Development:Textbook Tables of Contents
From ChemEd Collaborative
The textbook is the cornerstone of present-day curriculum in most subjects. Present-day curriculum is typically organized according to the textbook being used in the course.
Contents |
Rationale
All items in ChemEd DL are categorized using a controlled vocabulary of terms developed to describe digital learning assets in chemistry. Application of these identical terms to the tables of contents of chemistry textbooks at the sub-chapter or topic level will allow cross-referencing those chemistry topics with the corresponding learning assets in the library. Using pattern matching algorithms, the cross-referencing will be dynamic. As new items are catalogued in the library, they will automatically be included in the cross reference without the cataloguer needing to explicitly provide the links.
Contributors to the library are likely very familiar with at least one textbook in the area of chemistry to which they are contributing resources. By explicitly linking their contributions to sub-chapter headings in a textbook, the contributions can acquire the terms from the controlled vocabulary. This removes the need for the contributor to have initimate knowledge of the controlled vocabulary in order to catalogue his or her contribution.
New learners of a discipline have little or no knowledge of the words used to describe the subject matter. They do not know what questions to ask or how to phrase those questions when using a search and discovery tool. If they are using a textbook to learn the subject, they can readily identify the sub-chapter of the text they are reading. Providing this information to a search and discovery tool can be made trivial for them (click the sub-chapter in your text).
Library builders can assess the completeness of their vocabulary in describing the subject. Areas where deeper vocabularies are needed to provide a finer granularity are readily discovered when applied to a textbook at the sub-chapter level.
Pilot Project v. ChemEd Content
Development:TToC v. ChemEd Content
Pilot Project v. JCE DLib (CWIS)
JCE DLib has piloted Textbook Tables of Contents (TToC) using generic tables of contents at the chapter level (no sub-chapter headings). These pilot projects can be seen in action using the 'Browse by Topic' links of the JCE QBank and JCE DigiDemos collections. JCE QBank Browse by Topic includes a generic general chemistry textbook table of contents, a generic organic chemistry textbook table of contents, and the table of contents from McMurray's organic chemistry textbook. JCE DigiDemos Browse by Topic includes only the generic general chemistry textbook table of contents. In each of these pilot projects results returned are from the QBank or DigiDemos collections, respectively.
New Verson (December 2009)
Web scripts have been placed on the new XServe that perform TToC functions. Currently there are three books available.
The web scripts are functional, but there are several immediate issues that have already been found.
First of all, the links to the PDFs and movies are to the copies housed on the Alfresco server. This means that currently there is no authentication method present. In order to use authentication, we could use the copies on the JCE server. For videos, they will be coming from the JCE Web Software area, PDFs from the JCE subscriber area. In addition, the search results are currently returning the same metadata for articles and movies. Ultimately this will need to be adjusted since the fields are slightly different. It will be nice to implement a nicer system for displaying results, as currently all the results get listed on one page. There probably should be previous and next pages.
One possible solution to our authentication issue: rather than trying to link people to the jcewebsoftware area (the html is not consistent throughout all of the CCA versions), maybe we could use a web script and ftl system to get a video back with the proper boarders/buttons/etc, but have the template reference one consistent file from a protected area on JCE's web site. Would there be a way to prevent the page from loading if the user didn't log in for the protected file (in theory, this could be a 1x1 .gif, or something similar)?
Another issue and possible fix: Some browsers (for me, it was Firefox 3.5.7, Mac OS 10.5.8) do not seem to handle the long links that Alfresco provides for the pdfs (or maybe it is some sort of punctuation in the link). For me, Firefox would try to download the file, but seem to stop, leaving only a .part file. If I did a right-click save as on the link, I would get a nonsense-named .part file, but if I opened it using Adobe Acrobat, the file was indeed the proper pdf. My solution was to download the Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X 1.1.2. The idea is that it will display PDFs in the browser using some of the Mac's built-in PDF viewing capabilities. For some reason, with this plugin installed, the links work fine. This also fixed some links that never used to work for me on the my.wisc.edu website (asp/.net queries also linking to PDFs) I'm not sure if anyone else is having similar problems, but it might be worth a try, at least. The plugin also is available for Firefox for Windows. I still think that Alfresco is doing something slightly unconventionally with these links, as when I do a "save as", the dialog shows a blank line for the "filename" of what I'm attempting to download.
