Learning Registry

[ADL Learning Content Registries and Repositories Summit Manager]

Hello Everyone

I wanted to let you know about one of the outcomes from the April
Summit. I know some of you already know, so apologies.

In the last few weeks the US has launched the Learning Registry, a
project to make all federal learning resources easier to find and
access. Initial key collaborators are ADL and the Office of
Educational Technology in the Dept of Ed.

Please visit http://www.learningregistry.org/ for more info.

Sign up to that group to keep up with what we are doing.
http://groups.google.com/group/learningregistry?hl=en&pli=1

Cheers
- Dan

[Aaron E. Silvers]

Hello All,

I met several of you at the Registry and Repository Summit back in April. My name is Aaron Silvers, and I'm the Community Manager for ADL; I'm helping Dan with the Learning Registry project.

We'd like your counsel.  We've set up a category for "Search Engines" on our IdeaScale site

(http://bit.ly/learningregistrysearch), and we are in need of ideas and suggestions in tackling this question:

"What Could Search Engines Do to Make Finding Educational Cotent Better/Easier?"

We’re sprinting to gather input on this particular topic by August 31, 2010.  We would like to get as many ideas generated on IdeaScale as we can, and as Dan mentioned in his last email, we have a Google Group dedicated to discussing those ideas further (http://groups.google.com/group/learningregistry?hl=en&pli=1).

Please help us spread the word, as well as participate.

Thank you!

-a-

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[Peter Berking]

Aaron,

I am unclear on the scope of the question. Which of the following do you mean?

·         How could a search engine more better/more easily identify learning content out on the web (through some kind of intelligent crawling and analysis of sites)? The focus here would be on determining whether a web site is educational or training related, in order to add it to some kind of catalog of learning related sites. A second  tier of analysis by the search engine would then be to look within the objects found in these sites to determine subject matter, etc.

·         How could a search engine better find the right learning object(s) for seekers of content with specific subject matter, etc. attributes in content repositories associated with the Learning Registry? (ie, to take the burden off of robust metadata generation and tagging and put it more on the intelligence of the search engine).

Thanks,

Peter

[Daniel Rehak]

Peter

We mean either.  Anything that a search engine can do is fair game.
    - Dan

Daniel R. Rehak, Ph.D.

ADL Technical Advisor
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[Aaron E. Silvers]

Hi Peter,

The scope of the question is intentionally ambiguous.  We don't want any constraints on the nature of the suggestions at this point.

Your delineations highlight a handful of possible use-cases for employing a widely adopted search engine to find learning content.

How could a search engine more better/more easily identify learning content out on the web (through some kind of intelligent crawling and analysis of sites)? The focus here would be on determining whether a web site is educational or training related, in order to add it to some kind of catalog of learning related sites. A second  tier of analysis by the search engine would then be to look within the objects found in these sites to determine subject matter, etc.

This statement implies several potential suggestions for improvement of the search experience. The low hanging fruit in your statement might be broken down further:

1. How might a search engine determine if a website is educational or training related?

2. Is it part of a registry of learning-related sites, and if not, might it be suggested for inclusion?

3. Is there semantic analysis that could be automated and performed on the content if there is insufficient metadata to determine subject matter, reading level, etc.?

 How could a search engine better find the right learning object(s) for seekers of content with specific subject matter, etc. attributes in content repositories associated with the Learning Registry? (ie, to take the burden off of robust metadata generation and tagging and put it more on the intelligence of the search engine).

To me this feels like a natural tie to your first bullet.  I wouldn't think of this as either/or -- more both/and.

-a-