecting the theme and choosing the components and any available plugins and then building your pages.

Cheers,
Paul

PS: I've updated the diagram as I left some numbers in a few of the stages that were only relevant to an internal project.

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Hi - I've been reading with interest. Ryan's diagram accurately depicts our processes for build as well - I guess we all use something similar and also agree with Paul that being able to generate a skeleton structure of the course is very useful as many clients have no idea how the storyboard translates into an on-screen module and so very often it's not until a prototype or even alpha version that they realise how it hangs together. We often produce the p101 equivalent that Paul refers to for any custom screens, styled up with a couple of standard screens, and use it for sign off of the GUI.

It would be nice to be able to generate that preview in a client area within the tool and to provide secure access to it for the client - and then taking it further be able to gather feedback online but I guess that's further down the line.

What I'm not sure about yet is the scope of the tool around asset management, version control, common asset libraries etc. Some of the platforms being discussed as the underlying framework i.e. drupal etc have this inherently but it is the plan that adapt will utilise this, or would this be handled externally on SVN for example? Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere and I've missed it.

I know the main aim of the tool is to produce adaptive content but it would be nice to address some of those other aspects of content development that I guess we all have to deal with day to day.

Cheers Al

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