Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in metadata
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Zoe
Apr 27, 2012, 12:36:07 PM4/27/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Hi everyone, me again - and with more questions, too! Get a cup of
tea, this might take a while...
I thought it might be useful to share some of the research that we've
been doing in this area at the BBC. I know I was surprised by some of
the findings, and while many of you are probably very familiar with
this stuff, others might find it useful.
The first thing we looked at was curriculum theory. There are, it
turns out, several competing theories of curriculum design in the
world. By far the two most common are what I’ll call:
a) 'Learning Outcomes'
b) 'Syllabus'
In the English speaking (and parts of the developed) world, 'learning
outcomes' is currently much more common. In the rest of the world,
'syllabus' is.
So - is there a difference, and does it matter?
There is, and for the purposes of good metadata, it does.
'Learning outcomes'
‘Learning outcomes’ are statements of what students should be able to
do - and prove that they can do - after a learning experience.
Outcomes must be measurable and specific. The four UK national
curricula are outcomes-based, and the USA's 'learning standards' (e.g.
Common Core) are also learning outcomes. The LRMI term
'competency' (‘competency’ which is definable as ‘being able to do
something’) is too.
Learning outcome statements are verb-oriented (I’m not sure what the
grammatically correct term for that is!) Here are some examples of
learning outcomes:
e.g English National Curriculum, KS1, En1 Speaking (Sample)
1. To speak clearly, fluently and confidently to different people,
pupils should be taught to:
a. speak with clear diction and appropriate intonation
b. choose words with precision
c. organise what they say
d. focus on the main point(s)
e. include relevant detail
f. take into account the needs of their listeners.
e.g. Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts Standards »
Speaking & Listening » Grade 1 (sample)
SL.1.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse
partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small
and larger groups.
SL1.2. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to
others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts
under discussion).
SL1.3. Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the
comments of others through multiple exchanges.
SL1.4. Ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and
texts under discussion.
‘Syllabus’
Syllabus is the model that many of us grew up with, and what most
people think of first when they think of a ‘curriculum’. A syllabus is
intrinsically content-oriented. The focus is on what students should
be taught, not what they should be able to do after they have been
taught (the ‘outcomes’). Fundamentally, a syllabus model is a list of
topics, sub-topics, and (where required) descriptions. It can be - but
does not have to be - hierarchical.
Syllabus statements are noun-oriented.
e.g. (I invented this one)
Science > Biology
Science > Biology > cell structure
Science > Biology > reproduction
Science > Biology > reproduction > asexual reproduction
or
Science > Biology > asexual reproduction
So what’s the problem?
Unfortunately, from an information modeling perspective, the ‘learning
outcomes’ curriculum model and the ‘syllabus’ curriculum model are not
actually compatible. For example, a student cannot demonstrate that
they can ‘cell structure’ because ‘cell structure’ isn’t an outcome in
itself.
How do these curriculum models work with what we know about teacher
and learner search behaviour?
We know that, faced with a search box like google’s (and that's what
we're designing for!), teachers and learners (well, all users really)
will search by keywords.
As evidence for this, here are the top 20 searches from thegateway.org
(traffic = about 500 000 a month, I think) (This is cited from a post
on my blog from March - http://www.memexblog.com/2012/03/what-are-our-teachers-looking-for/)
1. Social studies
2. Health
3. Math
4. Lesson plans
5. Career
6. Technology
7. Science
8. Reading
9. Spanish
10. Music
11. English
12. Marketing
13. Physical Education
14. Fractions
15. Grammar
16. Gravitational field strength
17. Poetry
18. Weather
19. Writing
20. Algebra
I’ve seen very similar results from klascement.net (in Dutch), our own
results, and a couple of others too.
The thing worth noting here is that none of the dominant search
strings are learning outcomes. They might be terms that can be found
in outcomes, but they are not themselves outcomes. (A learner can’t
demonstrate their ability to ‘Poetry’ because ‘poetry’ is not an
outcome.)
It is also worth noting there are no verbs in these strings, where all
strings describing learning outcomes must by definition contain
verbs.
Learning outcomes must also, because they must be grammatically
complete sentences, be long. The longest search term in the top 20
here is three words, ‘gravitational field strength’, but all the
outcomes in the sample (which are representative of the NC) are 10+
words long.
So, even if the markup is accurately populated with complete outcomes,
matches between the (long) outcome and the (short) search term will be
a bit of a kludge.
I find it hard to imagine any teacher or learner ever searching on the
string ‘Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the
comments of others through multiple exchanges.’
This leads us to a strange and (to my mind) unexpected paradox - an
accurate description of a learning outcome does not equal a good
searchable string for those seeking to teach to the outcome.
This isn’t too surprising when assessed against the two curriculum
models - learning resources are made of content, and a syllabus model
is geared towards content. An outcomes model is not geared towards
content, it just uses content as a means to get to the outcome - so it
makes a bad match with searching.
Outcomes don't give good keywords, either.In our experience so far at
the BBC, learning outcomes as written in national curricula are either
very difficult or impossible to derive good keywords from (as the
person who had to try to do this with the four current UK national
curricula I’m quite confident in this assertion, but I’m happy to
discuss it if anyone wants clarification).
It is also worth noting that all the outcomes based curricula we’ve
seen are written in such a way that many, many resources could be used
to fulfil them - for the outcome ‘Build on others’ talk in
conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple
exchanges’, the topic of conversation could be anything. Marking up a
given resource (be it about rabbits or the rainforest) as being
appropriate for this outcome would be accurate, but it would not
necessarily be useful.
There is good news, though!
The same source as provided the top twenty has recently introduced
subject (Maths, Science, etc.) filters, and they have been hugely
popular. So we know that educators really do value - and use -
semantic markup.
The question then becomes, if learning outcomes don’t create good/
easily seachable markup, then what does?
There are some clues in the top twenty that I think are worth
considering.
1. ‘Subject’ as a specific education-meaningful class (Maths, Science,
English etc). The evidence shows these to be very popular search terms
for educators. They are also ambiguous as non-semantic strings -
‘English’ the school subject is different from ‘English’ the language
(itself a viable subject in schema.org 'Thing' markup) and ‘English’
the adjective, ‘Science’ the school subject is different from ‘Science
+fiction’. We think that this area is ripe for semantic markup, but as
importantly, we’ve come to the conclusion that the real-world
education-specific infrastructure of ‘subject’ is worth maintaining in
our data architecture: ‘schoolSubject’ is different from ‘subject’
because schoolSubject is a complete, domain-specific administrative
group, making it a homograph of but not a synonym with ‘subject-as-
topic’. Perhaps introducing ‘Discipline’ as a LRMI field, external to
the Thing schema’s ‘subject’, would be useful in reflecting this
division.
2. All the learning outcomes have one extraordinarily useful
attribute: they exist in the context of either a level (e.g. a Key
Stage) and/or a qualification (GCSE, SATs, NVQ, IELTS, UAI/HSC/VSCE if
you’re an Australian like me and so on). The outcomes themselves are
at their most meaningful within the context of the level/
qualification. As a searchable string, ‘GCSE’ will have a much higher
level of useable meaning than ‘16’ - especially given that the LRMI
has been arranged to collect ‘learning outcomes’ in the ‘competency’
field.
3. I’m sure we’ve all been glad to see the Common Core standards gain
traction, and I am especially glad to see them pick up on the ASN’s
work by introducing Official Identifiers. It’s almost inevitable that
standards worldwide will start to move towards machine readability,
and I think the LRMI is in an excellent position to anticipate and
facilitate that shift. If conjunction with ‘Qualification’, an
‘identifier’ field would make a huge impact on this (and would be, I
think, far more robust than full-text retyping of each outcome).
4. We’re very, very lucky - our user population is highly skilled.
Most of them will have a very good idea of what they want their
students to be able to do at the end of a learning experience, so the
weight of marking up by outcome is reduced for us. (I also note that
outcomes have turnover - they only last about five years before being
rewritten.) What we *can’t* predict is what content our teachers will
want to achieve those outcomes - rabbits or rainforests - but the good
news is, we don’t have to. Big, sweeping, real-world-reflecting
maximum-consensus fields will do almost all the work. It’s a very
fortunate position to be in and I certainly hope the LRMI exploits it.
I look forward to discussing these issues with you all.
tea, this might take a while...
I thought it might be useful to share some of the research that we've
been doing in this area at the BBC. I know I was surprised by some of
the findings, and while many of you are probably very familiar with
this stuff, others might find it useful.
The first thing we looked at was curriculum theory. There are, it
turns out, several competing theories of curriculum design in the
world. By far the two most common are what I’ll call:
a) 'Learning Outcomes'
b) 'Syllabus'
In the English speaking (and parts of the developed) world, 'learning
outcomes' is currently much more common. In the rest of the world,
'syllabus' is.
So - is there a difference, and does it matter?
There is, and for the purposes of good metadata, it does.
'Learning outcomes'
‘Learning outcomes’ are statements of what students should be able to
do - and prove that they can do - after a learning experience.
Outcomes must be measurable and specific. The four UK national
curricula are outcomes-based, and the USA's 'learning standards' (e.g.
Common Core) are also learning outcomes. The LRMI term
'competency' (‘competency’ which is definable as ‘being able to do
something’) is too.
Learning outcome statements are verb-oriented (I’m not sure what the
grammatically correct term for that is!) Here are some examples of
learning outcomes:
e.g English National Curriculum, KS1, En1 Speaking (Sample)
1. To speak clearly, fluently and confidently to different people,
pupils should be taught to:
a. speak with clear diction and appropriate intonation
b. choose words with precision
c. organise what they say
d. focus on the main point(s)
e. include relevant detail
f. take into account the needs of their listeners.
e.g. Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts Standards »
Speaking & Listening » Grade 1 (sample)
SL.1.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse
partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small
and larger groups.
SL1.2. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to
others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts
under discussion).
SL1.3. Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the
comments of others through multiple exchanges.
SL1.4. Ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and
texts under discussion.
‘Syllabus’
Syllabus is the model that many of us grew up with, and what most
people think of first when they think of a ‘curriculum’. A syllabus is
intrinsically content-oriented. The focus is on what students should
be taught, not what they should be able to do after they have been
taught (the ‘outcomes’). Fundamentally, a syllabus model is a list of
topics, sub-topics, and (where required) descriptions. It can be - but
does not have to be - hierarchical.
Syllabus statements are noun-oriented.
e.g. (I invented this one)
Science > Biology
Science > Biology > cell structure
Science > Biology > reproduction
Science > Biology > reproduction > asexual reproduction
or
Science > Biology > asexual reproduction
So what’s the problem?
Unfortunately, from an information modeling perspective, the ‘learning
outcomes’ curriculum model and the ‘syllabus’ curriculum model are not
actually compatible. For example, a student cannot demonstrate that
they can ‘cell structure’ because ‘cell structure’ isn’t an outcome in
itself.
How do these curriculum models work with what we know about teacher
and learner search behaviour?
We know that, faced with a search box like google’s (and that's what
we're designing for!), teachers and learners (well, all users really)
will search by keywords.
As evidence for this, here are the top 20 searches from thegateway.org
(traffic = about 500 000 a month, I think) (This is cited from a post
on my blog from March - http://www.memexblog.com/2012/03/what-are-our-teachers-looking-for/)
1. Social studies
2. Health
3. Math
4. Lesson plans
5. Career
6. Technology
7. Science
8. Reading
9. Spanish
10. Music
11. English
12. Marketing
13. Physical Education
14. Fractions
15. Grammar
16. Gravitational field strength
17. Poetry
18. Weather
19. Writing
20. Algebra
I’ve seen very similar results from klascement.net (in Dutch), our own
results, and a couple of others too.
The thing worth noting here is that none of the dominant search
strings are learning outcomes. They might be terms that can be found
in outcomes, but they are not themselves outcomes. (A learner can’t
demonstrate their ability to ‘Poetry’ because ‘poetry’ is not an
outcome.)
It is also worth noting there are no verbs in these strings, where all
strings describing learning outcomes must by definition contain
verbs.
Learning outcomes must also, because they must be grammatically
complete sentences, be long. The longest search term in the top 20
here is three words, ‘gravitational field strength’, but all the
outcomes in the sample (which are representative of the NC) are 10+
words long.
So, even if the markup is accurately populated with complete outcomes,
matches between the (long) outcome and the (short) search term will be
a bit of a kludge.
I find it hard to imagine any teacher or learner ever searching on the
string ‘Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the
comments of others through multiple exchanges.’
This leads us to a strange and (to my mind) unexpected paradox - an
accurate description of a learning outcome does not equal a good
searchable string for those seeking to teach to the outcome.
This isn’t too surprising when assessed against the two curriculum
models - learning resources are made of content, and a syllabus model
is geared towards content. An outcomes model is not geared towards
content, it just uses content as a means to get to the outcome - so it
makes a bad match with searching.
Outcomes don't give good keywords, either.In our experience so far at
the BBC, learning outcomes as written in national curricula are either
very difficult or impossible to derive good keywords from (as the
person who had to try to do this with the four current UK national
curricula I’m quite confident in this assertion, but I’m happy to
discuss it if anyone wants clarification).
It is also worth noting that all the outcomes based curricula we’ve
seen are written in such a way that many, many resources could be used
to fulfil them - for the outcome ‘Build on others’ talk in
conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple
exchanges’, the topic of conversation could be anything. Marking up a
given resource (be it about rabbits or the rainforest) as being
appropriate for this outcome would be accurate, but it would not
necessarily be useful.
There is good news, though!
The same source as provided the top twenty has recently introduced
subject (Maths, Science, etc.) filters, and they have been hugely
popular. So we know that educators really do value - and use -
semantic markup.
