Adopting the Experience API to work with the Virtual Patient Standard - how, what and why?

Matt Cownie, Jonathan Wright

University of the West of England, Bristol

AbstractThe eXperience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) is a new specification that allows learning content to link with learning systems to track and share all types of learning experiences. Learning activities can be tracked using combinations of a limited vocabulary of activities, verbs and subjects. While the specification provides a default profile of activities and verbs it allows for communities of practice to develop custom profiles of their own agreed activities and verbs. This presentation will have main 3 parts.

XAPI

Actor, Verb, Object

Leaner , Completed, Virtual Patient

Caveat Emptor• Tincan OR experienceAPI OR xAPI

• Versions 0.90-0.95-1.0-1.01

• Many examples are ‘slightly wrong’

• Libraries for Java, JS and PHP

• New .NET Library for the Tin Can API is Now Available!

• Refer to the final spec 1.0.1

• Assumes you are VP Standard aware

Part 1 - HowFirstly it will demonstrate how to use the experience API to capture the stream of activities a learner generates while playing a Virtual Patient (VP). It will show technical examples that map VP concepts onto XAPI calls that can be used to populate a Learning Record System (LRS) with VP related learner data.

Simplest example (C#)

statement = actor + verb + activity

Actor

Verb

Activity

Statement

LRS

ActivityType

We made a statementhttp://tincanapi.com/public-lrs/

Statement in the LRS

JSON payload

URL

URI

URL

Simplest example (JavaScript)

More detail? “verb” : { “display” : {“en-US” :”visited”}, “id” : ”http://medbiq/exapi/verbs/visited },

“type” : http://medbiq/exapi/activites/virtualPatient/ } } }

COP Verb ?

COP Activity ?

Looks like, but

More detail with context (simple)

Tie everything together

sessionId

XAPI - ContextActivitiesXAPI provides four possibilities - ‘parent’, ‘grouping’, ‘category’, and ‘other’

Parent - model the Virtual Patient as parent activity and set that as the context for all subsequent related activities. Further granularity would be a video and MCQ with a node as parent activity.

Grouping - might want to group an activity within the VP with related activities in same VP or other VPs

Category - “Category SHOULD be used to indicate a "profile" of xAPI behaviors” - e.g. PhysicalExam, Medication?

Other - none of the above, perhaps supporting learning material or making a branching decision?

Some Concerns

• Media Resources, Counters, CounterRules, DataItems,NodeRules, NodeAccessRules

• Extensions• Exposing internal workings and Id’s• Name spacing• Versioning• Who’s the audience?

Part 2 - whatSecondly it will review what this data looks like in an LRS and examples of querying it for meaning. It will outline what verbs and activities might be contained in a Virtual Patient specific profile and what use cases these could meet.

Simplest – manual get (c#)

query

results

Dashboard

A Report Builder

Statement Forwarding

Painting by Eugene Delacroix, available under a Creative Commons Public Domain license.

Verbs and Activities and URL’s

VP Activities + typesPage : page

MCQ : question

Video : video

audio : audioDocument : file

Short answer : note

Image : media

Flash activity : interaction

Unity activity : interaction

Html5 activity : interaction

YouTubeVid : media

DataItems : file?

Blood Test : media

Media Resources : media CounterRules : event

DataItemRequest : interaction

NodeRules : event

NodeAccessRule : event

CounterRules : event

VP Verbs

Started : started

Visited : was at

Requested : requested

Watched : watched

Listened : listened

Triggered: ?????

Altered: updated?

Exited : exited

Answered : answered

Completed : completed

Read : read

Commented : commented

Played : playedrestarted : terminated?

Extensions and Profile

feedback : extensioncounter : extension

Part 3 – why (for VP’s)Lastly it will outline why the virtual patient community might want to adopt the experience API and ask whether a specific community profile is necessary. Influences for consideration include the “Internet of Things”, mobile learning, data-mining, combining virtual patients with other simulation activities, capturing the complete educational context of a learners VP experience and reporting into competency frameworks.

What were my use cases?

1. Reporting

2. Big Data

3. Learning Management System(s)

4. LTI 1.1 & outcomes

5. Simulation

Other VP use cases?

1. 3D & Games

2. Multi-modal simulation

3. Team based

4. Platform transition (state API)

5. Learner Profiles

Wider reasons to adopt XAPI

1. Transversal

2. Transparency

3. System silos

4. Simulation (non-linear)

5. Mobile

6. Innovation

7. Future proof

Answer the Question…

Is a specific VP community profile necessary?

A friend in need

http://www.adlnet.gov/tla/experience-api

https://github.com/adlnet/xAPIWrapper

http://nodejs.org/

https://www.npmjs.org/package/adl-xapiwrapper

https://github.com/LearningLocker/learninglocker

http://thedesignspace.net/misc/xapi

https://github.com/RusticiSoftware/TinCan.NET

https://github.com/RusticiSoftware/TinCanJS

https://registry.tincanapi.com/

http://tincanapi.com/public-lrs/

http://scorm.com/scorm-solved/scorm-cloud-developers/