Metadata Representations of Educational Frameworks

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Brandt Redd

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Mar 10, 2014, 8:20:59 PM3/10/14
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Hi All:

 

I’m even later to the discussion than Joshua. First I want to thank Phil for an excellent blog post. Next, I want to support Steve in saying that yes, I think this is an important topic (which is why I renamed the thread in this subject line.

 

Quick summary:

 

·        The thread suggests at least four formats for representing educational frameworks/taxonomies:
ASN, InLoc, GIM, and SKOS (URL references for all of these appear elsewhere in the thread).

 

·        Stuart is doubtful that existing educational frameworks can be represented in any of these formats without information loss.

 

Observation:

·        I understand through the grapevine that NGSS is working on representing their standards in a derivative of the GIM format.

 

Question:

·        Would it be beneficial or detrimental for the information or content of an educational framework to be constrained by representation formats? In other words, if Stuart is right that existing frameworks suffer information loss. What if we said that information in a framework had to be limited to what CAN be represented in a particular schema?

 

Thanks,

Brandt

 

From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stuart Sutton
Sent: Sunday, March 9, 2014 11:39 AM
To: LRMI
Cc: pa...@hoplahup.net; tshe...@curriki.org
Subject: Re: Explaining the LRMI Alignment Object

 

On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Joshua Marks <jma...@curriki.org> wrote:

All.

 

Catching up here, but a very interesting conversation. First off, nice job Phil on the blog! We had a very long dialog about the Alignment Object and the type of alignment.  Where we ended up was elegant and it seems useful. But, as you and Steve point out, falls a bit short as there is little, er, really no  guidance on how to express a framework or taxonomy even though we can effectively point to most any. Even the CCSSO could not get the SIF (LSI/LSD) structure right for corestandards.org.

 

Stuart, as always you have put some provocative ideas out there. Metadata harmonization and the assertion that framework promulgators do not care about standard  representations.

 

Joshua, I think I did not make myself clear.  First --to make sure-- when I say "promulgator", I am talking about the authors of the framework.  Promulgators generally are very, very concerned with the canonical framework, construct it to meet their particular needs, and seldom do so with the "representation" of that framework as data in mind.  Organizations (other than the promulgators) that represent or developed information models for the expression of canonical frameworks as data are very concerned about the models on which those representations rely (e.g., Academic Benchmarks, Edgate, ASN, inLoc etc) and the capacity of those models to represent the canonical as data in meaningful ways.

What I did say (or intended to say) was that LRMI (as a language of description) is not inherently concerned about the information models (i.e., other languages of description) it may chance upon through its alignment object so long as that alignment object is sufficient standing alone and speaking LRMI's language to uniquely identify the framework and even a particular node in that framework. 

I guess I'd go further and say that it isn't LRMI's task to solve the "multiple information models matter" in terms of the frameworks to be referenced.  I personally think that getting it clear that the desire for some homogeneous information model on the framework end of the equation isn't an LRMI issue.  Then we can stop talking about it "falling short"--LRMI being the "it". 

 

History certainly supports you, but I think ‘the times they are a changing.’ Historically frameworks were created as a way to assure that curriculum and instruction achieved some common benchmarks. In the process it often implies or influences pedagogy and methodology. Regardless, there is rarely any intention that the frameworks be used for classification and discovery of materials. But yet, that is the objective we seek to realize. In some sense we are seeking a different kind a framework for a different purpose. Perhaps harmonizing these frameworks might get close, but I am not sure how we do that (I need to read that paper Stuart shared).

 

Regardless of the structure or intent of a framework, I think we might help folks by providing guidance and a schema.org based approach to expressing any framework.

 

I am sorry to play devils advocate, Joshua, but all education frameworks (every one of them forms of knowledge organization systems (KOS)) don't model the same way without significant information loss.  You mention taxonomic structures, well, there's a mature W3C specification for doing that--Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) that has pretty massive uptake globally.  If you want widely recognized way of representing taxonomies, adopt it [1].  You will be in good company with cultural memory institutions globally including most national libraries (and all of the controlled vocabularies in the ASN [2]).

But everything doesn't model taxonomically .  Take, the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).  You can force it into a taxonomic structure if you are unwilling to recognize that the canonical framework is graphing between two distinct frameworks--the NGSS itself and the Framework for K-12 Science Education [3] and are willing to accept the information losses and noise by shoehorning it into a taxonomic structure.  