The question then becomes, if learning outcomes don’t create good/
easily seachable markup, then what does?
There are some clues in the top twenty that I think are worth
considering.
1. ‘Subject’ as a specific education-meaningful class (Maths, Science,
English etc). The evidence shows these to be very popular search terms
for educators. They are also ambiguous as non-semantic strings -
‘English’ the school subject is different from ‘English’ the language
(itself a viable subject in schema.org 'Thing' markup) and ‘English’
the adjective, ‘Science’ the school subject is different from ‘Science
+fiction’. We think that this area is ripe for semantic markup, but as
importantly, we’ve come to the conclusion that the real-world
education-specific infrastructure of ‘subject’ is worth maintaining in
our data architecture: ‘schoolSubject’ is different from ‘subject’
because schoolSubject is a complete, domain-specific administrative
group, making it a homograph of but not a synonym with ‘subject-as-
topic’. Perhaps introducing ‘Discipline’ as a LRMI field, external to
the Thing schema’s ‘subject’, would be useful in reflecting this
division.
2. All the learning outcomes have one extraordinarily useful
attribute: they exist in the context of either a level (e.g. a Key
Stage) and/or a qualification (GCSE, SATs, NVQ, IELTS, UAI/HSC/VSCE if
you’re an Australian like me and so on). The outcomes themselves are
at their most meaningful within the context of the level/
qualification. As a searchable string, ‘GCSE’ will have a much higher
level of useable meaning than ‘16’ - especially given that the LRMI
has been arranged to collect ‘learning outcomes’ in the ‘competency’
field.
3. I’m sure we’ve all been glad to see the Common Core standards gain
traction, and I am especially glad to see them pick up on the ASN’s
work by introducing Official Identifiers. It’s almost inevitable that
standards worldwide will start to move towards machine readability,
and I think the LRMI is in an excellent position to anticipate and
facilitate that shift. If conjunction with ‘Qualification’, an
‘identifier’ field would make a huge impact on this (and would be, I
think, far more robust than full-text retyping of each outcome).
4. We’re very, very lucky - our user population is highly skilled.
Most of them will have a very good idea of what they want their
students to be able to do at the end of a learning experience, so the
weight of marking up by outcome is reduced for us. (I also note that
outcomes have turnover - they only last about five years before being
rewritten.) What we *can’t* predict is what content our teachers will
want to achieve those outcomes - rabbits or rainforests - but the good
news is, we don’t have to. Big, sweeping, real-world-reflecting
maximum-consensus fields will do almost all the work. It’s a very
fortunate position to be in and I certainly hope the LRMI exploits it.
I look forward to discussing these issues with you all.
Kathi Fletcher
Apr 27, 2012, 1:18:39 PM4/27/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
This discussion about the searchability of learning outcomes vs. subject/discipline is really interesting. Is this on your blog somewhere, where we can point others to it?
Kathi
Kathi
Phil Barker
Apr 27, 2012, 1:20:35 PM4/27/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On 27/04/2012 18:18, Kathi Fletcher wrote:
> This discussion about the searchability of learning outcomes vs.
> subject/discipline is really interesting. Is this on your blog
> somewhere, where we can point others to it?
I just happen to have it bookmarked:
> This discussion about the searchability of learning outcomes vs.
> subject/discipline is really interesting. Is this on your blog
> somewhere, where we can point others to it?
http://www.memexblog.com/2012/03/what-are-our-teachers-looking-for/
P.
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Joshua Marks
Apr 27, 2012, 6:20:46 PM4/27/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Zoe,
Let me be the first to say WOW!
You cover a lot of ground here, and there is much we might dig into.
However, for the pending work to finalize 1.0 of LRMI, let me point to a
couple of important implications.
First you again demonstrate that "Competencies" may not be an appropriately
flexible term to represent the relationship between a resource and the two
competing structural frameworks for organizing curriculum design you discuss
(Outcomes vs. Syllabus). There are others we might list as well. All of them
seem to boil down to some form of catalog, be it of skills or topics to be
covered. I will note here that in the US, the K-12 learning standards are
met via programs of instruction that are guided by an "instructional scope
and sequence" which more closely resembles a Syllabus. Alignment to a Scope
and Sequence document is another kind of curriculum alignment.
If we put the term Competency aside, and keep the same structure, we really
are defining an alignment or an association between some resource and some
framework (Be it a skill, or content framework). This alignment has some
number of classifications (AlignmentTypes), but what those are (Teaches,
Assesses, Requires, etc.) really depends on the thing being aligned, and the
framework it is being aligned to. The same resource ("how to get dressed"
for example), might require a skill ("can tie shoes") and address part of a
syllabus topic ("life skills > things you do in the morning"). I believe
the basic structure provided enables both types of alignment, really.
Another is the ReadingLevel case, which aligns a text document to a reading
complexity scale or framework.
So the second thing you point to, indirectly is the need to support
different classifications of alignment.
The last important point I will call out is your observation that similar
things can and are often described in very different ways depending on
content and use. This I fear is not really a solvable issue. But as you
observe, if everyone simply tagged their learning resources as being about
some topic at some level for some type of user an aligned to some structured
topical or skill based framework, we will be much better of then we are
today. If we happen to use the same terms and frameworks, that would be even
better, but I won't be holding my breath on that one.
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.
Let me be the first to say WOW!
You cover a lot of ground here, and there is much we might dig into.
However, for the pending work to finalize 1.0 of LRMI, let me point to a
couple of important implications.
First you again demonstrate that "Competencies" may not be an appropriately
flexible term to represent the relationship between a resource and the two
competing structural frameworks for organizing curriculum design you discuss
(Outcomes vs. Syllabus). There are others we might list as well. All of them
seem to boil down to some form of catalog, be it of skills or topics to be
covered. I will note here that in the US, the K-12 learning standards are
met via programs of instruction that are guided by an "instructional scope
and sequence" which more closely resembles a Syllabus. Alignment to a Scope
and Sequence document is another kind of curriculum alignment.
If we put the term Competency aside, and keep the same structure, we really
are defining an alignment or an association between some resource and some
framework (Be it a skill, or content framework). This alignment has some
number of classifications (AlignmentTypes), but what those are (Teaches,
Assesses, Requires, etc.) really depends on the thing being aligned, and the
framework it is being aligned to. The same resource ("how to get dressed"
for example), might require a skill ("can tie shoes") and address part of a
syllabus topic ("life skills > things you do in the morning"). I believe
the basic structure provided enables both types of alignment, really.
Another is the ReadingLevel case, which aligns a text document to a reading
complexity scale or framework.
So the second thing you point to, indirectly is the need to support
different classifications of alignment.
The last important point I will call out is your observation that similar
things can and are often described in very different ways depending on
content and use. This I fear is not really a solvable issue. But as you
observe, if everyone simply tagged their learning resources as being about
some topic at some level for some type of user an aligned to some structured
topical or skill based framework, we will be much better of then we are
today. If we happen to use the same terms and frameworks, that would be even
better, but I won't be holding my breath on that one.
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.
Zoe
Apr 30, 2012, 6:19:23 AM4/30/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Hi everyone!
Glad to see people are interested in these issues :)
Two posts coming: This one is about a theory point, the next will
respond directly to Josh.
Teasing out some big concepts from Josh's post - I could be wrong, but
I think I've spotted a theoretical point worth fleshing out. It has to
do with the usefulness of accuracy in a keyword-search context.
Competency, timeRequired, and interactivityType are the fields
affected.
The key take-home is: Accurate descriptions that work in catalogues
don't necessarily add value in keyword search. I think
(As an early-career cataloguing fiend, accuracy was my first love -
but I have, grudgingly, come to respect the other flavours of icecream
available...)
What I like about schema.org as opposed to, for example, our old &
trusted friend Dublin Core is it's usefulness to the search box. No
filters on the UI, no taxonomy, no controlled vocabs, just keyword
search.
That does mean, however, that anything stored in the LRMI has to be
something someone would use in a keyword search.
(Keyword search does not/never will provide as much accuracy/control
as a good catalogue record (most websites don't even have dates on
them, after all!) but it does what it does very well, if more
messily.)
Here are some terms that I can't imagine an educational-resource-
seeking user typing into google, either with or without other strings:
Assesses
Teaches
Active
Expositive
Mixed
P1H30M
For example: I can't imagine a teacher looking for Jane Eyre resources
typing 'Jane Eyre expositive'.
Nor can I imagine the string 'Jane Eyre assesses' or 'Jane Eyre P1H'.
'Jane Eyre essay questions' I can imagine though (I've searched that
one myself! I was an English teacher in a former life :) ), which is
nicely facilitated by LRMI's learningResourceType. I can also imagine
'Jane Eyre lesson plan', 'Jane Eyre GCSE', and (at a stretch) 'Jane
Eyre classroom activity one hour'.
What's interesting is that 'active', 'expositive', 'mixed', 'teaches',
'assesses', and ISO 8601 time forms are all very definitely *accurate*
(or more specifically, capable of providing accurate information). In
a classical cataloguing environement, they're very useful.
Within a google context, however, the story may be different. These
strings don't match with what we know about how people use that big
empty search box - the search box invites concrete, discrete concepts,
not context-dependent abstractions like 'mixed'.
This is another reason, I think, to make sure concrete concepts (a
couple I threw into the pot were were 'discipline' and
'qualification') have the chance to be included in the markup. What do
others think?
Zoe
> blog from March -http://www.memexblog.com/2012/03/what-are-our-teachers-looking-for/)
> ...
>
> read more »
Glad to see people are interested in these issues :)
Two posts coming: This one is about a theory point, the next will
respond directly to Josh.
Teasing out some big concepts from Josh's post - I could be wrong, but
I think I've spotted a theoretical point worth fleshing out. It has to
do with the usefulness of accuracy in a keyword-search context.
Competency, timeRequired, and interactivityType are the fields
affected.
The key take-home is: Accurate descriptions that work in catalogues
don't necessarily add value in keyword search. I think
(As an early-career cataloguing fiend, accuracy was my first love -
but I have, grudgingly, come to respect the other flavours of icecream
available...)
What I like about schema.org as opposed to, for example, our old &
trusted friend Dublin Core is it's usefulness to the search box. No
filters on the UI, no taxonomy, no controlled vocabs, just keyword
search.
That does mean, however, that anything stored in the LRMI has to be
something someone would use in a keyword search.
(Keyword search does not/never will provide as much accuracy/control
as a good catalogue record (most websites don't even have dates on
them, after all!) but it does what it does very well, if more
messily.)
Here are some terms that I can't imagine an educational-resource-
seeking user typing into google, either with or without other strings:
Assesses
Teaches
Active
Expositive
Mixed
P1H30M
For example: I can't imagine a teacher looking for Jane Eyre resources
typing 'Jane Eyre expositive'.
Nor can I imagine the string 'Jane Eyre assesses' or 'Jane Eyre P1H'.
'Jane Eyre essay questions' I can imagine though (I've searched that
one myself! I was an English teacher in a former life :) ), which is
nicely facilitated by LRMI's learningResourceType. I can also imagine
'Jane Eyre lesson plan', 'Jane Eyre GCSE', and (at a stretch) 'Jane
Eyre classroom activity one hour'.
What's interesting is that 'active', 'expositive', 'mixed', 'teaches',
'assesses', and ISO 8601 time forms are all very definitely *accurate*
(or more specifically, capable of providing accurate information). In
a classical cataloguing environement, they're very useful.
Within a google context, however, the story may be different. These
strings don't match with what we know about how people use that big
empty search box - the search box invites concrete, discrete concepts,
not context-dependent abstractions like 'mixed'.
This is another reason, I think, to make sure concrete concepts (a
couple I threw into the pot were were 'discipline' and
'qualification') have the chance to be included in the markup. What do
others think?
Zoe
>
> read more »
Zoe
Apr 30, 2012, 6:33:42 AM4/30/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
And on Josh's points...
Josh, thanks for giving me an insight into how this work has built up
and what you expect from it.
1. I hadn't seen 'scope and sequence' - that looks much more concrete.
In England we are waiting on a new curriculum, to be delivered next
month, which we have been told will be more content-oriented... though
we won't know until we see it!
2. I see what you mean - yes, they cater to both cases. This looks to
me, however, a bit like CBT/SCORM type thinking, where the computer
has a role in deciding what the learner should do next. On the open
web (as per my last long post!) I'm not sure that function is as
useful as providing markup to teachers, and working on the assumption
that they can/will decide what the learner should do next.
As an example, I note that your example 'things you do in the morning'
does not actually contain the string 'tying shoes'. If I was teaching
this class, I'd already know that I was doing a unit on things you do
in the morning, and if I decided that a session on tying shoes was
right for my class, that's what I'd type into google - 'tying shoes'.
I guess what I'm saying is, google is not sequential. Google's just
one search, then another search, then another search. If we design for
sequencing, that is very useful for CBT programming in a closed
environment, but not for searchable html markup.
3. Ha ha - yes, I see. Our users search on simple strings, so (if I've
got you right) I agree - that's what we should be building for :)
> blog from March -http://www.memexblog.com/2012/03/what-are-our-teachers-looking-for/)
> ...
>
> read more »
Josh, thanks for giving me an insight into how this work has built up
and what you expect from it.
1. I hadn't seen 'scope and sequence' - that looks much more concrete.
In England we are waiting on a new curriculum, to be delivered next
month, which we have been told will be more content-oriented... though
we won't know until we see it!
2. I see what you mean - yes, they cater to both cases. This looks to
me, however, a bit like CBT/SCORM type thinking, where the computer
has a role in deciding what the learner should do next. On the open
web (as per my last long post!) I'm not sure that function is as
useful as providing markup to teachers, and working on the assumption
that they can/will decide what the learner should do next.
