Introducing: xAPI Prepositions

Sometimes, you want to define relationships. Other times, you want to add context. When describing time, direction, location, and spatial relationships, we depend on prepositions. But that’s been a difficult task in the realm of xAPI.

Until now.

Meet xAPI Prepositions — a set of 150 machine-readable xAPI concepts delivered in a conformant xAPI Profile.

Use xAPI Prepositions to set up prepositional relationships or to provide context around indirect objects. The opportunities are nearly endless, for example:

  • Describe location and spatial context in relation to an action: “He placed the bread on/under/below the table”.

  • Ensure clarity: “He announced the rules for the participants.”

  • Specify intent: “She booked a flight on account of the hurricane.”

  • Define relationships between actors: “He logged into the account as someone else”.

The following concept describes the latter case: “Joe Instructor logs into the LMS ‘as’ Jill Learner”.

{

"actor": {

"name": "Joe Instructor",

"account": {

"homePage": "https://lms.example/id",

"name": "048863bf-34ee-4c5f-a0e4-94f67ee1fb93"

}

},

"verb": {

"id": "https://lms.example/profile/concepts/verbs/login",

"display": {

"en": "Logged In"

}

},

"object": {

"id": "https://lms.example/",

"definition": {

"type": "https://lms.example/profile/activitytype/lms",

"name": {

"en-US": "Example LMS"

}

}

},

"result": {

"success": true

},

"context": {

"extensions": {

"https://yetanalytics.com/profiles/prepositions/concepts/context-extensions/as": {

"name": "Jill Learner",

"account": {

"homePage": "https://lms.example/id",

"name": "048863bf-34ee-4c5f-a0e4-94f67ee1fb92"

}

}

}

}

}

xAPI Prepositions is available as open source distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. Find it on GitHub and tell us how you are using it.

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