Functional Spec

Phase two

An online multi-user pedagogic planner application, incorporating extensive user guidance and a learning design creation tool.

See also GuidanceMaintenance.

Core functionality

1. User login system using OpenId?. Accounts don't need to be authorised, but we will need to have some spam proection (CATCHPA?)
2. User interface
   1. Clear separation of guidance material and the learing design being worked on - an in-browser frame for each.
   2. The whole learning design presented in one document (4 eval requests)
   3. Movement around the design frame updates the content shown in the guidance frame.
   4. Different configurations of the guidance and design parts.
      1. Guidance maximised
      2. Design maximised
      3. Split horizontal
3. Multiple designs per user
4. Design template management
   1. Template creation
      1. From scratch
      2. Clone existing template
   2. Edit template
      1. Add fields
      2. Rearrange field hierarchy
      3. Delete fields
      4. Change field properties [Title; Guidance URLs; Type (component, section, single-line value, multi-line value); Default value]
5. Design management
   1. Design creation
      1. From scratch
      2. From template
      3. Clone existing design
   2. Edit existing design
      1. Change field values
         • Fields can refer to other fields, e.g. Use the title of a design learning objective as an activity outcome
      2. Hide fields
   3. Share design (none/anyone)
   4. Export design
      1. HTML page
   5. Delete design
6. Designs updated in-place, using AJAX calls to a small group of simple database interface pages.
7. Content tools
   1. System tags
   2. Tag clouds

Nice to have

1. More fine-grained sharing options
   1. Who can access (groups, OpenId? domain name, others?...)
   2. What is shared
      1. Template only
      2. Template and data
2. Visual (concept map) representation
3. Design template builder interface (derived from a )
4. More extensive interface configuration
   1. Split vertical
   2. Arrange split view panels
5. Show/hide design node contents, similarly to +/- folder lists in Windows Explorer
6. Export design
   1. RTF/MS Word Doc
   2. MS Excel
   3. ODF
   4. PDF
7. User tags (5 evel requests)
8. Different tag cloud ranking models

Possible future work

1. Integration/data exchange with Course Management Systems (2 eval requests)
2. IMS LD export
3. Visual (concept map) representation
4. Stakeholder representations of learning design (tutor, student, admin...)
5. Multiple stakeholder groups labels for users
6. Offline version (HTML 5 Storage)

Out of scope / rejected

1. Multiple designs open at one time? - No, just ensure that different designs in multiple browser windows will work.

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Phase One, first pass

The Phoebe prototype will not have all this functionality, indeed we are not sure we would want it to.

• Content editing facility (e.g. CMS, wiki)
  • Phoebe admins can edit
  • Specified users can edit
  • Content representing:
    • Activities
    • Resources
    • Concepts
    • (Maybe via tags)
• User accounts, containing:
  • Multiple learning sessions
    • Node annotation functionality for users
    • Each is private by default
    • Option to allow other users read access
    • Option to allow other users write access
    • Option to allow public viewing
    • Allow inclusion of learning sessions as components of another learning session.
    • Session notes export
      • Lesson plan
        • Standard format (list/heirachy of notes matched to pre-defined nodes)
        • User defined format (list/hierarchy of notes constructed by user)
        • Activity flow (node graph based on user-defined (tag)relationships)
      • All notes
      • Format options:
        • HTML - print/save from browser
        • Plain text - print/save from browser
        • MS Word (more involved export) - save from browser
    • Tagcloud of user tags; maybe user tags and built-in tags
  • An association with an institution
• Page tagging
  • By Phoebe admins
  • By users
• Entry points to content pages:
  • Hierarchical list
    • With expanding/contracting sections
  • Tagclouds using custom weighting factors, e.g. Tag
    • Usage frequency
    • Search referral
    • Annotation referral
  • Concept map
    • With expanding/contracting sections
  • Search
    • Tags
    • Full text
• Web-based