Adapt Learning Community: Which way wiki?

If the Adapt wiki is to be the primary source of technical documentation for the framework and the authoring tool, where should wiki development be focused?

1) What “audiences” should the Adapt Wiki address? What categories or roles can be used to guide wiki development? Is technical proficiency, as conceived below, an adequate lens?

Non-technical user

course creators who would not attempt to use the framework without the assistance of an authoring tool or without having someone else to install it for them and to guide their work

Technical user

course creators who can install the framework and use it to create a course with little or no help from another person; who can utilize input from technical support without it be being formatted as step-by-step directions

Developer

technical users who create plugins (components, extensions, themes), provide technical support for framework & authoring tool users, and/or contribute to Adapt code

2) What group has the most urgent need for more documentation?

3) What topics does this group need to have created or revised?

Your thoughts about any of this?
Thanks in advance!

Hi Chuck,

I think that all those groups will benefit from detailed step by step installation process as at the moment it is not clear at all (some ommisions, out-dated details or too broad mental shortcuts done).

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Yes, Łukasz, I think this is an important place to start. Installation is a significant step in how the user relates to Adapt. By attempting to install either the framework or authoring tool, the user has demonstrated that they find Adapt attractive (or at least intriguing). We want them to judge Adapt on its own merits, not on a negative installation experience.

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Hi Chuck

All are valid audiences but it question of priorities right now.

For me, the developer documentation for the framework is quite good, although it would be great if it could be standardised as it's refreshed for version 2.0.

Personally I think the authoring tool wiki could use some attention, particularly with regards to specific versions of platforms (NodeJS) required, which has caused some problems. I think we should possibly update the install code also to check for these pre-requisites and make things as easy as possible for end-users. (I'm assuming that end users at this stage have enough technical skills to install and configure the application though.)

In terms of creating plugins which are compatible with the authoring tool, we're still tweaking what will actually be possible so I would put that one down the list for the meantime. There are some hints at the way things are going with regards to the core components but things are still likely to change over the coming months.

Regards,

Brian

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Brian,

Based on your post, I added a couple of items to authoring tool Wikiprovements #606. Please comment there if I didn't quite capture your thoughts (or if you have others you'd like to add).

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Hi Chuck,

first of all, just a big thanks for getting involved more closely with the Adapt project.

It was great to talk to you and I'm excited that you're keen to work with the core team to help out on the documentation aspect. I'm delighted to have you involved in this area in particular as we place significant value on documentation (see our core principles) but are often falling short of our own standards (as I'm sure is a common experience out there).

As for your questions, thanks for raising this here as we discussed.

My view is that looking at the installation instructions of both the authoring tool and the framework for the Technical User audience (as per your definition above) is probably the highest priority / would have the biggest positive impact. I also agree with Brian that we could add some further love to the Authoring Tool wiki.

That's my two pence worth - really keen to hear what the community think...

Thanks,
Sven

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Happy to help, Sven.

Tom Taylor has started a list of potential improvements to the framework wiki: Wikiprovements #548. I want to call attention to it here. It's a quick and easy way for anyone in the community to help identify needed improvements.

I just created a parallel issue for improvements to the authoring tool wiki: Wikiprovements #606. (Hope the similar name doesn't cause too much confusion.)

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GitHub has a showcase of Projects with great wikis. It's a source of ideas. For example, I like the clarity of a custom sidebar menu (with the default Pages rolled up).

But it got me thinking...
Aren't there principles of learning and of accessing information that this community can apply to these wikis? Aren't we uniquely suited to presenting content visually to learners? Sure, we're constrained to some degree by the wiki functionality...but every tool has its limitations. And yes, we have technical information to communicate, but we can easily identify at least three sets of "learners" who will relate to that information differently.

Oh, so many of us are geeks--but we're e-learning geeks!

How can we structure and present the information in the wiki that would make an e-learning community proud?

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Hey Chuck,

I agree with most of the comments here.

The question really is priority and I think the priority should still be technical users, gaining more involvement here from outside will help push the framework further and gain more momentum.

The framework still requires you to have a fair bit of technical knowledge, even step by step instructions would still prove tricky for the "non-technical users".

With the recent changes to the framework and a lot of new things being added (such as accessibility, and building to make components work with the authoring tool) the v2 update should ideally have an up-to-date wiki to help push the release and to avoid any potential blocks for using the new version of the framework.

Regards

Alan

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