As an example, I note that your example 'things you do in the morning'
does not actually contain the string 'tying shoes'. If I was teaching
this class, I'd already know that I was doing a unit on things you do
in the morning, and if I decided that a session on tying shoes was
right for my class, that's what I'd type into google - 'tying shoes'.
I guess what I'm saying is, google is not sequential. Google's just
one search, then another search, then another search. If we design for
sequencing, that is very useful for CBT programming in a closed
environment, but not for searchable html markup.
3. Ha ha - yes, I see. Our users search on simple strings, so (if I've
got you right) I agree - that's what we should be building for :)
>
> read more »
Stuart Sutton
Apr 30, 2012, 7:45:42 AM4/30/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 3:19 AM, Zoe <zoe.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here are some terms that I can't imagine an educational-resource-
seeking user typing into google, either with or without other strings:
Assesses
Teaches
Active
Expositive
Mixed
P1H30M
For example: I can't imagine a teacher looking for Jane Eyre resources
typing 'Jane Eyre expositive'.
Nor can I imagine the string 'Jane Eyre assesses' or 'Jane Eyre P1H'.
Zoe, it appears that there there is an underlying assumption to this thread that metadata utility is all about one aspect of "search": what terms get typed into the browser. But there are other critical user behaviors with search beyond determining the search string. An equally important matter is whether the descriptions returned by whatever is typed into the search box contain useful information of a kind sufficient to support making a decision whether to retrieve. "P1H30M" or "Expositive" may not be terms a teacher initially types into Google, but that bit of information might well support a decision to retrieve or not when what is needed is a lesson plan that can be usefully deployed in under an hour and is purely expositive. This is particularly true when result sets are appropriately faceted.
So, "Jane Eyre lesson plan" may be what is typed as the first step in search, but the other structured metadata likely determines whether what is returned by the engine is retrieved. So, Zoe, I think you are likely spot-on in your analysis if the sole purpose of structured LRMI and schema.org metadata is the magic bullet of that evasive perfect string to type into the search box. But, deciding which resources in the retrieved list to actually retrieve is a function beyond the search string.
Stuart A. Sutton,
CEO and Managing Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Associate Professor Emeritus, The Information School
University of Washington
Peter Pinch
Apr 30, 2012, 10:10:40 AM4/30/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
Google now supports around recipes.
I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
"potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
count.
https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
"potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
term.
I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
metadata.
- Peter
Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
From: Stuart Sutton <stuart...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lr...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, April 30, 2012 7:45 AM
To: <lr...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in
metadata
>schema.org <http://schema.org> metadata is the magic bullet of that
justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
Google now supports around recipes.
I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
"potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
count.
https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
"potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
term.
I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
metadata.
- Peter
Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
From: Stuart Sutton <stuart...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lr...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, April 30, 2012 7:45 AM
To: <lr...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in
metadata
Zoe
Apr 30, 2012, 11:29:48 AM4/30/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Yes, I see what you mean, Peter, and I agree - to an extent.
Stuart - I hadn't thought of the results display angle. Using
standards for marking up time, as an example, makes much more sense
now, thanks.
Funny you should mention 'food', Peter... I wrote a post about why
food != learning resources a couple of weeks ago! Here's the link:
http://www.memexblog.com/2012/02/describing-learning-should-we/
(The post wasn't written for this list and I've chosen not to edit it,
but if you have a read you'll notice that some of my questions about
the nature of usefulness in learning metadata are long-standing.)
(TL;DR: Food is an area where we all agree what constitutes an entity,
and what the names of the entities are. The same applies to movies
(e.g. 'title', 'director'), books ('author', 'publisher'), and so on.
Pretty much every field of human industry *except* learning content,
maybe! In learning, consensus on entity existence, limit, and name is
either loose or not present.)
I do like the google reciple search, very much. I've been using the
yummly.com interface as an example of the same thing in my efforts to
improve our faceted search.
If one goal of LRMI is to support faceted search, however, that
implies the need for the most consensus-driven/discrete/user-
predictable fields we can get - a strong argument, I think, for
considering the inclusion of Discipline and Qualification.
Zoe
On Apr 30, 3:10 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
> justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
> Google now supports around recipes.
>
> I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
> "potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
> that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
> count.
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
>
> As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
> search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
> "potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
> to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
>
> You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
> with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
> levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
> narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
> term.
>
> I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
> I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
> metadata.
>
> - Peter
>
> Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
Stuart - I hadn't thought of the results display angle. Using
standards for marking up time, as an example, makes much more sense
now, thanks.
Funny you should mention 'food', Peter... I wrote a post about why
food != learning resources a couple of weeks ago! Here's the link:
http://www.memexblog.com/2012/02/describing-learning-should-we/
(The post wasn't written for this list and I've chosen not to edit it,
but if you have a read you'll notice that some of my questions about
the nature of usefulness in learning metadata are long-standing.)
(TL;DR: Food is an area where we all agree what constitutes an entity,
and what the names of the entities are. The same applies to movies
(e.g. 'title', 'director'), books ('author', 'publisher'), and so on.
Pretty much every field of human industry *except* learning content,
maybe! In learning, consensus on entity existence, limit, and name is
either loose or not present.)
I do like the google reciple search, very much. I've been using the
yummly.com interface as an example of the same thing in my efforts to
improve our faceted search.
If one goal of LRMI is to support faceted search, however, that
implies the need for the most consensus-driven/discrete/user-
predictable fields we can get - a strong argument, I think, for
considering the inclusion of Discipline and Qualification.
Zoe
On Apr 30, 3:10 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
> justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
> Google now supports around recipes.
>
> I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
> "potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
> that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
> count.
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
>
> As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
> search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
> "potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
> to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
>
> You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
> with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
> levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
> narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
> term.
>
> I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
> I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
> metadata.
>
> - Peter
>
> Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 8:03:05 AM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Peter -
I just worked out where I think the big difference if for what the
LRMI draft does from what you want it to do (e.g. modelling from the
'food' example...)
The problem is in having full-text outcomes, without contextualising
structures.
So:
'Mayonnaise' will fit on a sidebar.
'Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
'Mayonnnaise' exists in the semantic construct 'ingredients'
''Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
...but that's not actually useful information without the
contextualising specifier 'English'. (The outcome could just as easily
be taken from grade 1 'Science'.)
I note that in the string 'Participate in collaborative conversations
occur - nor does 'speaking', 'listening', or 'speaking and listening'.
I also note that the LRMI 0.7 draft doesn't have an area where these
meaning-making fields that define the context of the outcome can be
recorded - or where the identifier for the outcome string (which ties
back to the meaning-making fields) can be stored. There's only the
full-text outcome, and as our research has shown, full-text outcomes
almost never contain strings that match user search terms.
My point here is, full-text outcome strings without context don't
support usable display of information pertaining to search results
either.
So while I think your model of 'recipe' is a good one to aim for, I
don't think that the 0.7 specification supports it just yet. That
would require identifiers and subject areas as a minimum, not an
optional extra.
Hope that made sense...
I just worked out where I think the big difference if for what the
LRMI draft does from what you want it to do (e.g. modelling from the
'food' example...)
The problem is in having full-text outcomes, without contextualising
structures.
So:
'Mayonnaise' will fit on a sidebar.
'Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and
larger groups' will not fit on a sidebar.
'Mayonnnaise' exists in the semantic construct 'ingredients'
''Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and
larger groups' exists in the semantic construct 'Outcomes'...
...but that's not actually useful information without the
contextualising specifier 'English'. (The outcome could just as easily
be taken from grade 1 'Science'.)
I note that in the string 'Participate in collaborative conversations
with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and
adults in small and larger groups', the string 'English' does not
occur - nor does 'speaking', 'listening', or 'speaking and listening'.
I also note that the LRMI 0.7 draft doesn't have an area where these
meaning-making fields that define the context of the outcome can be
recorded - or where the identifier for the outcome string (which ties
back to the meaning-making fields) can be stored. There's only the
full-text outcome, and as our research has shown, full-text outcomes
almost never contain strings that match user search terms.
My point here is, full-text outcome strings without context don't
support usable display of information pertaining to search results
either.
So while I think your model of 'recipe' is a good one to aim for, I
don't think that the 0.7 specification supports it just yet. That
would require identifiers and subject areas as a minimum, not an
optional extra.
Hope that made sense...
> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
> justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
> Google now supports around recipes.
>
> I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
> "potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
> that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
> count.
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
>
> As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
> search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
> "potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
> to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
>
> You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
> with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
> levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
> narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
> term.
>
> I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
> I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
> metadata.
>
> - Peter
>
> Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
> justifying LRMI (and schema.org in general) is the faceted search that
> Google now supports around recipes.
>
> I'm never sure if this works for everyone, but when I do a search now for
> "potato salad recipe" in Google, I now get a set of facets on the left
> that let me narrow down my search, for ingredients, cook time and calorie
> count.
>
> https://www.google.com/search?q=potato+salad+recipe
>
> As a casual recipe searcher, I think I'd be unlikely to use a
> search term "potato salad recipe with less than 300 calories" much less
> "potato salad recipe with 200 calories." But having that metadata exposed
> to Google allows it to provide a better search experience.
>
> You can imagine how this might work for LRMI metadata. The user starts
> with a search on "Math," but can quickly see what the range of grade
> levels, type of content, duration, etc are. She can then use a filter to
> narrow the results, or perhaps realize she needs a more specific search
> term.
>
> I still believe full text searches are where most users want to start, but
> I think there's a lot of room to enhance the search experience with better
> metadata.
>
> - Peter
>
> Peter Pinch | Production Manager, OpenCourseWare
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
Peter Pinch
May 1, 2012, 9:07:07 AM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Absolutely makes sense to me.
In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and then,
maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The primary use
case (at least for schema.org) is of adding semantic markup to an already
existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page useful
for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
easier for computers to read.
So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the text
of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades 1-2"
and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
- Peter
-----------
Peter Pinch
Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu
In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and then,
maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The primary use
case (at least for schema.org) is of adding semantic markup to an already
existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page useful
for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
easier for computers to read.
So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the text
of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades 1-2"
and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
- Peter
-----------
Peter Pinch
Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 11:33:51 AM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
So, Peter, what do you recommend? Leaving things as they are, or
modifying them to reflect the discussion?
(On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
the 'age' field.
Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
Zoe
On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and then,
> maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The primary use
> case (at least for schema.org) is of adding semantic markup to an already
> existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page useful
> for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> easier for computers to read.
>
> So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the text
> of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades 1-2"
> and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> - Peter
>
> -----------
> Peter Pinch
> Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu
modifying them to reflect the discussion?
(On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
the 'age' field.
Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
Zoe
On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and then,
> maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The primary use
> case (at least for schema.org) is of adding semantic markup to an already
> existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page useful
> for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> easier for computers to read.
>
> So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the text
> of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades 1-2"
> and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> - Peter
>
> -----------
> Peter Pinch
Stuart Sutton
May 1, 2012, 11:54:19 AM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Zoe, dcterms:educationLevel [1] used by many Dublin Core-based projects for expressing the notion behind grades (in U.S. vernacular) and qualifications was part of the original listing of potential LRMI properties but was not included. I have no idea whether it is possible at this point to reopen those discussions/decisions since finalization of the LRMI specification is near.
However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some other non-LRMI property.
Stuart
[1] http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or training context, for which the described resource is intended."
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some other non-LRMI property.
Stuart
[1] http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or training context, for which the described resource is intended."
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
Joshua Marks
May 1, 2012, 12:06:38 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Stuart,
Yes you are correct, we discussed mapping typical age to ed level. We also said this would not work for higher education and then sort of left it there. However, since we have the box of worm cans open, we might as well look at this educaitonalLevel issues again (Which seems like yet another framework alignment issue… e.g. What is your ed level framework and which level is this resource aligned with.)
Joshua Marks
CTO
Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
US 831-685-3511
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.
Stuart Sutton
May 1, 2012, 12:23:11 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Joshua, I am not certain that for most cases an assertion of educationLevel need come even close to the potential complexity of an assertion of a correlation between a leaning resource and authoritatively promulgated learning outcome. While I will not venture to say anything about other jurisdictions, there are longstanding definitions of education levels in the US. [1] was developed in the mid-1990s for what was then the U.S. Department of Education's Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) [now the Gateway for 21st Century Skills]--also later published for use with NSDL. So, the means for making straightforward assertions exist. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages demonstrates that there are fairly well defined frameworks in most jurisdictions. Mapping a learning resource to particular points in such frameworks is no harder (perhaps less) than mapping to a typical age range.
Stuart
[1] http://standards.jesandco.org/wiki/ASN_Education_Level_Vocabulary
Stuart
[1] http://standards.jesandco.org/wiki/ASN_Education_Level_Vocabulary
Phil Barker
May 1, 2012, 12:32:46 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Age doesn't work at all well for HE either, unless you just say 18+ and don't differentiate between 1st year bachelor level and Master degree level.
I think there was also an issue that grade levels are very difficult to map across different education systems.
Have a look the wikipedia entry on Ninth Grade [1] and see how US 9th Grade "usually the first year of high school" equates to Grade 8 for some parts of Australia and Grade 7 in others, if you map via it being "Freshman year", or Year 10/Form 4 in New Zealand (mapped by age), or Year 10 in England and Wales but Year 11 in Northern Ireland, which for some is the final year of High School not the first...
At which point you perhaps think that maybe the only way to express this equivalence, albeit inadequately, is in terms of the typical age of the students? E.g.
This resource is suitable for Scottish <span itemprop="typicalAge" value="14-15">S5</span> pupils
Phil
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_grade
-- <http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/> Please note new email address: phil....@hw.ac.uk
Heriot-Watt University is the Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2011-2012.
