Graph Based Representation of Walden’s Paths in Drupal 7

Abstract

The Walden’s Paths Project is used by different communities in order to create and use linear paths that link to documents available on the web. Walden’s Paths has been implemented as a web application using Drupal where a web service handles the core functionality of storage and representation of a Path data structure and a user interface uses this service for authoring and browsing of the paths. I have implemented an interactive user interface for representation of information for educational purpose in the form of a graph instead of a linear representation. This representation helps the users of the path to better understand the subject by understanding the conceptual structure of subject. The authoring interface is simple and easy to use and enables the authors of Walden’s Paths to represent the conceptual structure of a subject domain in the form of a graph. It allows for graphical representation of different types of relationships between various topic included in the Walden’s Paths. Such graphical representation of educational resources is similar to the concept of Topic Maps. The authoring tool for the Walden’s Paths has been implemented in Drupal 7. This Drupal 7 version of Walden’s Paths extends its implementation from a hypertextual system to a hypermedia system by supporting different document types like images, PDF, etc.