Distribution:Authoring Features
January 2, 2010 by admin
At another level of organization, we can put together a drupal distribution that would provide pre-built features that are conducive to the type of content we specialize in. So, what is that type of content?
Basically, what we are looking at is a new type of textbook. One that makes it as easy as possible for content experts to write interactive textbooks, or perhaps create websites that would serve as textbook companions. There might need to be some types of content that area easily created without hiring anybody. In fact, I'm sure there would need to be such, but also easy plugins so that people who hired a web developer to create custom content would be able to hook that into the database as easily as possible.
So, what features would the distribution need, beyond what we are already providing through the e_book? One way to look at it is in terms of work-flow. What would a content expert do in order to author books in the system, and how can this be made as easy and intuitive as it can possibly be?
Another way of looking at it is to select a subject area that we want to target specifically, such as math or chemistry. Something that requires specialized notations or tools that make it difficult to press a plain vanilla drupal site into useful service.
I should probably have started this as a forum rather than a book, but we can treat this particular page as though it were a forum by collecting ideas in comment form, and just sticking with those threads. A drupal forum is not much more than a collection of comments anyway.
Comments
Exercises
No matter what we do, we are going to need to provide a way for people to put some interactive content into these websites. If it turns out that no one has an interest in doing this, then we've got no concept at all, so I'm going to take it as a given that there is some level of market for this. We actually have a fair amount of competition for this type of service. The best one I know of is webassign.com. They do some really nice, but very expensive stuff by way of providing interactive content that supports textbooks and/or courses. Students carry the burden of paying for this content on a per course, per semester basis. WebAssign has been around long enough to prove that their business model works.
Aside from interactive content which we would build for people, there may also be a small number of content types people would build for themselves. Not all types of interaction can easily be made customizable, but there are quite a few that can, and commonly are, including all sorts of quiz questions and mini-games. Below are some types of content I know I want to be able to support.
Becky Kinney
Assumptions
Another thing I've learned from Frasier is that people creating textbook support sites do not always want the organizational structure of the website to match that of the textbook. Personally, I think that is insane, but there you have it. It may be that Frasier is atypical in that way, but it's good to know that that particular assumption might be flawed. What other assumptions are we making? Let's start a list here. We do need some assumptions, but we need to examine and test each one carefully.
Add assumptions to this comment thread.
Becky Kinney
Errata
One thing I've learned from working with Frasier is that any site that supports a paper text needs to have a decent way to deal with errors in the existing book. An errata content type would be a good thing to have. It would need field for chapter, topic, sub-topic, figure id, and correction. Maybe more. Then we'd make a view of the errata sorted by page #. Nothing here that requires a module, but some cck and views work that could be included with the distribution might be a welcome thing. I actually don't know how much can be accomplished with a distribution. Need to look into that, but if distributions aren't the answer, I'm sure something else can be done. The idea of building out something that a lot of people will like out of the box is still valid, I think.
Becky Kinney
Text
Text is in some ways the easiest piece of this, but still problematic. The big question in my mind at the moment is html editors. I'm not thrilled with any of the wysiwyg editors that are available for Drupal, but then I haven't looked very hard at any of them. It's pretty clear that most faculty are not going to be satisfied with plain text, nor willing to deal with the BUEditor, so this is something that will require some research. Which of the wysiwyg editors is best, and what other alternatives can we explore? Can we write an 'import from Word' module? Does one exist? How is the recent lawsuit against Microsoft's implementation of xml in Office going to play in?
Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Maybe what we should be offering is a conversion service from Word. We can take people's Word documents and turn them into searchable Drupal pages with suggestions for interactive content options, and end of chapter questions converted to page-specific self-tests. Not clear.
Becky Kinney