Overview of the applied learning platform

How the process works

  1. Educators navigate to the www.WhenKnowingMatters.com website where they start the Applied Learning Platform, and select “Create an activity.”
  2. When finished creating an activity they copy the xml markup tags of the activity to their clipboard and save them in a word processing document (Activity document) that is distributed to learners. These tags can also be added to an existing word processing document that contains traditional elements such as text, images, and hyperlinks.
  3. Learners receive the document by email or download, and copy its entire contents to their clipboard. It does not matter if the document also contains additional supportive materials because the software will ignore anything that is not contained in the XML markup tags. This means that additional text, images, and hyperlinks can be included in the document, which can then be referred to in the applied learning activity.
  4. Learners navigate to the www.WhenKnowingMatters.com website where they start the Applied Learning Platform, and select “Begin an activity.”
  5. Learners paste the contents of their clipboard into the dialog box and work through the activity.
  6. Once the activity is completed, or if learners want to pause and return later, they Save the activity to their clipboard, and paste the new set of XML markup tags into a separate word processing document. When returning to their work, they copy the contents of this new document to their clipboard, and import them into the software in the same way they did with the original activity.

Activity document

An activity document is the word processing document that contains the XML markup tags of an activity that are created using the Applied Learning Platform. As mentioned previously, in addition to the markup tags, the document can include any other resources such as text, images, links to videos or other Internet resources, etc. The only limit on the types of resources included in an activity document is the document’s inherent native capabilities, such as differences among Microsoft Word, WordPad, Notepad, TextEdit, or a PDF.

An example of a DSH Cat case with ALP markup tags assembled by Mills (Word) is provided by David Coleman and Duncan C. Ferguson. The document contains images of radiographs for learners to analyze along with a guiding framework of questions for learners to consider. The document also contains the Applied Learning Platform XML markup tags. If you click on the link to open the document you will notice that much of the content is encoded to prevent viewing by learners prior to working through the activity with the software. A PDF version is also available at the following link,  DSH Cat case and markup PDF version assembled by Mills. A significant limitation of PDF files used for this purpose is the extremely slow functionality when copying the entire contents of a large document (60 pages) to the clipboard for importing into the Applied Learning Platform. The benefit however, is for learners who do not have access to a copy of Microsoft Word.