Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: Help With .LRN User Documentation

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7: Re: Help With .LRN User Documentation (response to 6)
Posted by Bruce Spear on 11/03/03 03:23 PM
Interesting questions, all.  I'm tempted to ask how the writing of documentation can be compared to the writing of software, in which case, versioning models make a lot of sense.  My immediate interest is much closer to the learners.  First, how can I write tutorials that my  new users can use in 30 minutes or less.  Second, how can we build feedback and assessment into the documentation to the end of helping instructors and users see how well they are doing and what advantages teaching/learning using .LRN might offer.  That is, I am trying to imagine how we might prepare documentation that would lead users to embrace the technology because the benefits would be immediate and obvious; thus, instead of writing "an introduction to the functions," I would write/design "productive learning activities you might try using .LRN". How about that?
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9: Re: Help With .LRN User Documentation (response to 7)
Posted by Matthias Melcher on 11/06/03 10:22 AM
<bruce>how the writing of documentation can be compared to the writing of software, in which case, versioning models make a lot of sense</bruce>

Once we start COLLABORATING on documentation, we need some way to ensure that contributed efforts can be reasonably re-used in forthcoming updates, otherwise most people will prefer to stick with their own monographs.

Of course, revision control with text is not as simple as line-wise cvs diffs in software versioning. But who should try and learn how to collaborate on shared documents if not the promoters of a collaborative system?