Stuart

 

Other then the proposal mentioned, I have not seen a way to do this in Schema, and perhaps this is a contribution we could make. 

Another approach, taking a clue for Learning Registry, is to provide a  free and open source taxonomy creation tool that that automatically publish a well formed and referenceable framework. I have noted that some organizations have created amazingly complex content framework using the Curriki collection tools, such as this one created by the Santa Clara County Office of Education => http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_SantaClaraCountyCCSSCurriculumMapping/Math (Expand the unit maps in each grade to see their structure.) What is cool, is this collection is itself a framework that can be referenced by URL and as XML (e.g. http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_SantaClaraCountyCCSSCurriculumMapping/Math?xpage=xml). This unintended use is quite interesting as the users themselves create and manage the framework and use the framework (TOC) itself to align content. Perhaps this is a more useful form of harmonization; let the community of use create and manage the shared framework.

 

I think this conversation has some legs. More to come.

 

-Joshua

 

From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Steve Midgley
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 12:55 PM
To: lr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Explaining the LRMI Alignment Object

 

I'm trying to ask how to describe with metadata a standard on the other end of the HTTP call from the LRMI alignment object using a structure that resembles or is schema.org. For comparison, we currently have this kind of XML description for CCSS on CCSS's main site: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/5/OA.xml

 

I'm guessing that info could be converted into ASN, InLoc or GIM format with no loss (and maybe some gain)? My question is whether it's worth having a schema.org-like (or officially adopted) way to describe that kind of information so that we can embed in web pages like we do for other schema.org enriched pages (so this page could have the metadata http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/5/OA)? And then we could just serialize that representation for transmission when we need to communicate standards info in an encapsulated way.

 

Thanks for any additional insight and thanks for the patience in walking me through this.. I'm just a developer swimming in the standards ocean! :)

 

I could be barking up the wrong tree completely..

Steve

 

 

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Stuart Sutton <stuart...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Steve Midgley <steve....@mixrun.com> wrote:

Oh my bad Stuart on the verb tense. I did not mean to imply that ASN isn't with us - just that the work was completed in the past, but I see my language was definitely wrong.. I'm very excited that D2L has picked up the project and looking forward to working with you and them.

 

Thanks for the summary - it sounds like there are at least 3 models for describing or depicting curricular frameworks:

 

ASN, InLoc, GIM

 

Is that right?


Yes, and my take is that the metadata wars are basically long over and the lesson learned is that no schema won (or will ever win).  So, the most productive conversation would move us from "which do we choose" to what models will take us beyond even metadata interoperability to metadata harmonization (http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:369527/FULLTEXT02).
 

Should/could any of these be mapped over into a schema.org/lrmi orientation so that both sides of the relationship (per Phil's article) are described with the same metadata structures?

 

Steve, sorry, I am still a bit confused.  LRMI cares nothing about the data modeling on the other end of a reference to a framework since the core data for LRMI's effective use is embodied in the alignment object: framework, URL, name, description.  LRMI doesn't really care whether what is on the resolved end is descriptively rich or impoverished or whether the URL resolves to useful data or to a pretty web page (or even nothing) as long as what is there in the LRMI alignment object data uniquely and unambiguously identifies the framework and node (primarily for humans). 

Is your question targeted toward everyone being able to resolve the reference to a framework node and get the exact same serialization of something back?    Thus my confusion...

 

Seems like if we could move one of them over to a schema.org format, we might be able to organize LRMI advocacy around it? Or maybe this has already been done?

 

If I'm talking about this incorrectly - please correct me! All input welcome,

Steve

 

 

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Stuart Sutton <stuart...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Steve Midgley <steve....@mixrun.com> wrote:

This is really useful Phil. I've already shared with some groups who are thinking about how to make digital representations of standards and content.

 

The issue that I haven't found an answer to yet is if there is a standard way to represent an curricular framework (in schema.org ideally)? I don't think we have the right keys/vocab yet, let alone examples. For example, Common Core doesn't describe their standards in the same way as Next Generation Science Standards.

 

Steve, I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean by "describe".  If experience tells us anything, it is that no two promulgators of competency frameworks will approach their work product in the same way.  And, as far as I can tell, no level of outside suggestions are likely to convince them that they should (if, in fact, they should).  It seems to me that if the question is whether there are principled means for data representations of competency frameworks that meet the needs of LRMI, there definitely are. ASN is one, inLoc is another.  And, to the extent they share a common  or harmonious information models, such means can interact harmoniously.