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 12:53:10 PM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Wait - Phil, is the scope of the LRMI supposed to encompass HE and FE?
On May 1, 5:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> Age doesn't work at all well for HE either, unless you just say 18+ and
> don't differentiate between 1st year bachelor level and Master degree level.
>
> I think there was also an issue that grade levels are very difficult to
> map across different education systems.
>
> Have a look the wikipedia entry on Ninth Grade [1] and see how US 9th
> Grade "usually the first year of high school" equates to Grade 8 for
> some parts of Australia and Grade 7 in others, if you map via it being
> "Freshman year", or Year 10/Form 4 in New Zealand (mapped by age), or
> Year 10 in England and Wales but Year 11 in Northern Ireland, which for
> some is the final year of High School not the first...
>
> At which point you perhaps think that maybe the only way to express this
> equivalence, albeit inadequately, is in terms of the typical age of the
> students? E.g.
> This resource is suitable for Scottish <span itemprop="typicalAge"
> value="14-15">S5</span> pupils
>
> Phil
>
> 1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_grade
>
> >www.curriki.org<http://www.curriki.org>
> > <https://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/JoinCurriki> of the
> > <http://blog.curriki.org/>, Facebook
> > <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Curriki/134427817464>and LinkedIn
> > <http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1826931&sharedKey=277...> communities.
>
> > *From:*lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf
> > Of *Stuart Sutton
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:54 AM
> > *To:* lr...@googlegroups.com
> > *Subject:* Re: Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in
>
> > > Reply-To: "lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>"
> > <lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>>
> ...
>
> read more »
On May 1, 5:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> Age doesn't work at all well for HE either, unless you just say 18+ and
> don't differentiate between 1st year bachelor level and Master degree level.
>
> I think there was also an issue that grade levels are very difficult to
> map across different education systems.
>
> Have a look the wikipedia entry on Ninth Grade [1] and see how US 9th
> Grade "usually the first year of high school" equates to Grade 8 for
> some parts of Australia and Grade 7 in others, if you map via it being
> "Freshman year", or Year 10/Form 4 in New Zealand (mapped by age), or
> Year 10 in England and Wales but Year 11 in Northern Ireland, which for
> some is the final year of High School not the first...
>
> At which point you perhaps think that maybe the only way to express this
> equivalence, albeit inadequately, is in terms of the typical age of the
> students? E.g.
> This resource is suitable for Scottish <span itemprop="typicalAge"
> value="14-15">S5</span> pupils
>
> Phil
>
>
> On 01/05/2012 17:06, Joshua Marks wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Stuart,
>
> > Yes you are correct, we discussed mapping typical age to ed level. We
> > also said this would not work for higher education and then sort of
> > left it there. However, since we have the box of worm cans open, we
> > might as well look at this educaitonalLevel issues again (Which seems
> > like yet another framework alignment issue… e.g. What is your ed level
> > framework and which level is this resource aligned with.)
>
> > Joshua Marks
>
> > CTO
>
> > Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
>
> > jma...@curriki.org <mailto:jma...@curriki.org>
> On 01/05/2012 17:06, Joshua Marks wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Stuart,
>
> > Yes you are correct, we discussed mapping typical age to ed level. We
> > also said this would not work for higher education and then sort of
> > left it there. However, since we have the box of worm cans open, we
> > might as well look at this educaitonalLevel issues again (Which seems
> > like yet another framework alignment issue… e.g. What is your ed level
> > framework and which level is this resource aligned with.)
>
> > Joshua Marks
>
> > CTO
>
> > Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
>
>
> >www.curriki.org<http://www.curriki.org>
> > <https://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/JoinCurriki> of the
> > Curriki community, to follow us on Twitter
> > <http://twitter.com/Curriki> and to say hello on our blog
> > <http://blog.curriki.org/>, Facebook
> > <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Curriki/134427817464>and LinkedIn
> > <http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1826931&sharedKey=277...> communities.
>
> > *From:*lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf
> > Of *Stuart Sutton
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:54 AM
> > *To:* lr...@googlegroups.com
> > *Subject:* Re: Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in
> > metadata
>
> > Zoe, dcterms:educationLevel [1] used by many Dublin Core-based
> > projects for expressing the notion behind grades (in U.S. vernacular)
> > and qualifications was part of the original listing of potential LRMI
> > properties but was not included. I have no idea whether it is
> > possible at this point to reopen those discussions/decisions since
> > finalization of the LRMI specification is near.
>
> > However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly
> > among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and
> > not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be
> > mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some
> > other non-LRMI property.
>
> > Stuart
>
> > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of
> > entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or
> > training context, for which the described resource is intended."
> > [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
>
>
> > Zoe, dcterms:educationLevel [1] used by many Dublin Core-based
> > projects for expressing the notion behind grades (in U.S. vernacular)
> > and qualifications was part of the original listing of potential LRMI
> > properties but was not included. I have no idea whether it is
> > possible at this point to reopen those discussions/decisions since
> > finalization of the LRMI specification is near.
>
> > However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly
> > among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and
> > not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be
> > mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some
> > other non-LRMI property.
>
> > Stuart
>
> > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of
> > entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or
> > training context, for which the described resource is intended."
> > [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
>
> > On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Zoe <zoe.f.r...@gmail.com
> > <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > So, Peter, what do you recommend? Leaving things as they are, or
> > modifying them to reflect the discussion?
>
> > (On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
> > intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
> > only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
> > learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
> > marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
> > the 'age' field.
>
> > Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
> > appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
> > of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
> > olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
> > for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
> > context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
> > optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
>
> > Zoe
>
> > On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU
> > <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > So, Peter, what do you recommend? Leaving things as they are, or
> > modifying them to reflect the discussion?
>
> > (On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
> > intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
> > only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
> > learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
> > marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
> > the 'age' field.
>
> > Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
> > appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
> > of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
> > olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
> > for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
> > context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
> > optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
>
> > Zoe
>
> > On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU
> > <mailto:pdpi...@MIT.EDU>> wrote:
> > > Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> > > In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> > > competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> > > relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and
> > then,
> > > maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> > > Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> > > that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The
> > primary use
> > > case (at least for schema.org <http://schema.org>) is of adding
> > > Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> > > In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> > > competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> > > relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and
> > then,
> > > maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> > > Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> > > that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The
> > primary use
> > semantic markup to an already
> > > existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page
> > useful
> > > for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> > > easier for computers to read.
>
> > > So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the
> > text
> > > of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades
> > 1-2"
> > > and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> > > - Peter
>
> > > -----------
> > > Peter Pinch
>
> > > Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu
> > <http://ocw.mit.edu>
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Zoe <zoe.f.r...@gmail.com <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>>
> > > existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page
> > useful
> > > for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> > > easier for computers to read.
>
> > > So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the
> > text
> > > of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades
> > 1-2"
> > > and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> > > - Peter
>
> > > -----------
> > > Peter Pinch
>
> > > Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu
> > <http://ocw.mit.edu>
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
>
> > > Reply-To: "lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>"
> > <lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>>
> > > Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:03 AM
> > > To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative <lr...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>>
> > > To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative <lr...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:pdpi...@MIT.EDU>> wrote:
> > > >> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
> > > >> justifying LRMI (and schema.org <http://schema.org> in general)
> > > >> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
>
> read more »
Phil Barker
May 1, 2012, 12:57:29 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On 01/05/2012 17:53, Zoe wrote:
> Wait - Phil, is the scope of the LRMI supposed to encompass HE and FE?
Why wouldn't it?
> Wait - Phil, is the scope of the LRMI supposed to encompass HE and FE?
--
Heriot-Watt University is the Sunday Times
Scottish University of the Year 2011-2012
Scottish University of the Year 2011-2012
Stuart Sutton
May 1, 2012, 1:03:24 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Phil, agreed. Even saying "5th grade" in the U.S. has a lot squish around it. Any American will follow on with the question "5th grade where in the United States"--in Beverly Hills?... somewhere where folks are less "fortunate"? I _think_ Zoe's point comes down to the fact that most learning resource descriptions tend to be framed in terms of some system of education level. I believe that that's because when you ask a teacher what she teaches, she'll respond not with a statement of ages, but with an education level. That's also how they think and search. Ideally, the fact that Scottish S5 maps to typical age range 14-15 is something that should be happening more globally in the background and not repetitively at the point of markup. We can imagine an RDFy kind of world where such mappings exist for machines presenting me descriptions and I am not driven to a Wikipedia page to figure out the value of a learning resource mapped to Scottish S5 to a 9th grade teacher in the U.S. If the glue in the mapping is typical age range--great. But Zoe's point was (I think) that a teacher in neither Scottland nor the U.S. is likely to search for age 14-15. Of course this turns back on me in terms of my earlier post regarding the value of the metadata outside the initial search--oh my.
Stuart
Stuart
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 1:06:16 PM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
But the competencies don't map at all.
I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
outcomes.
'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion >
decrease results relevance.
If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
we have different measurement systems.
The curricula of the world aren't standard, no, but that's a strength
not a weakness!
For metadata, it's actually a significant strength - anyone who
searches on/benefits from results markup mentioning 'KS2' has self-
identified as a UK teacher using UK outcomes. That's excellent.
I also note that the 'guiding principles' talk about using information
that's already stored/is often stored in the existing html - in all
the content I've seen/worked with, grade is a far more comment piece
of data than age.
> ...
>
> read more »
But the competencies don't map at all.
I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
outcomes.
'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion >
decrease results relevance.
If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
we have different measurement systems.
The curricula of the world aren't standard, no, but that's a strength
not a weakness!
For metadata, it's actually a significant strength - anyone who
searches on/benefits from results markup mentioning 'KS2' has self-
identified as a UK teacher using UK outcomes. That's excellent.
I also note that the 'guiding principles' talk about using information
that's already stored/is often stored in the existing html - in all
the content I've seen/worked with, grade is a far more comment piece
of data than age.
> Age doesn't work at all well for HE either, unless you just say 18+ and
> don't differentiate between 1st year bachelor level and Master degree level.
>
> I think there was also an issue that grade levels are very difficult to
> map across different education systems.
>
> Have a look the wikipedia entry on Ninth Grade [1] and see how US 9th
> Grade "usually the first year of high school" equates to Grade 8 for
> some parts of Australia and Grade 7 in others, if you map via it being
> "Freshman year", or Year 10/Form 4 in New Zealand (mapped by age), or
> Year 10 in England and Wales but Year 11 in Northern Ireland, which for
> some is the final year of High School not the first...
>
> At which point you perhaps think that maybe the only way to express this
> equivalence, albeit inadequately, is in terms of the typical age of the
> students? E.g.
> This resource is suitable for Scottish <span itemprop="typicalAge"
> value="14-15">S5</span> pupils
>
> Phil
>
> 1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_grade
> don't differentiate between 1st year bachelor level and Master degree level.
>
> I think there was also an issue that grade levels are very difficult to
> map across different education systems.
>
> Have a look the wikipedia entry on Ninth Grade [1] and see how US 9th
> Grade "usually the first year of high school" equates to Grade 8 for
> some parts of Australia and Grade 7 in others, if you map via it being
> "Freshman year", or Year 10/Form 4 in New Zealand (mapped by age), or
> Year 10 in England and Wales but Year 11 in Northern Ireland, which for
> some is the final year of High School not the first...
>
> At which point you perhaps think that maybe the only way to express this
> equivalence, albeit inadequately, is in terms of the typical age of the
> students? E.g.
> This resource is suitable for Scottish <span itemprop="typicalAge"
> value="14-15">S5</span> pupils
>
> Phil
>
>
> On 01/05/2012 17:06, Joshua Marks wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Stuart,
>
> > Yes you are correct, we discussed mapping typical age to ed level. We
> > also said this would not work for higher education and then sort of
> > left it there. However, since we have the box of worm cans open, we
> > might as well look at this educaitonalLevel issues again (Which seems
> > like yet another framework alignment issue… e.g. What is your ed level
> > framework and which level is this resource aligned with.)
>
> > Joshua Marks
>
> > CTO
>
> > Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
>
> > <https://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/JoinCurriki> of the
> On 01/05/2012 17:06, Joshua Marks wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Stuart,
>
> > Yes you are correct, we discussed mapping typical age to ed level. We
> > also said this would not work for higher education and then sort of
> > left it there. However, since we have the box of worm cans open, we
> > might as well look at this educaitonalLevel issues again (Which seems
> > like yet another framework alignment issue… e.g. What is your ed level
> > framework and which level is this resource aligned with.)
>
> > Joshua Marks
>
> > CTO
>
> > Curriki: The Global Education and Learning Community
>
> > Curriki community, to follow us on Twitter
> > <http://twitter.com/Curriki> and to say hello on our blog
> > <http://blog.curriki.org/>, Facebook
> > <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Curriki/134427817464>and LinkedIn
> > <http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1826931&sharedKey=277...> communities.
>
> > *From:*lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf
> > Of *Stuart Sutton
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:54 AM
> > *To:* lr...@googlegroups.com
> > *Subject:* Re: Some thoughts from our research on curriculum models in
> > <http://blog.curriki.org/>, Facebook
> > <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Curriki/134427817464>and LinkedIn
> > <http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1826931&sharedKey=277...> communities.
>
> > *From:*lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf
> > Of *Stuart Sutton
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:54 AM
> > *To:* lr...@googlegroups.com
> > metadata
>
> > Zoe, dcterms:educationLevel [1] used by many Dublin Core-based
> > projects for expressing the notion behind grades (in U.S. vernacular)
> > and qualifications was part of the original listing of potential LRMI
> > properties but was not included. I have no idea whether it is
> > possible at this point to reopen those discussions/decisions since
> > finalization of the LRMI specification is near.
