DITA

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Definition

• DITA is an XML document standard (vocabulary) for authoring modular text.

• “The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web.” (Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, retrieved 12:27, 3 November 2006 (MET)).

Dita was originally developed at IBM by Don R. Day, Michael Priestley and others. It now is a OASIS standard. Its general architecture may be quite interesting for education, because it (1) accommodates for topic-oriented organization and reuse (as opposed to long documents), (2) allows specialization and (3) therefore supports semantic markup (as opposed to Docbook which is typographic basically).

DITA summary

DITA is a topics-based information architecture. "Darwin information typing architecture" can be summarized as:

1. Darwin: DITA utilizes principles of inheritance for specialization
2. Information Typing: DITA was originally designed for technical information based on an information architecture of Concept, Task and Reference
3. Architecture: DITA is a model for extension both of design and of processes

Topics can be physically or logically embedded. The general architecture of a topic is:

• Title
• Prolog (author, metadata, small description, etc.)
• Body (sections that are structured according to each topic type)
• Tail (embedded topics)

Here is picture (from Don Day PPT reproduced without permission) showing the specialization principle by putting side-by side the generic topic and the "task" topic:

DITA generic topic and task topic

New topics can be defined as autonomous nodes (or better) as nodes that inherit properties from a parent.

DITA in education

DSchneider believes that DITA could play a role in education.

Here are some quickly made up use case examples:

Pedagogical knowledge management

• Educators and communities of practice are sometimes engaged in knowledge management tasks and thus constitute a knowledge-building community. In addition, there exist many structures financed to provide educators and other experts with structure information. Here are a few examples:
• pedagogical scenarios
• Smaller learning activities
• Lesson plans
• Feature lists of various technologies (as different as for example microworlds, LMSs, cognitive tools
• Websites like this wiki (e.g. pages that describe theories, concepts, methods, technology, etc.) and that are interlinked and categorized.

Searching

This kind of information is characterized by being structured and it would be nice if it could be searched by "kinds of information". In theory this could be implemented with SQL. However, our experience shows that building SQL tables for each kind of information is very time consuming and not very flexible. The opposite alternative is unstructuredness, e.g. like a Wiki. Wikis allow to enter data very quickly, but have the disadvantage that one can't easily produce text on demands (it's not easy to make a wiki book) and that full text search has its limits once the wiki starts growing. In addition, Wiki engines don't produce text, but the spit back page names plus the search context. E.g. you can't say something like "let's have a list of all the references on pages that belong to the category "instructional design modeling".

DITA can address some of the needs for flexible information retrieval architectures, in particular if combined with a XML database web application like eXist.

We believe that eXist "will take off" as soon as there are sufficient PHP APIs. eXist is both a server but there is also a portal written in Java (which makes this technology not very accessible to the "bricoleur" world of education). The advantage of an XML-database is that you can just "stick in" XML contents and then retrieve them with XQuery expressions. Adding new information structures may require rewriting of interfaces to XQuery to optimize retrieving, but otherwise flexibility comes at a much lower price.

this paragraph should be move to some future article on XML databases

Flexible document production

Now lets image that you are engaged in teacher training and wish to hand out some training materials that is appropriate for a given course, or that you are interested in reading all information related to some topic, e.g. how to design inquiry-based learning. DITA would allow to create print or web documents on the fly, on a per needed bases.

Authoring

In some cases, it is desired that information entered be complete according to some standards. A typical example would be lesson plans. In order to share these plans it would be nice to this through an online application. A flexible TTW DITA-based editor coupled to an on-line XML database could address this issue. (However DSchneider admits that XML editing is not easy and user must receive some initial training).

A test case

DSchneider made some DITA extensions to have a writing tool to author the TECFA SEED catalog, an inventory of various learning activities and tools that can support these.

The DITA + TECFA extensions DTD included the following new topics:

• card: generic node inherited by the others
• c3msbrick: topic to describe conceptually plugins/modules for C3MS portals
• c3mssoft: topic to describe software for plugins/modules
• learnactivity: topic to describe learning activities (i.e. small scenarios)
• learnact: topic to describe elementary learning activities

e-Learning objects

• It may be an interesting idea to investigate how DITA could enhance or replace simple content-based standards like LMS Content Packaging / SCORM based learning objects. Hunt and Bernard (2005) demonstrated that DITA XML can be extended to develop reusable learning content.