 

That said, we have made progress in creating permalink URL IDs for both, so the schema.org alignment object "works" with both.

 

How important do you think it is to have a way of marking up the curricular frameworks in LRMI or some proposed extensions? I'm talking with a group about working on this, but would love to get people's opinion from this group first. I think ASN had an RDF way of doing it, and GIM (Granular Identifiers Metadata) project built something but never released it..

 

Not sure how to read "ASN had an RDF way of doing it".  ASN very much HAS such a model and, given this weeks news out of Canada, ASN will continue to provide fully open access services "powered by D2L".

 

All input/thoughts welcome,

Steve

 

 

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 7:14 AM, Phil Barker <ph...@pjjk.net> wrote:

Hello all.
I've written a post trying to explain the technical aspects of the LRMI Alignment object in some depth:
http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/philb/2014/03/06/explaining-the-lrmi-alignment-object/

From implementations of LRMI, I know some people have struggled with this, I'm interested in feedback on whether this level of technical detail is helpful. It's aimed at people with a hand in developing services that expose/embed LRMI in their web pages, so it assumes some familiarity with schema.org, and definitely isn't meant for non-technical people trying to make a policy decision on whether LRMI would be useful.

Let me know what you think.

Phil.


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Phil Barker

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Mar 11, 2014, 6:13:52 AM3/11/14
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Hello all.
Thank you Brandt for you kind words about that blog post. There's more where that came from.

A couple of observations, in reverse order:

2) the answer to your question depends on what exactly it is that you are trying do with the representation of the framework. As far as LRMI has gone so far, that is to relate learning resources to nodes in an educational framework for the purpose of resource discovery, then I think clear identification of the nodes for computers and humans is enough. I think that the mini-SKOS in schema.org proposal that Dan Brickley mooted on the schema.org list is enough. It included properties of lines of url, name, codeValue, description, codingSystem(=educational framework). I did some investigation of how it would work for educational frameworks that I know of:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2013Dec/att-0044/00-part
I think that that next step as far as resource disovery goes would be to use the structure of the framework to allow intelligent expansion of searches, e.g. "there are no resources that align the node you chose, but here are some that align to nodes that are narrower than, broader than, related, similar but in another framework....".

That's just my point of view focused on resource discovery, I'm sure that other people have other potential use cases.

1) Until now LRMI has focused on expansion of schema.org. None of the suggested representations below exist in schema.  I think porting them to schema would  introduce properties of widespread impact if generalised slightly (some of them are already general enough for that to happen, there have already be discussions around SKOS). That would require quite a lot of effort in terms of liaising with the other communities affected. Whether this is worth while depends on what you are trying to do? Does it require representation of the framework in schema.org or is this an extension of the scope of LRMI away from schema.org?

Sorry, no answer, just more questions.

Phil
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Stuart Sutton

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Mar 11, 2014, 7:20:24 AM3/11/14
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Thanks, Brandt, I guess I had better speak with greater care.

On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 5:20 PM, Brandt Redd <bra...@redd.org> wrote:

Hi All:

 

I’m even later to the discussion than Joshua. First I want to thank Phil for an excellent blog post. Next, I want to support Steve in saying that yes, I think this is an important topic (which is why I renamed the thread in this subject line.

 

Quick summary:

 

·        The thread suggests at least four formats for representing educational frameworks/taxonomies:
ASN, InLoc, GIM, and SKOS (URL references for all of these appear elsewhere in the thread).

 

·        Stuart is doubtful that existing educational frameworks can be represented in any of these formats without information loss.

Brandt, I think my position is the exact opposite; and, I fear I have failed to be clear.  I think that each (inLoc, ASN, GIM) has its strengths, and that each is capable of handing useful data expressions of competency frameworks.  To the extent that one or the other is lacking in strengths, it will likely fall by the wayside. 

I take issue with what seems to be the goal of this thread of finding/developing that useful silver bullet that can express the range of optimal information models that fall within what is intended by the educational framework class of things in LRMI.  I deliberately distinguish between competency framework as a class --a kind of genre expressing learning goals/outcomes-- and the broader class of educational frameworks that the LRMI alignment object is intended to reference.   My take is that the information models (not serializations) needed to support useful data expressions of a competency framework can't handle something like a two or three dimensional rubric that also falls into the broad class educational framework (e.g., QuIP [1]).    Or, at least, they can't handle them without significant information loss.  It is always possible with enough force to get the glass slipper on one of the ugly stepsisters.