>
> > However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly
> > among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and
> > not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be
> > mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some
> > other non-LRMI property.
>
> > Stuart
>
> > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of
> > entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or
> > training context, for which the described resource is intended."
> > [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
>
>
> > Zoe, dcterms:educationLevel [1] used by many Dublin Core-based
> > projects for expressing the notion behind grades (in U.S. vernacular)
> > and qualifications was part of the original listing of potential LRMI
> > properties but was not included. I have no idea whether it is
> > possible at this point to reopen those discussions/decisions since
> > finalization of the LRMI specification is near.
>
> > However, you are correct, the prevalent expressions (particularly
> > among teachers/searchers) are in terms of grades/qualifications and
> > not typical age range. I guess this assumes many projects will be
> > mapping from education levels to typical age [see 2] or using some
> > other non-LRMI property.
>
> > Stuart
>
> > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel Definition: "A class of
> > entity, defined in terms of progression through an educational or
> > training context, for which the described resource is intended."
> > [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stages
>
> > On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Zoe <zoe.f.r...@gmail.com
> > <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > So, Peter, what do you recommend? Leaving things as they are, or
> > modifying them to reflect the discussion?
>
> > (On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
> > intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
> > only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
> > learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
> > marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
> > the 'age' field.
>
> > Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
> > appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
> > of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
> > olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
> > for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
> > context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
> > optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
>
> > Zoe
>
> > On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU
> > <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > So, Peter, what do you recommend? Leaving things as they are, or
> > modifying them to reflect the discussion?
>
> > (On the point of pre-existing html - that's what I thought the
> > intention was, but I wasn't sure as 'grade' isn't currently a field,
> > only age range is. Yet very little of our learning content (and the
> > learning content I see around the web) is marked up with ages, it's
> > marked up with grades or exam levels. So we wouldn't be able to use
> > the 'age' field.
>
> > Additional to this - outcomes/competencies are not objectively
> > appropriate for any given age, they are only meaningful in the context
> > of the whole curriculum. Assuming that Texas' outcomes for eight year
> > olds are the same as France's outcomes for eight year olds is asking
> > for trouble - another reason why I'm starting to suspect the outcome
> > context (grade, subject area, qualification) are required rather than
> > optional for LRMI metadata to be meaningful.
>
> > Zoe
>
> > On May 1, 2:07 pm, Peter Pinch <pdpi...@MIT.EDU
> > <mailto:pdpi...@MIT.EDU>> wrote:
> > > Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> > > In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> > > competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> > > relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and
> > then,
> > > maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> > > Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> > > that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The
> > primary use
> > > case (at least for schema.org <http://schema.org>) is of adding
> > > Absolutely makes sense to me.
>
> > > In the case of relations to competencies, I don't think the text of the
> > > competency is nearly as useful as the metadata around it -- first that a
> > > relation exists at all; then the jurisdiction of the competency; and
> > then,
> > > maybe someday, the position of a competency within a curriculum.
>
> > > Another thing to keep in mind is one of the basic ideas of microdata --
> > > that the metadata shouldn't take precedence over the data. The
> > primary use
> > semantic markup to an already
> > > existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page
> > useful
> > > for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> > > easier for computers to read.
>
> > > So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the
> > text
> > > of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades
> > 1-2"
> > > and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> > > - Peter
>
> > > -----------
> > > Peter Pinch
>
> > > Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu
> > <http://ocw.mit.edu>
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > existing web page. The presumption is the text that makes the page
> > useful
> > > for humans is already there. The purpose of the microdata is to make it
> > > easier for computers to read.
>
> > > So you actually have the option of putting something sensible in the
> > text
> > > of the page, perhaps "this resource supports collaboration in grades
> > 1-2"
> > > and then back-it up with microdata that links to the competency.
>
> > > - Peter
>
> > > -----------
> > > Peter Pinch
>
> > > Production Manager, MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu
> > <http://ocw.mit.edu>
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Zoe <zoe.f.r...@gmail.com <mailto:zoe.f.r...@gmail.com>>
>
> > > Reply-To: "lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>"
> > <lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>>
>
> > > Reply-To: "lr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>"
> > > Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:03 AM
> > > To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative <lr...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com>>
> > > To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative <lr...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:pdpi...@MIT.EDU>> wrote:
> > > >> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
> > > >> justifying LRMI (and schema.org <http://schema.org> in general)
> > > >> Following up on Stuart's response, the model I've had in my head for
>
> read more »
Stuart Sutton
May 1, 2012, 1:06:22 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Zoe <zoe.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
Wait - Phil, is the scope of the LRMI supposed to encompass HE and FE?
As far as I can tell the LRMI scope is for learning resource markup for search/discover. No limitations on the context.
Stuart
Stuart
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 1:11:46 PM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Close, Stuart!
My point is that ages are universal for students (they all turn twelve
at some point), but not for what they get taught.
It's sticky, but the complexity is unavoidable - students learn
different things at different ages depending on what school system
they're taught in.
I also point back to the outcomes - those are organised by grade, so,
they're only meaningful when associated with a grade (and subject
area). As full text, decontextualised strings, there's not much you
can do with them.
On May 1, 6:06 pm, Stuart Sutton <stuartasut...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevelDefinition: "A class of
> ...
>
> read more »
My point is that ages are universal for students (they all turn twelve
at some point), but not for what they get taught.
It's sticky, but the complexity is unavoidable - students learn
different things at different ages depending on what school system
they're taught in.
I also point back to the outcomes - those are organised by grade, so,
they're only meaningful when associated with a grade (and subject
area). As full text, decontextualised strings, there's not much you
can do with them.
On May 1, 6:06 pm, Stuart Sutton <stuartasut...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> read more »
Zoe
May 1, 2012, 1:15:20 PM5/1/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
HE education is an area of interest of mine (it's what you get for
marrying an academic ;) )
As a first impression, I'm not sure that the current LRMI fields would
support the breadth of teaching currently undertaken in FE and HE.
If FE and HE are on the list, then 'Qualification' becomes really
important (especially for FE as Qualification is how all their
learning is organised) and 'Subject area' even more so.
Zoe
> > > > [1]http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevelDefinition: "A class of
> ...
>
> read more »
marrying an academic ;) )
As a first impression, I'm not sure that the current LRMI fields would
support the breadth of teaching currently undertaken in FE and HE.
If FE and HE are on the list, then 'Qualification' becomes really
important (especially for FE as Qualification is how all their
learning is organised) and 'Subject area' even more so.
Zoe
>
> read more »
Simon Grant
May 1, 2012, 1:30:09 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Hi Zoe and all
Probably we all recognise that
(a) what is taught at a particular age varies not only between different countries, but also in different educational subsystems within a country, and in the same country in different years;
(b) there is little correlation between school "years", whether or not they have the same number (in any case compulsory education starts at different ages).
What is relatively well defined is what is expected within a certain (perhaps national or state) curriculum. That's what is published, what authors and book companies aim at, etc. To my way of thinking, there is no harm at all in referring to a defined level within a particular educational level system at a particular date. It is open to anyone who wants to do linked data to propose equivalences, either across the curriculum or in specific subject areas. When equivalences become at least mutually, or ideally more widely, recognised, mapping across different educational systems can begin.
Where age is actually relevant seems subtly different. Is there at least more of a general consensus about broad levels of social/emotional maturity, relating to how films/movies/games etc. are age rated?
Competence is more of a specialist area for me, so I'd better reply separately on that. I hope, more in reply to different points...
Simon
On 1 May 2012 18:06, Zoe <zoe.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
But the competencies don't map at all.
I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
outcomes.
'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion >
decrease results relevance.
If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
we have different measurement systems.
The curricula of the world aren't standard, no, but that's a strength
not a weakness!
For metadata, it's actually a significant strength - anyone who
searches on/benefits from results markup mentioning 'KS2' has self-
identified as a UK teacher using UK outcomes. That's excellent.
I also note that the 'guiding principles' talk about using information
that's already stored/is often stored in the existing html - in all
the content I've seen/worked with, grade is a far more comment piece
of data than age.
Phil Barker
May 1, 2012, 3:32:53 PM5/1/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On 01/05/12 18:06, Zoe wrote:
> Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
>
> But the competencies don't map at all.
>
> I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
> already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
> outcomes.
>
> 'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
> uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
> study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
> referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion>
> decrease results relevance.
>
> If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
> and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
> we have different measurement systems.
suggesting that we would map competencies (not at least within
LRMI--there might be some work on state -> common core mappings but that
is outwith LRMI), or that we would mark up a competency statement with
an age. That's why they are separate properties.
Age, I think, is an occasionally useful property in its own right. I
wouldn't give 4th Graders beginning learn French this book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voila-Course-French-Beginners-Publication/dp/0340813679
It's also useful for learning resources that don't map to specific
objectives (e.g.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Usborne-Childrens-Picture-Atlas/dp/0746047134 )
> The curricula of the world aren't standard, no, but that's a strength
> not a weakness!
>
> For metadata, it's actually a significant strength - anyone who
> searches on/benefits from results markup mentioning 'KS2' has self-
> identified as a UK teacher using UK outcomes. That's excellent.
>
> I also note that the 'guiding principles' talk about using information
> that's already stored/is often stored in the existing html - in all
> the content I've seen/worked with, grade is a far more comment piece
> of data than age.
>
was an educational level but I'm not sure it adds much in the scenario
that you describe.
However, I think that someone searching for KS2 is searching for
materials that meet the National Curriculum requirements for Key Stage
2. Going back to Jim Goodell's suggested definition of thing to which
the property currently known as competency expresses an alignment
> "Content that either describes [and references] a specific competency
> (learning objective) or describes [and references] a [more granular]
> grouping of competencies within the taxonomy of a Learning Standards
> Document [or framework]."
would that (perhaps with some tweaking) allow an expression that the
material is suitable for KS2? It aligns with (e.g. teaches) the
"grouping of competencies [read: objectives or something similar] within
a learning [...] framework" that is known as KS2. I'm not saying that
KS2 is a competency, because I don't think that 'competency' fully
describes what the property covers.
Phil
1. Key Stage 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Stage_2
--
Ubuntu: not so much an operating system as an opportunity to spend a weekend infront of the computer.
Zoe
May 2, 2012, 7:03:01 AM5/2/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
This gets more and more interesting...
Phil - I agree that Age, Grade, and 'competency' should be separate,
but it remains the case that 'competency' has little-to-no meaning
when divorced from context - grade and subject area. That's why I
think the fields 'grade' and 'subject area' should at least exist in
the schema. (Simon if I'm reading you correctly you seem to agree,
please let me know if I'm misrepresenting you...)
As a standalone statement, 'Pupils should be taught to explore, using
the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste as appropriate,
and make and record observations and measurements' is not useful at
all.
What I'm seeing in these last two comments from Simon and Phil really
brings us to a key point. To quote Phil - "I think that someone
A quick informal survey (of my friends who teach) and what I can
remember of BBC research show that this is not necessarily - or even
often - the case. The dominant search behaviour here is either
a) deciding how to teach an outcome, and then looking for resources to
support the teaching
b) using search as an inspiration, then using the results to decide
how to teach an outcome.
When I asked directly, my (small) sample of six primary & secondary
teachers said they never searched directly by outcome and probably
never would.
...if the 'requirements' Phil mentions are the same as the
'competencies' (UK's 'Learning outcomes'), then it is definitely not
the case as, as covered earlier in this thread, the competencies (US
and UK) contain little-to-no information about what the teacher should
teach.
I'm flying a little blind here though as I don't have good research to
hand - if we have any research at all on teacher search behaviours and
preferences, I would very much like to see it!
Age is a useful property, yes, and I wouldn't be inclined to get rid
of it. But it is the case that we'll find higher adoption for Grade
and Subject area as those are the ones that the majority of published
learning resources are already mapped to - both those made by
publishers and those made by teachers.
On May 1, 8:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 01/05/12 18:06, Zoe wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
>
> > But the competencies don't map at all.
>
> > I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
> > already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
> > outcomes.
>
> > 'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
> > uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
> > study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
> > referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion>
> > decrease results relevance.
>
> > If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
> > and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
> > we have different measurement systems.
>
> Hmm, let's keep age and competencies separate. I don't think anyone is
> suggesting that we would map competencies (not at least within
> LRMI--there might be some work on state -> common core mappings but that
> is outwith LRMI), or that we would mark up a competency statement with
> an age. That's why they are separate properties.
>
> Age, I think, is an occasionally useful property in its own right. I
> wouldn't give 4th Graders beginning learn French this bookhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Voila-Course-French-Beginners-Publication/dp/...
Phil - I agree that Age, Grade, and 'competency' should be separate,
but it remains the case that 'competency' has little-to-no meaning
when divorced from context - grade and subject area. That's why I
think the fields 'grade' and 'subject area' should at least exist in
the schema. (Simon if I'm reading you correctly you seem to agree,
please let me know if I'm misrepresenting you...)
As a standalone statement, 'Pupils should be taught to explore, using
the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste as appropriate,
and make and record observations and measurements' is not useful at
all.
What I'm seeing in these last two comments from Simon and Phil really
brings us to a key point. To quote Phil - "I think that someone
searching for KS2 is searching for materials that meet the National
Curriculum requirements for Key Stage 2."
Do we have any evidence that this is the case?
Curriculum requirements for Key Stage 2."
A quick informal survey (of my friends who teach) and what I can
remember of BBC research show that this is not necessarily - or even
often - the case. The dominant search behaviour here is either
a) deciding how to teach an outcome, and then looking for resources to
support the teaching
b) using search as an inspiration, then using the results to decide
how to teach an outcome.
When I asked directly, my (small) sample of six primary & secondary
teachers said they never searched directly by outcome and probably
never would.
