SBIR Phase I: Adaptive Authoring for Compound XML Documents: Collaboration Tools and eLearning Content Creation for STEM

该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)研究项目旨在确定创建直观用户界面的可行性，以支持直接创作复合XML文档，特别是包括数学和科学记数法的文档。该项目将产生可定制的XML编辑界面的初步框架，以及支持MathML标记的即时消息客户端和基于Web的讨论板的原型。这项工作的关键创新是开发了一个可配置的创作框架，该框架实现了使用不同的XML词汇表创建内容所需的不同编辑模式，并在这些词汇表聚集在一起生成信息丰富且可能交互的文档时协商这些词汇表之间的转换和关系。这个框架将扩展到多个XML词汇表，这是Integre以前为MathML的单一词汇表开发的类似框架。协作工具，如即时消息和网络讨论板，现在在教育和社会环境中广泛使用，但由于这些工具缺乏对数学记数法的足够支持，数学和科学界没有充分利用这些工具。该项目将产生第一代应用程序，让数学和理科学生更充分地参与基于网络的协作学习，让学生和他们的教师使用当前技术更清楚地交流概念，并促进在线研究社区的发展。后续研究将提供一种手段，为网上教学创造更多信息量更大、更具响应性的内容。拟议的创作框架直接解决了一个问题，该问题对XML作为标准的进一步发展和影响至关重要，并且在标准社区内以各种形式追求，即根据需要集成多个XML词汇表的能力，以在文档中捕获尽可能多的信息。这项研究将为此类复合文档的讨论提供信息，并可能有助于XML技术的不断进步。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) research project seeks to establish the feasibility of creating intuitive user interfaces that enable direct authoring of compound XML documents, and especially to documents that include mathematical and scientific notation. The project will produce a preliminary framework for customizable XML editing interfaces, as well as prototypes for an instant messaging client and a web-based discussion board that support MathML markup. The key innovation in this work is the development of a configurable authoring framework that implements the different editing modes needed to create content using diverse XML vocabularies, and that negotiates the transitions and relationships among these vocabularies as they come together to produce documents that are rich in information and potentially interactive. This framework will extend to multiple XML vocabularies a similar framework that Integre has previously developed for the single vocabulary of MathML.Collaboration tools like instant messaging and web discussion boards are now used pervasively in both educational and social contexts, but are underutilized by mathematics and scientific communities because these tools lack sufficient support for mathematical notation. This project will result in first-generation applications that let math and science students engage more fully in web-based collaborative learning, that let students and their instructors communicate concepts more clearly using current technologies, and that foster the development of online research communities. Subsequent research will provide a means of creating more informative and responsive content for web-based instruction. The proposed authoring framework directly addresses an issue that is critical to the further development and impact of XML as a standard and that has been pursued in various forms within the standards community, namely the ability to integrate multiple XML vocabularies on an as-needed basis to capture as much information as possible within a document. This research will inform the discussion of such compound documents, and potentially contribute to the ongoing advancement of XML technologies.