Sorry if my formatting (underlining & bolding) makes it seem like I am shouting; but, I fear we are either: (1) talking past each other; or (2) I have misunderstood the subtext of this thread that all that's needed is a silver bullet of an information model that can effectively encompasses the range of KOS that comprise the range of members of the class educational framework.  That's a pursuit that has been going on in the KOS community for over two centuries.  I think that community gave up the pursuit of a unifying information model long ago and focuses now on classifying the forms in useful ways.  For example, SKOS fills its niche in terms of taxonomic/thesaural forms.  And, SKOS does not play like it is what it is not.  What's that saying, Brandt, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

Jim Goodell

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Mar 11, 2014, 2:14:14 PM3/11/14
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I'll get on the bandwagon and agree that this is an important topic...and I agree with Stuart that we need to be clear about the difference between competency framework and the broader concept of educational frameworks.  IMHO the important thing now (and an opportunity for common ground) is competency frameworks. 

I think the main issue is that LRMI only defines the pointer to a 'node'.  It would be helpful if something in schema.org defined a standard for markup that search engines might find at the targetURL within the human readable page...this would not replace anything that is there, just add a few tags within existing page templates.  Then whether that page be on ASN or a site using InLoc or GIM schema, or something else, there would be common ground for discoverability of the most important node properties and pointers to related nodes for context.

The consumer would still use the existing sites to benefit from strengths of each (inLoc, ASN, GIM), and what is in schema.org and suggested for markup is limited to the common/most important data for discovery of competency definition and context.

JG

Steve Midgley

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Mar 11, 2014, 3:29:46 PM3/11/14
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+1 - thanks Jim. I'm looking for some metadata markup that would let me describe what is "expected to be learned" (or whatever/similar) when I resolve LRMI's targetURL in a machine readable manner. Obviously we could boil the ocean with markup for all possible frameworks and Stuart is sagely advising (among other things) to not fall into that trap.

But right now I feel like, in the schema.org markup, we don't have enough markup tags, or if we have them, we don't have enough examples of the best practices on using them to describe at least competency frameworks of the basic kind. I'd love to figure out what the "MVP" of markup elements that we need to express common competency frameworks without painful transformations or loss of information, if possible.

And all that said, I'm now putting my palm to forehead b/c my earlier metadata example from Common Core is now 404: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/5/OA.xml

While the underlying human readable page is still up! http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/5/OA/

And this probably highlights the need to get some schema.org metadata embedded into the human readable descriptions better than any other example could.. (I'll try to ping my CCSS contacts but anyone else who has contact with the people organizing that website - please feel free to let them know of the problem - looks like they redesigned their site recently which is the bane to all identifiers and metadata)..

More on topic, and off-the-top-of-my-head b/c I cant' refer to CCSS metadata here are some features/tags I think I need. Probably mini-SKOS + regular schema.org/lrmi would work for these?
  • Link to human readable version (schema/Thing/url)
  • Short description (schema/Thing/description)
  • URL to parent (schema/AlignmentObject with some extensions?)
  • Link to children (schema/AlignmentObject with some extensions?)
  • Alternate known identifiers (e.g. URLs, third-party guids, etc) (no tag proposed)
Maybe other people can add to this list?

Steve







Steve Midgley

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Mar 11, 2014, 3:35:46 PM3/11/14
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Just to add to my own list:
  • Long/complete human readable description (?)
  • Alternate known IDs
    • Possibly could be Thing/sameAs or Thing/alternateName depending on if it's a URL or Guid/text field?
    • I'd ideally like more context for the alt id's - maybe it's the alignment object again?

Brandt Redd

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Mar 11, 2014, 11:16:13 PM3/11/14
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Hi Stuart:

 

Thanks for the clarification. I understand now the distinction you made between competency frameworks and educational frameworks (and the underlining did help). I totally missed it the first time but reading back in the thread I see that distinction clearly now.

 

So, assuming you classify CCSS and NGSS as well as existing state standards as competency frameworks then they should be renderable into these structures without information loss. You’re right, that’s a big distinction and makes the question I asked moot.

 

Thanks!

Alan Paull

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Mar 12, 2014, 4:13:30 AM3/12/14
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Slightly confused here. You've mentioned 'link to parent' and 'link to children'. What would these be with respect to a competence framework?