...if the 'requirements' Phil mentions are the same as the
'competencies' (UK's 'Learning outcomes'), then it is definitely not
the case as, as covered earlier in this thread, the competencies (US
and UK) contain little-to-no information about what the teacher should
teach.
I'm flying a little blind here though as I don't have good research to
hand - if we have any research at all on teacher search behaviours and
preferences, I would very much like to see it!
Age is a useful property, yes, and I wouldn't be inclined to get rid
of it. But it is the case that we'll find higher adoption for Grade
and Subject area as those are the ones that the majority of published
learning resources are already mapped to - both those made by
publishers and those made by teachers.
On May 1, 8:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 01/05/12 18:06, Zoe wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
>
> > But the competencies don't map at all.
>
> > I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
> > already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
> > outcomes.
>
> > 'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
> > uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
> > study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
> > referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion>
> > decrease results relevance.
>
> > If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
> > and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
> > we have different measurement systems.
>
> Hmm, let's keep age and competencies separate. I don't think anyone is
> suggesting that we would map competencies (not at least within
> LRMI--there might be some work on state -> common core mappings but that
> is outwith LRMI), or that we would mark up a competency statement with
> an age. That's why they are separate properties.
>
> Age, I think, is an occasionally useful property in its own right. I
> It's also useful for learning resources that don't map to specific
> objectives (e.g.http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Usborne-Childrens-Picture-Atlas/dp/074604...)
Zoe
May 2, 2012, 7:20:41 AM5/2/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
...Another assumption I'd like to check on is this - is the intention
of the LRMI to create a universal descriptive vocabulary for learning
resources?
From the guiding documents, it doesn't look like it is.
If it isn't, then we really don't need to worry at all about the fact
that Grades don't map and students learn different things at different
ages.
It is the case that, using 'Grades', US 3rd Grade teachers won't get
UK KS2 or Australian year four resources in their search results.
But that's not a weakness - that's a strength. Good search results
require both a good number of results returned *and* a good rate of
relevance in results returned.
The fact that our teachers use curriculum-specific Grade strings in
their searches is excellent for results relevance - with no special
markup, scraping, fancy APIs, or anything linked-data-ish required.
I'm reminded of Clay Shirky's point in 'Ontology is overrated' -
people who say they like Movies don't necessarily have much in common
with people who say they like Cinema. They're not actually talking
about the same thing and they won't benefit from the two terms being
shoe-horned together.
http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
(The nice part is, that statement is not contradictory to having a
stable entity like 'director:John Woo' being a stable term - people
who like 'John Woo' will benefit from that a lot.)
On May 1, 8:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 01/05/12 18:06, Zoe wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
>
> > But the competencies don't map at all.
>
> > I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
> > already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
> > outcomes.
>
> > 'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
> > uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
> > study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
> > referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion>
> > decrease results relevance.
>
> > If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
> > and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
> > we have different measurement systems.
>
> Hmm, let's keep age and competencies separate. I don't think anyone is
> suggesting that we would map competencies (not at least within
> LRMI--there might be some work on state -> common core mappings but that
> is outwith LRMI), or that we would mark up a competency statement with
> an age. That's why they are separate properties.
>
> Age, I think, is an occasionally useful property in its own right. I
> wouldn't give 4th Graders beginning learn French this bookhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Voila-Course-French-Beginners-Publication/dp/...
of the LRMI to create a universal descriptive vocabulary for learning
resources?
From the guiding documents, it doesn't look like it is.
If it isn't, then we really don't need to worry at all about the fact
that Grades don't map and students learn different things at different
ages.
It is the case that, using 'Grades', US 3rd Grade teachers won't get
UK KS2 or Australian year four resources in their search results.
But that's not a weakness - that's a strength. Good search results
require both a good number of results returned *and* a good rate of
relevance in results returned.
The fact that our teachers use curriculum-specific Grade strings in
their searches is excellent for results relevance - with no special
markup, scraping, fancy APIs, or anything linked-data-ish required.
I'm reminded of Clay Shirky's point in 'Ontology is overrated' -
people who say they like Movies don't necessarily have much in common
with people who say they like Cinema. They're not actually talking
about the same thing and they won't benefit from the two terms being
shoe-horned together.
http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
(The nice part is, that statement is not contradictory to having a
stable entity like 'director:John Woo' being a stable term - people
who like 'John Woo' will benefit from that a lot.)
On May 1, 8:32 pm, Phil Barker <phil.bar...@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 01/05/12 18:06, Zoe wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Phil - correct that the grades do not map easily...
>
> > But the competencies don't map at all.
>
> > I think it's best to ignore 'map' as a concept entirely. As we've
> > already established, instruction has neither universal content nor
> > outcomes.
>
> > 'Mapping' by any universal constant like 'age' gives a false sense of
> > uniformity at best - a class of twelve year olds in Texas will not
> > study the same thing as a class of twelve year olds in France, and
> > referencing their age as if they did will increase confusion>
> > decrease results relevance.
>
> > If we marked up our maths>'shape space and measure' content with '12'
> > and US teachers found it, it wouldn't help, it would hinder - because
> > we have different measurement systems.
>
> Hmm, let's keep age and competencies separate. I don't think anyone is
> suggesting that we would map competencies (not at least within
> LRMI--there might be some work on state -> common core mappings but that
> is outwith LRMI), or that we would mark up a competency statement with
> an age. That's why they are separate properties.
>
> Age, I think, is an occasionally useful property in its own right. I
> It's also useful for learning resources that don't map to specific
> objectives (e.g.http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Usborne-Childrens-Picture-Atlas/dp/074604...)
Jim Goodell
May 2, 2012, 10:05:26 AM5/2/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Zoe,
In response to:
external web resource, like ASN, with a complete contextual framework,
including subject, domain/strand within the subject, and relationship
to other competencies. These frameworks also can provide context on
related/typical education level and learning progressions, e.g.
prerequisite competencies, if applicable. The search engines will
discover the semantic construct.
jg
In response to:
> 'Mayonnnaise' exists in the semantic construct 'ingredients'
> ''Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
> about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and
> larger groups' exists in the semantic construct 'Outcomes'...
> ...but that's not actually useful information without the
> contextualising specifier 'English'. (The outcome could just as easily
> be taken from grade 1 'Science'.)
The LRMI competency object has URL property assumed to reference an
> ''Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
> about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and
> larger groups' exists in the semantic construct 'Outcomes'...
> ...but that's not actually useful information without the
> contextualising specifier 'English'. (The outcome could just as easily
> be taken from grade 1 'Science'.)
external web resource, like ASN, with a complete contextual framework,
including subject, domain/strand within the subject, and relationship
to other competencies. These frameworks also can provide context on
related/typical education level and learning progressions, e.g.
prerequisite competencies, if applicable. The search engines will
discover the semantic construct.
jg
Stuart Sutton
May 2, 2012, 10:22:14 AM5/2/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 4:20 AM, Zoe <zoe.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
...Another assumption I'd like to check on is this - is the intention
of the LRMI to create a universal descriptive vocabulary for learning
resources?
From the guiding documents, it doesn't look like it is.
Zoe, if you are asking whether LRMI is intended to be, or will become, a language for rich description of learning resources for sophisticated use within information systems for tasks well beyond search/discovery, I believe the answer is "no". Instead, I _think_ LRMI's goal is a simple, useful markup vocabulary that builds on schema.org for key aspects of a 'learning resource' that will aid in search (including _find_ and _assess_ for retrieval).
Stuart
Diny Golder
May 2, 2012, 11:35:52 AM5/2/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Thanks, Jim.
I have a question for the group. Are we rehashing decisions made in the past regarding the LRMI?
Thanks, Diny
Diny Golder | Executive Director, JES & Co. | www.JESandCo.org | www.theGateway.org | http://asn.JESandCo.org
-----Original Message-----
From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jim Goodell
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 8:05 AM
To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
I have a question for the group. Are we rehashing decisions made in the past regarding the LRMI?
Thanks, Diny
Diny Golder | Executive Director, JES & Co. | www.JESandCo.org | www.theGateway.org | http://asn.JESandCo.org
-----Original Message-----
From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jim Goodell
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 8:05 AM
To: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Zoe
May 2, 2012, 11:44:22 AM5/2/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Diny -
If we are, it's likely due to my questions - I'm new to the group and
I'm trying to understand how everything works.
Zoe
Zoe
May 2, 2012, 2:15:53 PM5/2/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Aha - Jim's answer (thanks, Jim!) has, I think, brought me closer to
understanding how this is intended to work...
If I've read this correctly, Jim, you're saying that the grade and
subject area information *is* available, but only via a URI for a
given outcome, such as those maintained by common core or the ASN
(which I think would all agree are very rich and stable).
Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
So if the following statements are true:
A) any given outcome relies on the context of 'subject area' and
'grade' for meaning (true)
B) In LRMI 0.7, the 'subject area' and 'grade' for any given outcome
relies on a URI for the outcome being provided (this is what I infer
from your statement, please say if true or not true)
Then C must also be true:
C) LRMI 0.7 cannot be used to communicate 'subject area', 'grade', or
'outcome in the context of subject area and grade' for curricula that
do not provide URIs for outcomes.
Is this correct, or have I got it wrong?
Zoe
Simon Grant
May 2, 2012, 3:37:58 PM5/2/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
As far as I know, for occupational/vocational areas in the UK, the QCF has identifiers only for qualifications and units, and not for anything more fine grained. The unit's identifier can be used as a URL, as thus
which leads to the details of the unit. It is similar for regulated qualifications.
However, again as far as I know, the URL is not a URI in the sense of an identifier designed to be a URI, used as such, and with any guaranteed stability. It is simply the current URL of the unit information when accessed through the current Ofqual register. Which perhaps could be bettered.
I don't happen to know of any outcome statements in the UK that have URIs like the ASN has URIs.
My reactions to other points below...
On 2 May 2012 19:15, Zoe <zoe.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
Aha - Jim's answer (thanks, Jim!) has, I think, brought me closer to
understanding how this is intended to work...
If I've read this correctly, Jim, you're saying that the grade and
subject area information *is* available, but only via a URI for a
given outcome, such as those maintained by common core or the ASN
(which I think would all agree are very rich and stable).
Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
So if the following statements are true:
A) any given outcome relies on the context of 'subject area' and
'grade' for meaning (true)
B) In LRMI 0.7, the 'subject area' and 'grade' for any given outcome
relies on a URI for the outcome being provided (this is what I infer
from your statement, please say if true or not true)
Well AFAICS there is nothing stopping someone describing the subject area and grade as simple text in the competency description. It would just be that certain functionality is lost, and there would be no accurate machine-processability to support e.g. ensuring that the subject area was definitely the same.
Then C must also be true:
C) LRMI 0.7 cannot be used to communicate 'subject area', 'grade', or
'outcome in the context of subject area and grade' for curricula that
do not provide URIs for outcomes.
If we persuaded the UK Government to get this done, I guess we could set up a service in the UK that assigned URIs to any outcomes that the Government or other sponsoring body wanted to provide funds for doing, and that would then enable a fuller use of LRMI.
I think what the issue is here is not the absolute possibility or impossibility of anything, but rather the functionality that can be attached to it. if we want services to be able to unambiguously match things like subject area and grade, then they have to be represented in standard terms (with URIs, I would hope!)
Does that make sense (or have I strayed off track somewhere?)
Simon
Greg Grossmeier
May 2, 2012, 6:49:27 PM5/2/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Hi Zoe,
<quote name="Zoe" date="2012-05-02" time="11:15:53 -0700">
To be pedantic: no. Subject area and grade are not reliant on any URI.
The subject area can be defined through the basic non-LRMI terms from
Schema.org (eg: CreativeWork:About). Grade, as has been discussed, can
be listed on the page like any other information and, if the publisher
chooses to, 'mapped' (I know, we should stay away from that term...) to
an age range, if applicable. These two bits of information are useful in
and of themselves. Adding on top of that a URI for an
outcome/competency/curricula/etc is even better.
These bits of information are distinct in the sense that none are
required of each other in the current framework; but they build off each
other quite nicely.
(I am maybe incorrectly glossing over the "for any given outcome" part
of the sentence. But my interpretation of the situation is that the
subject area/grade can be described for a resource, multiple times if
need be without being bound to a competency/curricula URI. See the two
"abouts" under item 2, here[1].)
Also, as a note regarding the typicalAgeRange vs educationLevel vs
hoursSatInASchoolChair discussion: I think it is important to remember
that all LRMI terms will be contextualized along side lots of other
bits of information, not just other LRMI or Schema.org terms, but, the
website itself (where it is hosted, what language it is in, what its
stated audience is) along with, in the future via methods like The
Learning Registry, what other teachers/users say about the resource or
website or repository (ie: it was great for a Texan middle school math
teacher for her test on algebra basics).
> Then C must also be true:
>
> C) LRMI 0.7 cannot be used to communicate 'subject area', 'grade', or
> 'outcome in the context of subject area and grade' for curricula that
> do not provide URIs for outcomes.
If a curricula standard does not provide an URI for its pieces, then it
is harder to accurately and repeatedly reference the same thing across
all publishers/platforms, naturally. But, one can provide as much
information as they can (title of the curricula, description, url to a
pdf of one segment of it, etc) but, if it isn't referenceable, it isn't
referenceable.
I think a point that bears repeating in this context: It is not/was not
the goal of LRMI to be the end-all/be-all for educational metadata.
Simply, LRMI was initiated (see what I did there?) to provide a method
for those describing educational content online a means to do so in a
way that Schema.org-compatible indexers will understand. I believe it is
most people's understanding that the maximally descriptive metadata
schema for your content should be used to generate LRMI microdata/rdfa.