Educational modelling languages

The purpose of more advanced modelling languages is to outline pedagogical scenarios in terms of learner activities, to exchange learning units, and define executable scenarios. DITA certainly has been built as a text-centric vocabulary, but there is no reason why extensions couldn't be executable.

Again, there exist standards like IMS Learning Design (LD) or IMS Simple Sequencing, but as it stands today each of these languages only cover parts of our needs.

An other idea is to use DITA to sketch out scenarios as text document and then translate (e.g. via XSLT) to a vocabulary like IMS learning design for which there ought to be engines within the nearer future. In a similar spirit, DITA could act as a container for executable activity descriptions (e.g. LD within DITA)

DITA to support learner activities

DITA could be a cognitive tool for writing activities or a component for a such a tool.

DITA extensions could be built to help students with writing strongly structured texts. A typical example is what DSchneider and Paraskevy Synteta did in their C3MS project-based learning model. Students had to use a special purpose project tool named ePBL, which stands for « Project-Based e-learning and had to define research plans with a specially made XML grammar.

Some vocabularies may need a special authoring tool. A nice example is Benetos (2006) Computer-supported argumentative writer based on her ArgEssML defined as Relax NG grammar.

Discussion

What could we gain by writing vocabularies as DITA extensions ?

Firstly, there is no initial need to write stylesheets (contents of extensions displays). Second, we can reuse existing DITA topics (modules).

Structured portions of text could be integrated with others kinds of text, in particular some very loose "title + body" formatting that is supporting by the generic basic DITA topic. This would lead to a fine "manual engine" where typically very structured portions of text could mix with "loose" text.

Of course, these shortly sketched use cases could be combined into a document-centric learning and teaching environment, e.g. see instructional design models like writing-to-learn and Knowledge-building community model.

On the negative side: DITA ain't easy ...

Links

(needs some addition, and moving articles to references)

• Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA XML) Cover page article
• DITA - XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture FAQ
• Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
• Specialization in the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
• The Tecfa SEED Catalog

References

• Benetos, Kalliopi (2006), Computer-Supported Argumentative Writer An authoring tool with built-in scaffolding and self-regulation for novice writers of argumentative texts, Master thesis, TECFA, University of Geneva. [URL: http://tecfa.unige.ch/staf/staf-k/benetos/thesis/doc/kalli_benetos_memoire.pdf PDF]

• Hunt, John P. and Robert Bernard (2005), An XML-based information architecture for learning content, Part 1: A DITA specialization design, IBM developerWorks article, HTML.

• Hunt, John P. and Robert Bernard (2005), An XML-based information architecture for learning content, Part 1: A DITA content pilot, IBM developerWorks article, HTML.

• Schneider, Daniel. (2005) "Gestaltung kollektiver und kooperativer Lernumgebungen" in Euler & Seufert (eds.), E-Learning in Hochschulen und Bildungszentren. Gestaltungshinweise für pädagogische Innovationen, München: Oldenbourg. Preprint in PDF

• Schneider, Daniel with Paraskevi Synteta, Catherine Frété, Fabien Girardin, Stéphane Morand (2003) Conception and implementation of rich pedagogical scenarios through collaborative portal sites: clear focus and fuzzy edges. ICOOL International Conference on Open and Online Learning, December 7-13, 2003, University of Mauritius. PDF.

• Schneider Daniel & Paraskevi Synteta (2005). Conception and implementation of rich pedagogical scenarios through collaborative portal sites, in Senteni,A. Taurisson,A. Innovative Learning & Knowledge Communities / les communautés virtuelles: apprendre, innover et travailler ensemble", ICOOL 2003 & Colloque de Guéret 2003 selected papers, a University of Mauritius publication, under the auspices of the UNESCO, ISBN-99903-73-19-1. PDF Preprint