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Jim Goodell

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Mar 12, 2014, 7:50:59 AM3/12/14
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Alan,

Not meaning human "parent/child" in this context... Competency frameworks are usually developed as hierarchies such as subject, strand, standard (competency), more granular competency, etc. At any node the higher level is the 'parent' and any more granular competencies are 'children'. The more granular 'child' levels might be 'process skills' or 'indicators' to measure level/depth/completeness of competecy atainment.

...in adition to the hierarchy, there the are constructs in the various standards to handle horizontal relationships, such as competency pathways, e.g. prerequsite and postrequisite competencies, or recommended progressions.

Jim Goodell

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Mar 12, 2014, 7:56:42 AM3/12/14
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Steve,
I agree, we need some good examples of how to use what already exists.
jim

Alan Paull

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Mar 12, 2014, 10:41:10 AM3/12/14
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Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. I was meaning what would be a parent or child of a whole framework, not simply a node. I've done work on these types of relationships with the InteropAbility project, in which we simplified the structure in order to make it more usable.

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Steve Midgley

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Mar 12, 2014, 1:01:57 PM3/12/14
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Alan, 

I'm open on the specific implementation - in my mind I was thinking just a bi-directional hash kind of structure (with the hash links being URLs) - each node links to the node above it and all the nodes below it (assuming hierarchy which may or may not be enforced).

From this point of view a framework would simply be a node with no parent.

I definitely might be thinking about this wrong - so all input welcome.

Steve

Alan Paull

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Mar 12, 2014, 2:36:48 PM3/12/14
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Steve

There probably isn't a right way :).

Representation of this stuff seems problematic. Simon and I have had quite a few conversations about it, and unfortunately it does seem to matter. Some ways are easier to implement than others.

A framework as a node with no parent works for me. But what about children? If the node is the top of the framework, and its nodes are children, then that 'framework node' is a slightly different concept from the framework itself.

I think it's easier to have "simply":

·         An identifier (URI) for the framework

·         A link to human readable info about the framework

·         A short description of the framework.

Alan

 

From: lr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:lr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Steve Midgley
Sent: 12 March 2014 17:02
To: lr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Metadata Representations of Educational Frameworks

 

Alan, 

Steve Midgley

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Mar 12, 2014, 3:00:10 PM3/12/14
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Thanks. So each node would have to contain a pointer to parent, children and framework URLs?

And the framework destination would contain it's own URI, links to the starting place for children and a short description of the framework?

As Stuart and others have said, the modeling is tricky b/c the standards, even CCSS, are really more like graph traversals than hierarchies. And even from the point of view of a graph, the CCSS elements are not all that sensical (see below).

Which is why I'm hoping for help from one or more of the existing standards like ASN or others - I'm hoping to adopt keys, vocab and structure into a schema.org-like environment so I build tools to align content to frameworks using the tooling we're already building for content tagging. Anyone have thoughts on how to do this - or input/suggestions on a better path?

Steve

Example for CCSS:

Frameworks:

Framework Descr: Common State Standards

Framework Descr: Common State Standards ELA-Literacy
Children: [this is tricky]

Framework Descr: Common State Standards Math
Children: [this is tricky]

Standards:
Std Descr: Grade 5 » Operations & Algebraic Thinking

The Children elements for frameworks seems important b/c it lets the developer know where to start traversing the actual standards, but it's tricky (as I think Stuart has been pointing out) b/c the CCSS isn't a purely hierarchical framework. It has several parallel set of standards and some standards that cover a range of grade levels:

ELA-Literacy Children:
Introduction (all)
Anchor Standards (all - and there are unnamed content clusters inside this standard between it and its children)
Reading: Literature (1 per grade)
Reading: Informational Text (1 per grade, plus two ranges)
Reading: Foundational Skills (1 per grade)
Writing (1 per grade plus intro and 2 ranges)
Speaking & Listening (1 per grade plus intro and 2 ranges)
Language (1 per grade plus intro and 2 ranges)
Standard 10: Range, Quality, & Complexity (all grades, with 3 unnamed children)




Paul Libbrecht

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Mar 12, 2014, 5:09:55 PM3/12/14
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Hello all,

Sorry to chim in very late in this story. I am still puzzled on the purposes of encoding a framework using schema.org and I think this is why there seems to so many misunderstandings around...

Considering schema.org annotations are meant to be living inside some markup, why not use the markup's structure to denote the parent/child relationship, simply?