(Zoe: I don't mean to imply that you don't understand this, just making
a few points explicit in the conversation for the benefit of all,
especially those following along without comment.)
All the best,
Greg
[1] http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgrossmeier.net%2Ffiles%2Ftmp%2Fnsdl20110414163807295T-greg.htm&view=cse
--
Greg Grossmeier
Education Technology & Policy Coordinator
twitter: @g_gerg / identi.ca: @greg / skype: greg.grossmeier
<quote name="Zoe" date="2012-05-02" time="11:15:53 -0700">
> So if the following statements are true:
>
> A) any given outcome relies on the context of 'subject area' and
> 'grade' for meaning (true)
> B) In LRMI 0.7, the 'subject area' and 'grade' for any given outcome
> relies on a URI for the outcome being provided (this is what I infer
> from your statement, please say if true or not true)i
>
> A) any given outcome relies on the context of 'subject area' and
> 'grade' for meaning (true)
> B) In LRMI 0.7, the 'subject area' and 'grade' for any given outcome
> relies on a URI for the outcome being provided (this is what I infer
To be pedantic: no. Subject area and grade are not reliant on any URI.
The subject area can be defined through the basic non-LRMI terms from
Schema.org (eg: CreativeWork:About). Grade, as has been discussed, can
be listed on the page like any other information and, if the publisher
chooses to, 'mapped' (I know, we should stay away from that term...) to
an age range, if applicable. These two bits of information are useful in
and of themselves. Adding on top of that a URI for an
outcome/competency/curricula/etc is even better.
These bits of information are distinct in the sense that none are
required of each other in the current framework; but they build off each
other quite nicely.
(I am maybe incorrectly glossing over the "for any given outcome" part
of the sentence. But my interpretation of the situation is that the
subject area/grade can be described for a resource, multiple times if
need be without being bound to a competency/curricula URI. See the two
"abouts" under item 2, here[1].)
Also, as a note regarding the typicalAgeRange vs educationLevel vs
hoursSatInASchoolChair discussion: I think it is important to remember
that all LRMI terms will be contextualized along side lots of other
bits of information, not just other LRMI or Schema.org terms, but, the
website itself (where it is hosted, what language it is in, what its
stated audience is) along with, in the future via methods like The
Learning Registry, what other teachers/users say about the resource or
website or repository (ie: it was great for a Texan middle school math
teacher for her test on algebra basics).
> Then C must also be true:
>
> C) LRMI 0.7 cannot be used to communicate 'subject area', 'grade', or
> 'outcome in the context of subject area and grade' for curricula that
> do not provide URIs for outcomes.
is harder to accurately and repeatedly reference the same thing across
all publishers/platforms, naturally. But, one can provide as much
information as they can (title of the curricula, description, url to a
pdf of one segment of it, etc) but, if it isn't referenceable, it isn't
referenceable.
I think a point that bears repeating in this context: It is not/was not
the goal of LRMI to be the end-all/be-all for educational metadata.
Simply, LRMI was initiated (see what I did there?) to provide a method
for those describing educational content online a means to do so in a
way that Schema.org-compatible indexers will understand. I believe it is
most people's understanding that the maximally descriptive metadata
schema for your content should be used to generate LRMI microdata/rdfa.
(Zoe: I don't mean to imply that you don't understand this, just making
a few points explicit in the conversation for the benefit of all,
especially those following along without comment.)
All the best,
Greg
[1] http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgrossmeier.net%2Ffiles%2Ftmp%2Fnsdl20110414163807295T-greg.htm&view=cse
--
Greg Grossmeier
Education Technology & Policy Coordinator
twitter: @g_gerg / identi.ca: @greg / skype: greg.grossmeier
Jim Goodell
May 3, 2012, 9:39:26 AM5/3/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Regarding:
(on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
problem, here are a couple:
1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
curriculum.
It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit/Details/A_601_7344#21EC20203AEA1069A2DD08002B30309D
...the "political" conversation might take longer.
2. Use LRMI tags with URL to another provider willing to host the
granular detailed elements of the UK curricula as stable, version
controlled, URIs.
...e.g. ASN hosts "Mathematics program in Japan" (Diny want to weigh-
in here?)
> Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
The Unit Reference Number + Learning Outcome # + Assessment Criteria #
> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
(on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
problem, here are a couple:
1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
curriculum.
It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit/Details/A_601_7344#21EC20203AEA1069A2DD08002B30309D
...the "political" conversation might take longer.
2. Use LRMI tags with URL to another provider willing to host the
granular detailed elements of the UK curricula as stable, version
controlled, URIs.
...e.g. ASN hosts "Mathematics program in Japan" (Diny want to weigh-
in here?)
Kelly Peet
May 3, 2012, 11:13:54 AM5/3/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Academic Benchmarks gathered and maintains the collection of the four curricula of the UK. We have assigned stable GUIDs, as well as bolted those GUIDs to human-readable HTML pages, as well as a variety of XML, XLS, CSV, and other requested machine-readable formats. In addition, we have broken down the standards into an underlying controlled vocabulary of common concepts, which aims to be a dispassionate and objective analysis of explicitly what the standards/curricula mandate as knowledge, skills, and abilities required. We would happily entertain any discussion to accomplish an official URI-based repository of the same, under any domain.
Kelly Peet
Academic Benchmarks
Kelly Peet
Academic Benchmarks
Mike Collett
May 3, 2012, 11:38:47 AM5/3/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Hi all
Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
Summary:
keep subject and level in somehow
keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
(1) http://public.lexaurus.net/public/linkeddata/vocab/QCA/1001-000706/term/000758.json
(2) http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
Cheers
Mike 7:-D
-----------
Mike Collett, Schemeta
+44 7798 728 747
------------
www.schemeta.com
email: mi...@schemeta.com
twitter: @schemeta
skype: mikecollett
people are the network
Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
Summary:
keep subject and level in somehow
keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
(1) http://public.lexaurus.net/public/linkeddata/vocab/QCA/1001-000706/term/000758.json
(2) http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
Cheers
Mike 7:-D
-----------
Mike Collett, Schemeta
+44 7798 728 747
------------
www.schemeta.com
email: mi...@schemeta.com
twitter: @schemeta
skype: mikecollett
people are the network
Diny Golder
May 3, 2012, 1:43:05 PM5/3/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com, lr...@googlegroups.com
Greetings, Mike. We too use URIs that are resolvable over the web. You can learn more at asn.jesandco.org. Perhaps we can work together.
Regards, Diny
Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
Regards, Diny
Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
Zoe
May 4, 2012, 12:48:39 PM5/4/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Hi Mike! Remember me from ASPECT? *waves*
Full time job is right... I'm actually doing almost exactly the same
work for my other, paying full-time job at the moment, so I'm loving
this conversation. Time soent validating a data model is never wasted,
after all...
Top advice on the UK URIs, Mike. I'd like to step back and check all
this URI chat against the LRMI guiding principles over at
http://wiki.lrmi.net/Guiding+Principles, specifically:
'The focus is on end users, not data-miners. A fundamental rule is
Schema.org (and consequently LRMI) is about what is displayed on the
page (page markup). It should clarify what you want the end user to
understand about the page.'
...so while useful as an extra bonus, information available by a URI
doesn't really address the 'lack of representation for grade/subject
area/qualification' issues that have been identified.
To check/validate that claim I'm going to swing back to comments by
Simon...
'...AFAICS there is nothing to stop someone describing the subject
area and grade as simple text in the competency description'
Actually there is something to stop them - neither 'subject area' or
'grade' are a competency.
So we know a competency can be defined as 'a demonstrable, measureable
outcome' - something that the learner can br shown to be competent at.
But a learner can't demonstrate that they can Science
And nor can they can't demonstrate that they can Key Stage Two
...because they are intrinsically not things to which the word
'competency' can apply.
'there would be no machine processability to support e.g. ensuring the
subject area was exactly the same'.
I can't actually see a need to ensure the subject areas are the same -
they're not the same across curricula in the real world, they hardly
even map! (Actually I've tried to map the four UK curricula, they
don't map at all. If I remember a long ago conversation with Diny
correctly her team's research found similar results across US outcomes-
based standards, and she came up with a clever way of creating
inferred relationships via content).
Previous contributors to the thread (HT Stuart) have indicated that
the goals of the LRMI do not include creating a controlled vocabulary
for any branch of learning, which is also stated in the guiding
principles. Given that this is the case, it needn't concern us if any
of the fields end up will non-controlled, non-mapped, even non-
mappable statements. In fact, that would mean it was flexible enough
to work properly!
On to comments from Greg - 'the subject area can be defined through
the basic non-LRMI terms of schema.org (e.g. CreativeWork:About)'.
...we've actually spent the last couple of months trying out use case
after use case in data model after data model, trying to force this to
be true for our own content. The bad news is - we couldn't make a data
model where this held up. I wish we could, it would have made life
*so* much easier.
The fact that subject:AdministrativeCategoryInEducation is described
using the same string as subject:Topic is more accident than design
(NB it is also, apparently, almost exclusive to English, which tells
us a lot about how intrinsic the connection isn't).
Examples:
There's no such thing as a volcanoes staffroom.
No student goes to volcanoes class.
There's no volcanoes exam to graduate high school.
No teacher describes themselves as a volcanoes teacher.
...and if you saw one of Peter's facet sets in your search results (I
believe the search string was 'potato recipes', and a bunch of with/
without ingredient x (onions, rosemary etc) became visible), and the
listed facets were...
Volcanoes
Tectonic plates
Science
Lava
Ice volcanoes
...you would assume that google was doing something wrong.
Next one, age, again thank you Greg for the comments -
My opinion on this has changed since Phil pointed out that the LRMI
was intended for all/any learning content, not just schools.
Consider the needs of the teachers teaching the following
environments:
- a non-vocational qualification (NVQ) in pet store management
- the taught component of an apprenticeship
- a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher
with a beginner adult learner
- a TESOL teacher with an advanced high-school age learner
- a TESOL teacher with an advanced high-school age learner whose place
at a foreign university depends on her achieving IELTS 5.5 in her exam
(true case, I used to do admissions for foreign students in a former
life)
- an academic teaching the first of four units in a taught Masters in
accounting
- a student undertaking in standardized accounting training which will
end in a single qualifying exam which is standard across the nation
(also a true case - if you fail, you're not an accountant).
...all of these teachers and learners need resources with level
information, none of them can use age-based level information.
(to be honest, I'd want to see user testing but I suspect teachers at
a school level can't really use age-based level information without
contextualising details - who knows what crazy curricula the level
reflects? Maybe it's from Uganda - and who knows what Ugandan twelve
year olds do in Maths class? Not me!)
And yes - they will all have their own domain-specific terminology to
describe level. As discussed previously, that's an advantage, not a
disadvantage, as it will have a *huge* positive influence on results
relevance and results ranking - which is what we all want. (google can
already bring back several million results for almost any search
string, so really, relevance and ranking are our bread and butter, as
per Peter's hopes (if I've read him correctly). We don't need to be
SMEs or domain terminology experts - they are, that should do the job
just fine.
I guess my question is - is there a specific reason why we should
*not* accommodate these use cases? I've been trying to think of one,
and I haven't been able to come up with anything yet.
On May 3, 6:43 pm, "Diny Golder" <di...@jesandco.org> wrote:
> Greetings, Mike. We too use URIs that are resolvable over the web. You can learn more at asn.jesandco.org. Perhaps we can work together.
>
> Regards, Diny
>
> Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
>
> > (2)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
> ...
>
> read more »
Full time job is right... I'm actually doing almost exactly the same
work for my other, paying full-time job at the moment, so I'm loving
this conversation. Time soent validating a data model is never wasted,
after all...
Top advice on the UK URIs, Mike. I'd like to step back and check all
this URI chat against the LRMI guiding principles over at
http://wiki.lrmi.net/Guiding+Principles, specifically:
'The focus is on end users, not data-miners. A fundamental rule is
Schema.org (and consequently LRMI) is about what is displayed on the
page (page markup). It should clarify what you want the end user to
understand about the page.'
...so while useful as an extra bonus, information available by a URI
doesn't really address the 'lack of representation for grade/subject
area/qualification' issues that have been identified.
To check/validate that claim I'm going to swing back to comments by
Simon...
'...AFAICS there is nothing to stop someone describing the subject
area and grade as simple text in the competency description'
Actually there is something to stop them - neither 'subject area' or
'grade' are a competency.
So we know a competency can be defined as 'a demonstrable, measureable
outcome' - something that the learner can br shown to be competent at.
But a learner can't demonstrate that they can Science
And nor can they can't demonstrate that they can Key Stage Two
...because they are intrinsically not things to which the word
'competency' can apply.
'there would be no machine processability to support e.g. ensuring the
subject area was exactly the same'.
I can't actually see a need to ensure the subject areas are the same -
they're not the same across curricula in the real world, they hardly
even map! (Actually I've tried to map the four UK curricula, they
don't map at all. If I remember a long ago conversation with Diny
correctly her team's research found similar results across US outcomes-
based standards, and she came up with a clever way of creating
inferred relationships via content).
Previous contributors to the thread (HT Stuart) have indicated that
the goals of the LRMI do not include creating a controlled vocabulary
for any branch of learning, which is also stated in the guiding
principles. Given that this is the case, it needn't concern us if any
of the fields end up will non-controlled, non-mapped, even non-
mappable statements. In fact, that would mean it was flexible enough
to work properly!
On to comments from Greg - 'the subject area can be defined through
the basic non-LRMI terms of schema.org (e.g. CreativeWork:About)'.
...we've actually spent the last couple of months trying out use case
after use case in data model after data model, trying to force this to
be true for our own content. The bad news is - we couldn't make a data
model where this held up. I wish we could, it would have made life
*so* much easier.
