<quote name="Zoe" date="2012-04-24" time="10:29:17 -0700">
> Hello!
>
> I'm a newcomer to this list, so I hope these questions haven't been
> hashed over a hundred times...
Not a problem.
> (the current link on wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI goes to spec v 0.5,
> but I've also found 0.7 - I refer to both here as I'm not sure which
> is for public discussion).
My apologies. I have now listed 0.7 in the announcements there. 0.7 is
indeed the one you should comment on.
> Question one: links to curriculum standards
>
> I know we don't have many machine readable versions of the various
> curricula/standards, but should there not be the capacity to
> accommodate them when they start to become available? I can't see this
> catered to anywhere in 0.5.
By machine readable you mean fully dereferencable URIs with RDF
describing the thing represented by the URI? If so, I believe our
current (0.7) model of letting users give a URL/URI to a standard will
allow that.
> Question two: competencies (teaches, requires, assesses) (v 0.5)
>
> I must admit to being a little disappointed that the only curriculum
> model catered to is the 'learning outcomes' model (skill oriented).
> It's not the worst model, but it's not the only model either. I think
> we would be well served by being able to accommodate a syllabus/
> content oriented models as well, specifically by including 'knowledge'
> here - it is, after all, possible to teach knowledge, require
> knowledge, and assess knowledge, even if knowledge is not
> intrinsically classed as a 'competency'.
Can you give me an example of what that would look like? It might be
able to be accommodated within the current framework, actually.
> Question three: reduced list of competencies in 0.7
>
> I note that in draft 0.7, the three competency types (teaches,
> requires, assesses) have been reduced to one 'competency': 'The
> competency, learning standard, skill and/or text complexity that the
> work is aligned to.' Is the intention that competency here will be
> extended to incorporate machine readable curriculum links (as per my
> question one)? I admit a preference for the granularity of the 0.5
> version, and I am not quite sure what 'text complexity' is intended to
> mean (is this terminology rolled over from LOM?)
The competency term in 0.7 takes a competencyObject
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI/Properties/CompetencyObject
That object has a value that can be one of:
assesses, teaches, requires, or textComplexity.
textComplexity being the odd-ball there which might not seem to fit at
first but it does allow us to say additional things about the work in
the same framework as we do competencies.
> Question four: assessment
>
> Assessment is nobody's favorite area of teaching and learning, but it
> is of interest/importance to our teachers and learners. It is also
> intrinsically different from standards/outcomes - while a given
> assessment activity should be based on a learning outcome (IF the
> curriculum model is outcomes based, which not all are), the link can
> be tenuous. I'd be very much in favour of having assessments,
> including type (exam) and instance (GCSE, edexcel GCSE) described.
>
> An example of why is is useful can be seen in TESOL (English as a 2nd
> language) education. The competency 'speaks with words of more than
> two syllables' (a poor example, I know) may occur in both the IELTS
> test and the TOEFL test. Searchers studying for either IELTS or TOEFL
> could benefit from the material, so if it is marked up exclusively as
> being a TOEFL competency (rather than a generic competency that is
> also described in TOEFL), the IELTS candidate won't find it.
Interesting proposition. I don't know about what kind of major changes
can be made along these lines, but do you know of a good vocabulary that
describes those assessments that are mapped to the two competency's
(TOFEL and IELTS)?
> Looking forward to your responses!
I hope that has helped! And thanks for your thoughts.
All the best,
Greg
--
Greg Grossmeier
Education Technology & Policy Coordinator
twitter: @g_gerg / identi.ca: @greg / skype: greg.grossmeier
One note re: Question three: reduced list of competencies in 0.7
In our change from .5 to .7 the reason we added alignmentType as a property
of the CompetencyObject was to accommodate other types of alignments and
acceptable values then just assess, teaches, requires, and textComplexity.
So I think the following needs to indicate that these are not the only
acceptable values->
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI/Properties/CompetencyObject
Also we discussed that the alignmentType property was optional or reportable
(In the case the resource both teaches and assess, for example).
Zoe,
Great question about similar or equivalent statements in two different
standards frameworks. This has been a big challenge for a long time with 50
US states all with similar but different standards. It may well be an issue
even with variations of the common core. I don't have an answer, but it is a
question many of us have had to deal with time and time again when adapting
curriculum from one state to another.
Joshua Marks
CTO
Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
jma...@curriki.org
www.curriki.org
I welcome you to become a member of the Curriki community, to follow us
on Twitter and to say hello on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn communities.
I always wanted to call it “CompetencyAlignment” rather than Competency since it doesn’t really define a Competency (or Learning Objective, Standard, Skill, etc.) it only express alignment to such. I think the only reason we didn't do that is because "CompetencyAlignment" is really long and unwieldy.
With that in mind, what if we change the name of the property (and its associated type) to “Alignment”. In that context, an “AlignmentType” of “textComplexity” makes much more sense while the meanings of “teaches”, “requires” and “assesses” also work. And, in the spirit of Schema.org, future values for “alignmentType” would also make sense.
We're getting awfully close to the designated 1.0 release to consider a change like this but I think it's important enough to consider.
Thanks,
Brandt
From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stuart Sutton
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:50 PM
To: lr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Questions from a newcomer about LRMI
The problem we face with this property called "competency" in LRMI and the notion of assertions regarding learning outcomes in terms of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind is that there are simply _no_ settled definitions to attach as a label for this property. "Competency" is not right, but neither is "curriculum" (US/Europe conceptions of this notion don't align) and the U.S. is the only place on the planet where the general notion of these assertions can be referred to meaningfully as "standards" (as in Common Core State _Standards_). But, even in the U.S. there is not universal agreement around what "standard" means in this context. In Europe, refer to these assertions as "standards" and they will just cock their heads to the side and politely wonder what you are talking about. It makes me want to strip all meaning from the label (defeating the purpose of a label) or consider the use something like "widget" (as they use that notion in U.S. legal thinking) where you can say "Mr. Smith contracted for a bushel of widgets" and substitute for widget the "thing" required by the moment's discussion. Otherwise it means that every conversation must begin with a grounding in a consensual understanding of terms (note: I said understanding and not agreement).
-- <http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/> Please note new email address: phil....@hw.ac.uk
2. on the Object type: there is a technical issue here. The URL inherited from schema.org/Thing is the url of the object, so if that object is an 'alignment' then the URL will be the URL of the alignment (whatever that means), not the URL of thing to which the resource is aligned. The thing to which the resource is asserted to align would then be out of the model (unless we put it back in).
Indeed, this is the rub and why we went to Competency rather than CompitencyAlignment as Brant was suggesting. The URL/URI is the competency statement while the AlignmentType property expresses and classifies the alignment between the resource being tagged and the competency. While I do agree there are things we might align to that are not necessarily competencies, it is more flexible then the notion of a standards statement. I am not sure what other term might be better, but I am open to other terms then competency (even though I was warning up to that term.)
Joshua Marks
CTO
Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
I welcome you to become a member of the Curriki community, to follow us on Twitter and to say hello on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn communities.
From: lrmi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lrmi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stuart Sutton
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 9:40 AM
To: lrmi...@googlegroups.com
Cc: lr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Questions from a newcomer about LRMI