This is just a minor issue, but I would like to hear your opinions to this.
That is, what exactly does the Learning Area want to be?
In the articles I get to read somewhere “Hey we start a module now”, then later “Congratulations for finishing this article series”, next article we are doing a “course”. Between we are doing tutorials, guides and what not.
Too many terms for one thing, I think.
It’s not that MDN is not any of that, it’s all of that in some way, sure.
Still I think a bit more consistence throughout the Learning Area would maybe be less confusing. Or we need to make it clearer from the start, what is what.
What the modules should be is relative clear.
But what is the course? The whole thing? Or one article?
Tutorial? Are we doing this right now, while reading? Or are these only the code examples? Or the assesments?
I know we can name it all that, but I personally think it would be better if we choose a proper naming scheme (maybe even something else entirely or more unique? (SEO)) and then stick to it and not change from article to article. We need to think about people that find a random page of the learning area and let them know where they are, what they can do, where to go on.
This is an interesting point to bring up; it is always worth revisiting terminology to try to maintain consistency. I will try to clarify the terminology here.
“The course” is the whole learning area.
“A topic” is a single subject you want to learn about, e.g. HTML or CSS. One topic can be comprised of several modules.
“A module” is a single part of a topic, covering a particular aspect of using that topic, e.g. “Introducing HTML”, or “Styling text”. One module can be comprised of several articles.
“An article” is a single article inside a module.
“A tutorial” is a set of numbered steps that you can follow to complete a task of learning exercise. A single article can contain many tutorials, but if an article is mostly tutorial content, then it tends to be called “A tutorial”.
An assessment is a challenge that tests your knowledge of the module you have been working thorugh.
There is a lot of terminology here, but they do all mean specific things — they don’t tend to be used interchangeably. I have tried to be as consistent as possible in my usage of these terms, and I did consider this terminology carefully before I started.
Maybe the problem is that there is just too much terminology
Maybe we should try to just use the terminology a bit less in the articles, make it a bit more transparent to the reader? I don’t know. I’ve never considered this as a problem before now, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t one.