A Learning Guide, User Journeys (and paths)

[YetAnotherJonWilson]

A Learning Guide

This would be a tool to help a user find what they need in the moment, or to help create a larger "Learning Journey".
It would start by asking something along the lines of: "what do you want/need now?"

• to answer a question?
• do a task?
• build a thing?
• learn something?

It could help to find a single resource or aggregate a list of useful resources.
This tool would be available to anyone, logged in or not; logging in (with a WebID and Pod) would allow users to save lists of resources in their pods and create personalized goals as parts of "Learning Journeys" or "paths", described below.

Learning Journeys and Paths

This would be like an app within the site itself, that allows users to log in with their WebID's, and create "learning journeys"--collections of things they want to learn and build and do with Solid-- and "learning paths"--like, finding an answer to a question, completing a tutorial, getting help with a task.

This should always be optional, and, IMO, for good UX, users should always be able to find whatever they need without logging in.

The value of this feature would be in helping someone get from point A to B while creating a "map" they can use again, for specific tasks, or larger learning goals. (The metaphor of a learning journey and learning path are not essential--if there is a better metaphor, or more useful terminology, then we should use that instead.)

For example, let's say that today I want to answer a specific question I have about using a Type Index, but maybe I also want to learn more, eventually, about creating and using ontologies. If I'm in a hurry, or don't want to log in, or save anything anywhere, I can just do a search for resources related to "Type Indexes", then I could fliter the resources for only "How-to Guides". Once I've found one, I can move along with my day.

But, on the other hand, maybe I want to: 1) make sure I save links to any resources I find, so I can use them later, and at the same time, 2) create a placeholder for a larger goal I have of learning more about creating and using ontologies. In that case, I could create a "Learning Journey" and title it "Ontologies and Solid", and within it, create a "Path" called "How do I, within my app, query a Type Index to find resources in a pod?" Then I do my search for resources, and I find three that look interesting--two of them are "How-to's" relating directly to my current question, and one of them is a Youtube course (an "Explanation" type of resource) about Ontologies. I save the first two under the Path, and the third under the Journey. Then I go to the resource that looks most useful for my current issue that I'm working on.

In both of the above cases, I have found the resource that I want for my current task. But in the second case, with minimal extra effort, I have begun to curate resources that I can return to later.