Summary of learning topic, map, and domain designs

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.2

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Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.2

The DITA 1.2 Learning and Training specialization provides a set of specialized DITA topics, a learning interactions domain, a learning metadata domain, and a learning map domain to support creating and delivering structured learning content.

Learning topic types

The following specialized DITA topic types provide support for creating learning and training content.

Learning Plan topic type
Describes learning needs and goals, instructional design models, task analyses, learning taxonomies, and other information necessary to the lesson planning process.
Learning Overview topic type
Identifies the learning objectives and includes other information helpful to the learner, such prerequisites, duration, and intended audience.
Learning Content topic type
Provides the learning content itself and enables direct use of content from DITA task, concept, and reference topics, as well as additional content of any topic type that supports specific objectives declared in the Learning Overview topic type.
Learning Summary topic type
Recaps and provides context for the learning objectives and provides guidance to reinforce learning and long-term memory.
Learning Assessment topic type
Presents instruments that measure progress, encourage retrieval, and stimulate reinforcement of the learning content and can be presented before the content as a pre-assessment or after the content as a post-assessment checkpoint or test.

Learning map domain

Use the learning map domain to organize groups of topics as learning objects.

Note: The learning map domain is part of the learningMap and the learningBookmap document types. As these learning map structures are delivered as a domain specialization rather than as a structural specialization, it is possible to extend any type of DITA map to include these structures.
learningGroup
A map container and optional topic reference to introduce and group learning objects into higher-level organizations, such as course-level, module-level, or lesson-level. A learningGroup can contain other learningGroup elements, allowing you to organize learning content at course, module, or other higher levels of hierarchy.
learningObject
A map container and optional topic reference to introduce and group the topic references for a learning object.
learningPlanRef
A topic reference to a learning plan or other topic that provides the learning plan.
learningOverviewRef
A topic reference to a learning overview or other topic that introduces the learning object.
learningContentRef
A topic reference to a learning content topic, or a topic, task, concept, reference or other specialized topic.
learningContentComponentRef
A topic reference to a learning content topic, or a topic, task, concept, reference or other specialized topic.
learningSummaryRef
A topic reference to a learning summary or other topic that provides the summary.
learningPreAssessmentRef
A topic reference to a learning assessment or other topic that is used as a pre-assessment.
learningPostAssessmentRef
A topic reference to a learning assessment or other topic that is used as a post-assessment.

Learning interactions domain

The learning interactions domain defines a set of basic learning interaction elements as a DITA domain.
lcOpenQuestion
Poses an open-ended question in an assessment interaction.
lcTrueFalse
Presents the learner with two choices, one correct, the other incorrect, often presented as true/false or yes/no responses.
lcSingleSelect
Presents three or more choices, only one of which is correct.
lcMultipleSelect
Presents two or more choices, two or more of which are correct.
lcMatching
In a list of paired choices, the learner identifies the correct choice that matches another choice.
lcHotspot
Presents an image, and the learner clicks on one or more regions to indicate a choice.
lcSequencing
Presents choices in a list that the learner must arrange in a correct ordered sequence.

Learning metadata domain

The learning metadata domain defines a set of basic learning metadata elements as a DITA domain and available for use in the learning topic types, as specialized prolog metadata and in the learning map domain, as specialized topicmeta.

lcLom makes the learning metadata elements available in the learning topics and learning map domain.

Elements in lcLom include:
  • lomAggregationLevel
  • lomContext
  • lomCoverage
  • lomDifficulty
  • lomInstallationRemarks
  • lomIntendedUserRole
  • lomInteractivityLevel
  • lomInteractivityType
  • lomLearningResourceType
  • lomOtherPlatformRequirements
  • lomSemanticDensity
  • lomStructure
  • lomTechRequirement
  • lomTypicalAgeRange
  • lomTypicalLearningTime

Instructor notes

The learning interactions domain also makes available an lcInstructornote element for providing instructor-specific information.