Transcript Experience API (xAPI) Update - Advanced Distributed Learning

Experience API (xAPI) Update
Andy Johnson
Contractor with Problem Solutions, LLC in support of the ADL Initiative
I/ITSEC Plugfest
3 December 2014
Orlando, FL
Sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD P&R)
History
‣ xAPI transitioned to ADL in 2012 as version .80 of
what was called “TinCan”
‣ At this point in time the working group was
established, releasing .95 in October 2012 and 1.0
in April 2013
‣ Version 1.0.1 was formalized and released in Oct
2013 (clarification and intended 1.0 changes only)
‣ Informal 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 (no breaking changes)
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Today
‣ xAPI has been stable (no huge changes) for 18
months
‣ Technical language in the spec is getting more
and more specific (to stop bad practices)
‣ Technical Working Group meets weekly to work
out issues
‣ Many other groups, ADL and otherwise, meet to
create profiles, define verbs, create xAPI
activities, templates, tools, and examples
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Divide and Conquer
‣ Important to have “in scope” and “not in scope”
conversations:
‣ Technical Writing
Specifciation Group
‣ Targets version
1.0.3
‣ Issues originate on
GitHub
‣ Implement
requirements and
best practices
‣ All changes in scope
‣ Use Case and
Implementation Group
‣ Targets version 2.0
‣ Use cases
presented on and
discussed in
meeting
‣ Ideas based on
merit, not “how
much it will break
things”
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Version 1.0.3
‣ Working Group is editing technical specification
requirements to be as clear as possible
‣ Spec requirements feed into Conformance Testing
(more of a private effort until all requirements are
redone)
‣ Also adding best practices, some of which the
group has agreed will become requirements in
version 2.0
‣ Maintaining backward compatibility for “good”
implementations
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Version 1.0.3 Goals
‣ Further define the Sub-APIs of the document
‣ State API
‣ Activity/Activity Profile
‣ Agent Profile
‣ Split out and further define the Learning Record
Store role
‣ Currently intertwined with the rest of the document, not
clear responsibilities
‣ Enables modularization of spec for potential
standardization (suggested by IEEE)
‣ Decide on the role of the spec in regards to Privacy
and Security
‣ Separate section or separate document?
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Version 1.0.3 Current Issues
‣ RESTful nature of xAPI
‣ xAPI adopts many REST best practices, but isn’t truly
REST
‣ Verbs and the use of identifiers
‣ An identifier can human-readable, but cannot be used
in semantic web or AI systems
‣ Data synchronization
‣ Pagination
‣ Voiding Statements and timing
‣ Cannot expand Statements other than “extensions”
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Time Stamps
‣ xAPI has time stamps for everything, but doesn’t
have any teeth towards how offsets should be
used
‣ A user in Washington D.C. could finish 3 hours
earlier than someone in Seattle, when in reality, it
is the same time
‣ Huge headache for reporting team
training/learning scenarios
‣ Suggesting all systems store as UTC +0, can report
to individual time zone if desired
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O-Auth 2.0
‣ xAPI defines how to use O-Auth 1.0, not a
requirement of a system
‣ xAPI uses parts of O-Auth 2.0 in other areas, but
doesn’t define it
‣ Discussion of if xAPI should expand to talk about
O-Auth 2.0 (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. use it)
‣ Issue is that a very strong profile for 2.0 would be
needed, whereas 1.0 is very generic
‣ Have had volunteers to try to write such a profile
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Andy Johnson
Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)
[email protected]
Resources: xapi.adlnet.gov
@ADLTechTeam
@ADL_Initiative
@ADLmobile
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