The fact that subject:AdministrativeCategoryInEducation is described
using the same string as subject:Topic is more accident than design
(NB it is also, apparently, almost exclusive to English, which tells
us a lot about how intrinsic the connection isn't).
Examples:
There's no such thing as a volcanoes staffroom.
No student goes to volcanoes class.
There's no volcanoes exam to graduate high school.
No teacher describes themselves as a volcanoes teacher.
...and if you saw one of Peter's facet sets in your search results (I
believe the search string was 'potato recipes', and a bunch of with/
without ingredient x (onions, rosemary etc) became visible), and the
listed facets were...
Volcanoes
Tectonic plates
Science
Lava
Ice volcanoes
...you would assume that google was doing something wrong.
Next one, age, again thank you Greg for the comments -
My opinion on this has changed since Phil pointed out that the LRMI
was intended for all/any learning content, not just schools.
Consider the needs of the teachers teaching the following
environments:
- a non-vocational qualification (NVQ) in pet store management
- the taught component of an apprenticeship
- a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher
with a beginner adult learner
- a TESOL teacher with an advanced high-school age learner
- a TESOL teacher with an advanced high-school age learner whose place
at a foreign university depends on her achieving IELTS 5.5 in her exam
(true case, I used to do admissions for foreign students in a former
life)
- an academic teaching the first of four units in a taught Masters in
accounting
- a student undertaking in standardized accounting training which will
end in a single qualifying exam which is standard across the nation
(also a true case - if you fail, you're not an accountant).
...all of these teachers and learners need resources with level
information, none of them can use age-based level information.
(to be honest, I'd want to see user testing but I suspect teachers at
a school level can't really use age-based level information without
contextualising details - who knows what crazy curricula the level
reflects? Maybe it's from Uganda - and who knows what Ugandan twelve
year olds do in Maths class? Not me!)
And yes - they will all have their own domain-specific terminology to
describe level. As discussed previously, that's an advantage, not a
disadvantage, as it will have a *huge* positive influence on results
relevance and results ranking - which is what we all want. (google can
already bring back several million results for almost any search
string, so really, relevance and ranking are our bread and butter, as
per Peter's hopes (if I've read him correctly). We don't need to be
SMEs or domain terminology experts - they are, that should do the job
just fine.
I guess my question is - is there a specific reason why we should
*not* accommodate these use cases? I've been trying to think of one,
and I haven't been able to come up with anything yet.
On May 3, 6:43 pm, "Diny Golder" <di...@jesandco.org> wrote:
> Greetings, Mike. We too use URIs that are resolvable over the web. You can learn more at asn.jesandco.org. Perhaps we can work together.
>
> Regards, Diny
>
> Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 3, 2012, at 9:38 AM, "Mike Collett" <m...@schemeta.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi all
>
> > Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
>
> > Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
>
> > Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
>
> > For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
>
> > History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
>
> > Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
>
> > If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
>
> > Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
>
> > Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
>
> > Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
>
> > There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
>
> > To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
>
> > Summary:
> > keep subject and level in somehow
> > keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
> > let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
> > avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
>
> > (1)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/linkeddata/vocab/QCA/1001-000706/te...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi all
>
> > Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
>
> > Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
>
> > Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
>
> > For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
>
> > History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
>
> > Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
>
> > If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
>
> > Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
>
> > Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
>
> > Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
>
> > There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
>
> > To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
>
> > Summary:
> > keep subject and level in somehow
> > keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
> > let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
> > avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
>
> > (2)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
>
> > Cheers
> > Mike 7:-D
> > -----------
> > Mike Collett, Schemeta
> >+44 7798 728 747
> > ------------
> >www.schemeta.com
> > email: m...@schemeta.com
> > Cheers
> > Mike 7:-D
> > -----------
> > Mike Collett, Schemeta
> >+44 7798 728 747
> > ------------
> >www.schemeta.com
> > twitter: @schemeta
> > skype: mikecollett
>
> > people are the network
>
> > On 3 May 2012, at 14:39, Jim Goodell wrote:
>
> >> Regarding:
> >>> Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
> >>> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
>
> >> The Unit Reference Number + Learning Outcome # + Assessment Criteria #
> >> (on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
> >> uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
> >> anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
> >> the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
> >> updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
>
> >> As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
> >> problem, here are a couple:
>
> >> 1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
> >> each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
> >> produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
> >> curriculum.
> >> It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
> >> and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
> >>http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit/Details/A_601_7344#21EC20203AEA106...
> > skype: mikecollett
>
> > people are the network
>
> > On 3 May 2012, at 14:39, Jim Goodell wrote:
>
> >> Regarding:
> >>> Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
> >>> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
>
> >> The Unit Reference Number + Learning Outcome # + Assessment Criteria #
> >> (on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
> >> uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
> >> anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
> >> the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
> >> updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
>
> >> As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
> >> problem, here are a couple:
>
> >> 1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
> >> each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
> >> produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
> >> curriculum.
> >> It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
> >> and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
>
> read more »
Dan Brickley
May 4, 2012, 12:56:10 PM5/4/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
On 30 April 2012 13:45, Stuart Sutton <stuart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> schema.org metadata is the magic bullet of that evasive perfect string to
Another pretty mainstream scenario is thinking about activity streams,
e.g. '+1' and 'Like' buttons on pages that have increasingly rich
embedded metadata, alongside what you know about the person (or group
and other context) doing the clicking. So we should think also about
streams of that kind of data, and how you might use structured data
downstream from those clicks for learning-related scenarios...
Dan
> type into the search box. But, deciding which resources in the retrieved
> list to actually retrieve is a function beyond the search string.
Yup, there's more to search than search...
> list to actually retrieve is a function beyond the search string.
Another pretty mainstream scenario is thinking about activity streams,
e.g. '+1' and 'Like' buttons on pages that have increasingly rich
embedded metadata, alongside what you know about the person (or group
and other context) doing the clicking. So we should think also about
streams of that kind of data, and how you might use structured data
downstream from those clicks for learning-related scenarios...
Dan
Zoe
May 4, 2012, 12:56:59 PM5/4/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
I just remembered -
I was talking about this with a (teacher/educator) friend the other
day. She asked me this -
'if you walked up to a teacher, and you said to them 'I've made a
brilliant news way of describing learning resource stuff, only you
can't use it for the categories that you use at work every day', how
do you think they'd react?'
...as far as success criteria go, I think that's a pretty good one. If
we release a schema that makes educators nod and say 'sure, that
sounds about right', then that to me would be 'job done'.
On May 3, 6:43 pm, "Diny Golder" <di...@jesandco.org> wrote:
> Greetings, Mike. We too use URIs that are resolvable over the web. You can learn more at asn.jesandco.org. Perhaps we can work together.
>
> Regards, Diny
>
> Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
>
> > (2)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
> ...
>
> read more »
I was talking about this with a (teacher/educator) friend the other
day. She asked me this -
'if you walked up to a teacher, and you said to them 'I've made a
brilliant news way of describing learning resource stuff, only you
can't use it for the categories that you use at work every day', how
do you think they'd react?'
...as far as success criteria go, I think that's a pretty good one. If
we release a schema that makes educators nod and say 'sure, that
sounds about right', then that to me would be 'job done'.
On May 3, 6:43 pm, "Diny Golder" <di...@jesandco.org> wrote:
> Greetings, Mike. We too use URIs that are resolvable over the web. You can learn more at asn.jesandco.org. Perhaps we can work together.
>
> Regards, Diny
>
> Diny Golder ~ Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 3, 2012, at 9:38 AM, "Mike Collett" <m...@schemeta.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi all
>
> > Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
>
> > Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
>
> > Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
>
> > For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
>
> > History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
>
> > Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
>
> > If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
>
> > Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
>
> > Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
>
> > Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
>
> > There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
>
> > To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
>
> > Summary:
> > keep subject and level in somehow
> > keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
> > let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
> > avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
>
> > (1)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/linkeddata/vocab/QCA/1001-000706/te...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi all
>
> > Following these very interesting discussions is becoming a near full time task ;-)
>
> > Point of information: all items in the existing school curriculum for England (to soon be replaced as indicated by Zoe) have been encoded and placed online with a uniquely resolvable url accessible via a REST API.
>
> > Items that are learning objectives (same as intended learning outcomes or competences?) are differentiated within the various structures from other types of term or concept by assigning a curriculum type = "objective".
>
> > For example (1) - the suffix can be replaced by other formats, see (2) for details. (this work is old now and not perfect but some useful lessons came out of this extensive activity)
>
> > History and deltas between any revisions are available too and in this approach metadata about resources did not need to change when the curriculum structure changed or a "competency" was refined (eg levels, subject, relationships or wording changed) as long as the concept the id was related too remained close enough.
>
> > Where curriculum information is managed, and the authoritative version held, has been raised by several people.
>
> > If there are reliable services that are understood and accessible then simply aligning a resource to a (curriculum) uri may be sufficient since other information such as level, subject, type (eg topic, action or outcome) etc can be obtained via the uri or service - though this does require some live or near live processing and a reliable persistent service.
>
> > Sadly, reliable and persistent are not things you can associate with many curriculum authorities, at least with the Department for Education (England).
>
> > Those wanting to build reliable and persistent metadata services for learning resources therefore tend to want to have the most useful information within their control, even if they update it from another definitive source periodically.
>
> > Subject and level are facets that users, almost universally, seem to find valuable to support filtering, even if they do not type them into a search box, hence having them in LRMI seems a no-brainer to me.
>
> > There is a danger of putting too much information into the resource metadata (LOM Classification taxon path is a good example of over-engineering the resource metadata, managing changing polyhierarchical taxonomies is far better done somewhere else).
>
> > To a learning resource manager the whole world is learning resource metadata. But there are also curriculum managers, people managers, employers, portfolios managers, qualifications managers etc who have their own x-centric view of the world.
>
> > Summary:
> > keep subject and level in somehow
> > keep a simple vanilla relationship to other "things"
> > let the other thing's uri tell you what it is
> > avoid over-engineering the learning domain inside LRMI.
>
> > (2)http://public.lexaurus.net/public/api
>
> > Cheers
> > Mike 7:-D
> > -----------
> > Mike Collett, Schemeta
> >+44 7798 728 747
> > ------------
> >www.schemeta.com
> > email: m...@schemeta.com
> > Cheers
> > Mike 7:-D
> > -----------
> > Mike Collett, Schemeta
> >+44 7798 728 747
> > ------------
> >www.schemeta.com
> > twitter: @schemeta
> > skype: mikecollett
>
> > people are the network
>
> > On 3 May 2012, at 14:39, Jim Goodell wrote:
>
> >> Regarding:
> >>> Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
> >>> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
>
> >> The Unit Reference Number + Learning Outcome # + Assessment Criteria #
> >> (on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
> >> uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
> >> anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
> >> the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
> >> updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
>
> >> As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
> >> problem, here are a couple:
>
> >> 1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
> >> each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
> >> produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
> >> curriculum.
> >> It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
> >> and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
> >>http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit/Details/A_601_7344#21EC20203AEA106...
> > skype: mikecollett
>
> > people are the network
>
> > On 3 May 2012, at 14:39, Jim Goodell wrote:
>
> >> Regarding:
> >>> Here's the problem: in the four curricula of the UK, to the best of my
> >>> knowledge (Phil?) outcome statements do not currently have URIs.
>
> >> The Unit Reference Number + Learning Outcome # + Assessment Criteria #
> >> (on the page) could provide a search engine an ability to discover and
> >> uniquely identify the finer grained details...better if each had an
> >> anchor that could be in a URL or separate detail page. This may serve
> >> the purpose in the near term, but could be an issue if curricula are
> >> updated and reuse the same URL for something new...
>
> >> As for stability there seem to be several approaches to address the
> >> problem, here are a couple:
>
> >> 1. Ask the appropriate UK Governmental Agency to produce GUIDs for
> >> each competency (or simply agree to recognize/adopt GUIDs that someone
> >> produces for them)...and to adopt new GUIDs if they change the
> >> curriculum.
> >> It would be a very small technical matter to add the GUIDs as metadata
> >> and anchor in the data-driven page template, referencable such as
>
> read more »
Zoe
May 4, 2012, 1:21:38 PM5/4/12
to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Hi Dan! I crossposted you..
I was trying to keep out of social metrics (your expertise kind of
swamps mine) but I would say this...
...I've been asking my friends how they search for learning resources
since I started on this stuff in January, and more often than not,
they'll tell me they have 'rubbish' search skills and use google badly
(i.e. they blame themselves and stop looking), then the really adept
ones will try to convince me to use twitter - because that's where the
good stuff is.
(@z_rose, twitter fanatic since 2008 ;) )
On May 4, 5:56 pm, Dan Brickley <dan...@danbri.org> wrote:
> On 30 April 2012 13:45, Stuart Sutton <stuartasut...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was trying to keep out of social metrics (your expertise kind of
swamps mine) but I would say this...
...I've been asking my friends how they search for learning resources
since I started on this stuff in January, and more often than not,
they'll tell me they have 'rubbish' search skills and use google badly
(i.e. they blame themselves and stop looking), then the really adept
ones will try to convince me to use twitter - because that's where the
good stuff is.
(@z_rose, twitter fanatic since 2008 ;) )
On May 4, 5:56 pm, Dan Brickley <dan...@danbri.org> wrote:
> On 30 April 2012 13:45, Stuart Sutton <stuartasut...@gmail.com> wrote:
Diny Golder
May 6, 2012, 3:40:52 PM5/6/12
to lr...@googlegroups.com
Hi Zoe. I understand. You are new to the conversation. I think it would be helpful if we had documentation about the decisions already made and those that are still on the table. That way you would not have to dig into everything! But, I am glad to see you here. I hope all is well with you.
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