I think divs with itemScope may be sufficient for quite many purposes to denote the parent-child relationships.
Maybe one would add some id-s into the best-practice and this would make it a nest of things you can use in alignments' properties...

paul

Steve Midgley

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Mar 12, 2014, 7:56:11 PM3/12/14
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I thought itemScope was to indicate what metadata type was affiliated to an entity, not what relations the entity has to other entities? (Though I have an uneasy feeling I'm going to very shortly fall down a deep metadata semantics well). :)

Schema.org annotations were originally designed to live inside html markup, but a number of us (on the Learning Registry project and I think elsewhere) have been binding schema.org and lrmi into json-ld structures to create a portable version. So I'm hoping to have a way to markup competency frameworks using schema for placement on the website that defines the competencies (e.g., corestandards.org) as well as for transport through the Learning Registry and other encapsulated metadata transport or storage systems.

I'd like to start from schema.org since it seems simple and relatively easy for orgs who don't know much about metadata to put on their sites to create a relatively well-defined framework (and not just the English words describing one). But it will also allow us to talk about, refer to and transport those frameworks to whoever wants them..

Again, I may be thinking about this all wrong, but that's the work I'm thinking would be helpful. I have a few groups who are asking about making their competency frameworks digital/internet compliant, which is why I'm asking right now.

Steve


Jim Goodell

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Mar 13, 2014, 2:46:02 PM3/13/14
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I agree that we can assume a node with no parent is the top level, but we shouldn't assume that is all we need to define the framework.  Alan is right that the framework itself is a slightly different concept with its own properties.  That might be why the "educationalFramework" is named in LRMI.

CEDS, ASN, SIF, and other standards define a separate class for "Standard Document" ("Learning Standard Document" in CEDS) vs. the "Statement" ("Learning Standard Item" in CEDS).

see:
http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/StandardDocument
http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement

and

Learning Standard Document:Learning Standard Item:

Joshua Marks

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Mar 16, 2014, 8:52:16 PM3/16/14
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All,

 

Jim brings up an important point. When SIF created LeasringStandardsDoucment and LearningStandardsItem (LSD/LSI) XML schemas, the reason to have the separate document was to define the structure of the standard (Be it a taxonomy, a graph or something in between) as the structures were not consistent or even similar enough across the US states and large districts. However, the Learning Standards Item is the same regardless of the structure and can represent any node of any framework. That way nodes could be referenced regardless of their inter-relationships.

 

I don’t think we can assume a node with “No parent” is a top level. For that matter, the “Level” of a node in the framework is not as critical if the framework itself knows where the node lives. Perhaps the more critical question is if the node being referenced contains enough information to define its intent without the structure of its framework as context. In educational publishing there are endless discussions about the “Quality” of an educational alignment. These discussion boil down to some aspect of the amount and completeness of coverage of the skill or competency being targeted. As a result, the process of aligning and selecting materials becomes a quagmire of conflicting opinion about the intent of the skill/competency statement and what is really happening in an activity or lesson. Creators of frameworks may seek canonical conformance and consistency, but in the real world, their intent is lost or diluted.

 

So, we have good examples of data representations for educational frameworks that divide the document structure and the items in the document and enable appropriate referencing either via RDF or XML representations for any type of framework structure (Taxonomy, Graph or something else.) ASN is effectively as functional as CEDS SIF based data structure. So are we just talking about how to get promulgators to start to use one of these correctly? I fear that that just exacerbates our problem of tagging and discovery, particularly if there is still no way to effectively map and cross-walk between nodes in different frameworks.

 

In a global and digital knowledge space (the internet), I think we need a different and unifying approach to educational frameworks and tagging for topics, levels and competencies.  Local and cultural frameworks are not synonymous, nor are they similar enough to migrate to a common global framework (As argued by the harmonization approach.) What we are really doing is propagating differences in cultural history and expert opinion about the structure and leveling of the educational process.  I would like to see something different, something more forward looking and global, like a Wikipedia for the structure of knowledge. Perhaps what we need now is the wisdom of the crowd rather than the wisdom of experts and promulgators? If a living and open global ”master framework” were to be created, then all the historical/expert frameworks could align to it rather then constantly trying to create something that ties them together after the fact.   

 

I know this is a rather radical perspective for this conversation. I just feel like continuing to  enable experts to segments and fragment the critical metadata we need for sharing of content globally is counterproductive. We must use metadata standards, practices and the power of the market to pull these divergent promulgators together around more common terms and structures. Or at least force them to align their view of realty to a globally useful one.

 

Feeling like ranting the weekend, thanks for listening.

 

-Joshua

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