Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Surveys and Branching

Steffan,

> we're
> better off sticking to the original IMS Simple Sequencing
> Specification, IMHO.

Yes, that is cool. However, take a look at the doc since it describes a bit more technically the way that a simple sequencing engine should be design. IMS specs don't get to much technicalities and those are left (unfortunately or fortunately depends) to the designers and developers. It might give you some interesting perspectives on how to approach the design and construction.

> Curriculum will have
> working relations with at least two other packages:
Assessment and > Learning Object Repository (LOR).

I agree.

However, tell me ask you if I could do the following thing. Let's say I have a course that have three learning objects (A, B and C). Also, included in this course, we have the specified rules for the sequencing of those learning object (i.e. if learning object A completed and ScoreGreaterThan X, then Continue with B). Would I be able to pass these rules (or set activities or objectives) to the curriculum api and then it would give me the right sequencing of learning object to be launched for a particular learner that has taked (or not) the course before?

Or when I upload the course, should I pass the acs_object_id for my course and then the all the sequencing rules of the objects so the curriculum package "knows" how the scheme of launching the objects should be layed out?

I think basically, we need to define the API to the sequencing engine and what the SS will do.

> As I've suggested in an earlier post[1], it's not
> LOR's task "to include the sequencing engine to be able to launch
> different learning objects according to IMS simple sequencing rules";
> it's the task of Curriculum to be able to map content in LOR (or
> elsewhere) to activities in the curriculum sequences and launch them.

I guess it makes sense to launch LO from the LOR. However, we would need to work something in the between to support SCORM. It has its own funky API which is very specific. But I think we can work something around it.

Now about assessment. So for what you say, do the assessment package must have objectives and activities set according to IMS specs if the want to use the SS engine?

The way I would like to see it, and please correct me if you think there is something I might have missed, is to be able to give the SS engine the activities and objectives first [ i.e. ssengine::new_set_of_sequences -new_course_id $acs_object_id, -set_of_rules_and_objectives -map_to_LO {map to the LO (acs_object_ids) for the LOs in the content repository})]. Then I would like to be able to be given by the SS engine the proper sequencing for a given learner at any time [ie: ssengine::request_sequence_obj(user_id, course_id)] and get in return the sequence for this particular user (given what he has done in the past).

Moreover, a [ ssengine::check_activity (user_id, course_id activity_id) and get in return the status of the activity (satisfy, completed, attempted, etc).

Also others that deal with some sort of reporting (what have a learner have taken, where is he now, how many times it has taken it, and all that jazz). Do we kinda have the same thing in mind?

Thank you,

Ernie