The final keynote speech of XTech 2005 delivered by Microsoft’s Jean Paoli concluded with a prediction: In 2010 75% of new documents worldwide will be created in XML.

One implication of this prediction is that new documents created by non-technical, non-XML-aware end users will provide XML, and this in turn identifies the challenge of providing XML authoring solutions suited to end users.

A key feature of Word 2003 is that it can provide XML authoring capabilities – however Word 2003’s “out-of-the-box” XML functionality can deter the typical non-XML-aware end user from adopting Word 2003 to create XML documents.

This Case Study of a practical implementation of XML Authoring amongst academic content authors within the Open University in the UK outlines a customisation of Word 2003 that exploits the XML capabilities of Word 2003 whilst also providing an intuitive and usable interface for non-technical authors of learning materials.

The presentation provides a high-level outline of the Open Univeristy business drivers for XML authoring of learning materials and the eventual realisation of the benefits of customised Word 2003 for the end users and the organisation as well as the avoidable errors identified within the implementation.

The presentation describes the information architecture adopted including:

screen shots portraying the customisation components the role of and value to authors of on-demand previews of the final content presentation the role of Web services in delivering document resources to authors the integration of the authored XML with pagination services to deliver an end-to-end publishing solution the role of Open University XML Schemas in meeting e-government interoperabilty criteria the approaches taken to leveraging future benefits from the XML content including restylability, reusability, and maintainability of academic content in XML potential future open document standards

The presentation also describes the fit of the architecture with existing and future business processes. A key application design issue was the need to ensure that vendor lock-in is avoided by positioning the Open University XML Schemas at the centre of the architecture – facilitating a future change of authoring solution – for example to an open source XML authoring solution.

The presentation features screen shots that identify how end-users benefit from alternate presentations of their XML content suited to the required mutiple modalities of Web page, printed PDF, and speech synthesis, thereby meeting the accessibility requirements that are a feature of the Open University mandate.

The presentation describes end user response to the XML authoring solution and outlines:

the addition of metadata to authored content content chunking and compound document creation the integration of XML authoring with ECM the avoidable errors identified within the work the mechanisms adopted to secure end user engagement and buy-in the “Best Practice” identified with end users

The Open University is Britain’s largest university, with over 210,000 students and customers, and more students study with the Open University than any other university in the UK. Open University courses and learning materials are created and authored by several thousand academics.