Glossary
A glossary of Connexions terms
- Affiliation
- An affiliation is a special type of lens that allows organizations to gather together content created by members of their organization. Unlike an endorsement lens, the content may not have been reviewed and officially approved by the lens creator. Affiliations display in the Quality box on content that has been selected by the lens.
- CNXML
- CNXML is an XML specification for writing Connexions modules. The goal of creating CNXML was to have a language that dealt with the content of the material rather than the details of presentation.
- Content Commons
- The Content Commons is where the Connexions modules and collections/courses are stored.
- Collection/Course
- A collection (often referred to as a course) is a group of modules arranged in a specific order and labeled by the author, editor or instructor building the collection. A collection can be a course, textbook, report, survey, journal, etc. In each module, the collection builder can add links to supplemental, prerequisite, or example material to help the students understand the material.
- Collection Composer
- The Collection Composer is the tool used by authors, editors, or instructors to assemble a collection of modules into a course, textbook, report, survey or other collection. It allows instructors and textbook editors to search for relevant modules, add them to a collection, label them, and arrange them in the order in which they will appear to students. The collection author can also add links to related material in each module.
- Endorsement
- An endorsement is a special type of lens that provides a window into the Content Commons of material that has been reviewed and approved by the lens creator. Endorsements display in the Quality box on content that has been selected by the lens.
- Lens
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A lens is a selection of content in the Connexions repository to help readers find content that is related to a particular topic or focus. Four types of specialized lenses are currently supported: endorsement lenses for reviewed materials, affiliation lenses for material created by members of the lens creator's organization, a My Favorites list for members to keep track of their favorite Connexions content, and member list lenses for all other purposes.
Lens creators can add their own tags and comments to content selected in the lens. Private lenses are visible only to the lens maker while logged in to their account, whereas public lenses can be viewed by anyone. A list of all public lenses can be found at cnx.org/lenses, and subsets of each type of lens can be found at cnx.org/endorsements, cnx.org/affiliations, and cnx.org/memberlists. ( News item introducing lenses. )
- MathML
- MathML is an XML application for representing the content and presentation of mathematical equations and formulas. MathML allows Connexions authors to encode the meaning of an equation or formula without worrying about the presentation. This allows you to create a course from modules written by different authors and maintain notational consistency. For example, vectors may be notated by a bold letter, an over bar, an over arrow, or a hat. Instead of storing that information, Connexions stores the fact that it is a vector. You can specify how you want all the vectors notated in your course, regardless of the source of each module.
- Member List
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A member list is a type of lens that any Connexions account holder can create to keep a selection of content in the Connexions repository that they are interested in.
- Metadata
- Metadata are non-content information included within a module or a course. Module metadata include the module ID, license type, version number, creation date, revision date, authors, maintainers, copyright holders, module name, keywords, and abstract. Course metadata include the course title, institution, course code, instructor, course home page URL, keywords, and abstract.
- Module
- A module is the basic building block of a Connexions course, textbook, or other type of collection. You can think of it as a small knowledge chunk that contains text and images that address a single topic or a specific aspect of a topic. The author determines the size of a module. To a student or reader viewing a course or collection, a module is simply a web page in the collection. Modules allow readers to follow the information path arranged by the author or instructor or to branch off and discover their own path. To an instructor putting a course together, having topics in different modules allows easy selection and arrangement of the information. An instructor can include existing modules from other courses or other academic disciplines that are important to the presentation of the course subject.
- My Favorites List
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A My Favorites list is a type of lens that any Connexions account holder can create to keep track of their favorite content in the Connexions repository.
- Namespace (XML)
- Different XML applications or languages may use the same tags to mean different things. If you use multiple XML-based languages within the same document this may cause confusion. To prevent this, each XML-based language defines a namespace that distinguishes its tags from the tags of other languages.
- QML
- QML (Questions Markup Language) is an XML-based language for describing learning assessment items (questions). It was originally developed so that Connexions courses could present interactive questions to the students.
- Role
- A role is one of three types of contributors to a Connexions work. The Connexions roles are author, maintainer, copyright holder, editor, and translator.
- Stylesheet
- A stylesheet is a separate document from the CNXML file. You can download it from the Connexions web site. The stylesheet defines how the document is displayed. There are two stylesheet languages: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language). CSS defines how a tag is displayed. XSL is a transformation and formatting language that allows you to convert an XML document into another type of document, for example, convert a CNXML document into HTML or LaTeX.
- Tags are member created descriptors to help label content flexibly so that the tag maker and other readers can find and remember content. They can be used by groups and communities to attach a vocabulary to content that is meaningful in the group's context. Tags are created and attached to content through lenses.
- XML
- XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a set of rules for defining markup languages that define, validate, and share document formats. A markup language is any language (such as HTML) that uses tags surrounding text to convey information such as content or format.
