Dublin Core Education Application Profile Module

1. Dublin Core EducationApplication Profile Module Sarah Currier Moderator, DCMI Education Community Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd Group Improv, Repository Fringe, 31 July 2008, Edinburgh, UK

2. Overview of Session • Brief overview of DC-Education Community (5 mins) • Introduction to DC-Ed Application Profile work (5 mins) • Requirements gathering so far (15 mins) • Group improv: feedback on issues; what are your priorities for educational metadata? (30 mins)

3. Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI Education Community • Co-Moderators: Diane Hillmann (Cornell University); Sarah Currier (Intrallect Ltd) • DC-Education Application Profile Task Group • Lara Whitelaw (OU) co-ordinated use case gathering Website: http://www.dublincore.org/groups/education/ Wiki: http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/ JISCmail list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/DC-EDUCATION.html

4. Dublin Core Educational Work NOTE: “The DCMI Education Community is a forum for individuals and organizations involved in implementing Dublin Core and other learning resource metadata in the education domain. The objective of the Community is to promote interoperability within the domain through the use of standard metadata and consensus good practices.”

5. Dublin Core Educational Work NOTE: “The DCMI Education Community is a forum for individuals and organizations involved in implementing Dublin Core and other learning resource metadata in the education domain. The objective of the Community is to promote interoperability within the domain through the use of standard metadata and consensus good practices.”

6. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile • Aim: to provide a “modular” AP to support interoperable description of educational aspects of resources. • Scope: educationally significant properties available in Dublin Core + any other educational properties, e.g. elements from the LOM. • Out-of-scope: will notdefine or give guidelines for usage of non-educational properties, or non-educational usage of properties. • Modular:this will (we hope!) enable people to “plug in” the AP with other APs they are using, e.g. the Libraries AP, the Scholarly Works AP, a modular accessibility AP, or a local AP.

7. Dublin Core Application Profiles The DCMI Architecture Forum developed: • Dublin Core Abstract Model • Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles The Singapore Framework requires: • Functional requirements (mandatory) • Domain model (mandatory) • Description Set Profile (DSP) (mandatory) • Usage guidelines (optional) • Encoding syntax guidelines (optional)

8. Singapore Framework The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles: http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/SingaporeFramework/

9. A Note on Vocabularies The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles: http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/SingaporeFramework/

10. A Note on Vocabularies The Singapore Framework requires: • Functional requirements (mandatory) • Domain model (mandatory) • Description Set Profile (DSP) (mandatory) • Usage guidelines (optional) • Encoding syntax guidelines (optional) The DC-Ed AP will recommend vocabularies for fields included in the Description Set Profile where vocabularies are used. The DC-Ed AP Task Group have already collated a number of vocabularies for Instructional Method and Resource Type: http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/Vocabularies

11. Singapore Framework The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles: • […] describe the functions that the application profile is designed to support, as well as functions that are out of scope. • […] form the basis of evaluating the application profile for internal consistency and for giving guidance on the appropriateness of the application profile for a given use. http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/SingaporeFramework/

12. A Note About LOM and DC Joint DCMI/IEEE LTSC Task Force • Grew out of Mikael Nilsson’s work on an RDF binding for the LOM, which drew heavily on early RDF work with Dublin Core. • Became apparent that the LOM and DC had completely incompatible underlying models. • DC started developing the DC Abstract Model (DCAM) based on RDF principles. • Task Force is working on expressing LOM using the DCAM. • Gives a de facto translation of LOM in RDF (somewhat lossy, so not strictly a binding). • Will support use of LOM elements in DC-Ed Application Profile. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/currier/ http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/DCMIIEEELTSCTaskforce

13. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Use Cases Functional requirements We have the following general requirements: • Support for Resource Discovery • Support for Educational Use of Resources • Extensibility • Jurisdiction Neutrality

14. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Use Cases Functional requirements What about more specific requirements? We asked for use cases from the community on: • What educational attributes or properties do you want to describe? • What are your real world interoperability needs? • What do your users want to search for / by? • What else?

15. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Use Cases Use cases summary: • 48 use cases and scenarios gathered • From 23 organisations • Representing 6 countries (UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain) + 2 international organisations • Most educational sectors (workplace training; community/lifelong learning; HE/FE; primary; secondary)

16. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Use Cases Use cases summary: what properties? Table 1

17. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Use Cases Use cases summary: what properties? Table 2

18. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Problem Areas: • Who says? • Who created this review? • Who says this resource meets that competency? • Correlation • How closely does this learning object correlate to that educational achievement standard? • Educational level / context • Blurred semantics • Two different elements in the LOM; three if you include Typical Age Range • Is “Higher Education” a “context” or a “level”? • What about granularity of descriptions? • Are user-generated reviews, correlation statements, etc. separate resources?

19. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Some of these problem areas speak to the problem of the DC-Education AP Domain Model. Which we don’t have yet. • We’ve looked at OAIS and FRBR. • Where these leave off, our problems begin. NB: Our thanks to the JISC Learning Materials AP Project: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/lmap/

20. Dublin Core Educational Work Group Improv… What to do now? NB: I am here to get your input • Discuss any further requirements you have, or further refinements on the existing requirements. • Look at domain model issues? • Discussion on Audience issues? • Anything else arising folk want to discuss? • Are there different groups here interested in different issues?- If so should we break into groups and report back, or all discuss everything together?

21. Dublin Core Educational Work Please join the DC-Ed Community! E-mail me or Diane s.currier@intrallect.com dih1@cornell.edu Join the DC-Ed list to be notified of new developments and take part in discussions Thanks to Diane Hillmann, Lara Whitelaw, JISC-CETIS, and the DC-Education Community for their contributions so far, including to these slides. http://www.intrallect.com