Through Connexions, authors can share their work in such a way that it can either stand alone for the reader as a single article or be combined with other author’s works by a “collection editor,” who creates a course charting a path through related topics in the Connexions repository.  As a result, materials in Connexions are distinctly modular in nature and, in fact, each such article is referred to as a “module”.

 

 

Modules are written so that they are fairly self-contained, either addressing a single, simple topic or a single aspect of a more complex topic.  For example, an explanation of fast convolution could be broken down into instruction on the fast Fourier transform, circular convolution, and achieving linear convolution from circular convolution using overlap add and overlap save (zero-padding), yielding 3 modules.  An instructor wishing to compose an explanation of fast convolution could search the Connexions repository for pre-existing modules on these topics and then use those modules that suit her needs.  The instructor might create her own introductory module and add a module explaining a concept for which she could find no pre-existing module or for which she had her own, alternate presentation.

 

 

A collection can be thought of as an ordered folder containing either modules or sub-folders (each of which can itself contain modules and sub-folders), mirroring the chapters, sections and sub-sections of the original.

 

 

 

Creating modules from scratch in Connexions is fairly straightforward, as authors can adopt a modular organization from the outset.  Importing pre-existing materials, such as books, research papers, and course notes, can be a bit more challenging due to their linear nature.  Chapters, sections, and subsections can each provide structure for decomposing a larger work into modular chunks, depending on their relative sizes.  In general, a module should focus on a single main topic and be no more than a few pages in length.  With this rule of thumb and the original structure of the material, a modularization scheme usually presents itself after a little thought.  Even if such imported content is not perfectly modularized in Connexions from the outset, it is likely to evolve in that direction through re-use by third-party authors.

 

 

The steps to importing content into Connexions can be summarized as follows:

 

 

In more detail, Connexions provides a number of avenues for creating content.  Module authors can create new CNXML from scratch based on original source material using online editing tools, or they can use conversion tools to automatically port source materials from a variety of formats into CNXML.  Converters are currently available for MS Word and Open Office Writer, and a conversion tool for LaTeX is coming soon.

 

When preparing materials for conversion into CNXML, it is crucial that authors of the original content first determine how the material is decomposed into modules.  For each module, a set of meta-data must be provided to aid in indexing the module for search purposes. This includes the module title, the language in which the module is written, module keywords, a summary of the module content, and the subject area(s) of the module (one or more of “Arts”, ”Business”, ”Humanities”, ”Mathematics and Statistics”, ”Science and Technology”, or “Social Sciences”).   In addition to the decomposition, authors must also determine the structure needed to re-assemble their modules into a “collection” in Connexions approximating the original work.