DCMI Education Community Activities for 2007 Sarah Currier Co-Moderator, DCMI Education Community Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd CETIS Metadata & Digital Repositories SIG Meeting, University of Manchester, UK

Overview of Presentation 1.DCMI Education Community – background 2.DCMI and IEEE LOM 3.DC-Ed Application Profile 1.Use cases 2.Vocabularies 3.Registering vocabularies and APs 4.LOM elements for the DC-Ed AP 4.Join DC-Ed!

Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI Working Groups -> Communities Dublin Core Metadata Initiative had “Working Groups” co-ordinated by “Chairs” Working Groups organised their activities via discussion and F2F meetings Working Groups reported on their activities on the DCMI website In 2006 the Working Groups were re-named “Communities”, and Chairs are now called “Moderators” Communities have wikis now for collaborative working, while keeping discussion lists and providing more static web pages with formal results of work

Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI Education Community The DCMI Education Working Group is now the DCMI Education Community For short, I’ll just call it DC-Ed Co-Moderators: Diane Hillmann (Cornell University); me I replaced Stuart Sutton of the University of Washington, who is still very active in DCMI, including DC-Ed Website: Wiki: JISCmail list:

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

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

Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI and IEEE LOM There is an oft-noted cross-over of interests between the DC- Ed and IEEE LOM communities of practice Various initiatives have been afoot for a few years to bring about some coherence, and we hope, interoperability, amongst all those communities wishing to use learning resource metadata The DC-Ed Community provides a focal point for such collaboration from the Dublin Core side There are two main areas of work: –The Joint DCMI / IEEE LTSC Task Force Wiki: -The DC Education Application Profile Wiki:

Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI and IEEE LOM The Joint DCMI / IEEE LTSC Task Force -Reported on earlier by Pete Johnston -Takes a high-level, future-proofing view of mapping IEEE LOM and Dublin Core, i.e. at the Abstract Model level The DC Education Application Profile -I’ll report on this now -Looking at how Dublin Core as it is can be used to describe learning resources (or educational aspects of any resource) -Includes looking at how some elements and vocabularies from the IEEE LOM might be used with Dublin Core

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile: Background Dublin Core has 15 elements, describing 15 properties of resources: title, subject, description, type, source, relation, coverage, creator, publisher, contributor, rights, date, format, identifier, language NB: When DC people say “properties” they usually mean the same thing as LOM people do when they say “elements” or MARC people do when they say “fields” These 15 properties can be used exactly as is (“Simple Dublin Core”) or they may be extended (“Qualified Dublin Core”: e.g. for date, qualifications can be: created, valid, available, issued, modified, accepted, copyrighted, submitted). They may also be qualified by using specific controlled vocabularies When using Qualified Dublin Core there are some additional properties available, including: –InstructionalMethod (obviously this is education-specific) –Audience (which can be education-specific, and in an educational context may be further refined by EducationLevel)

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile The DC-Ed Application Profile aims to provide a “modular” or “thin” AP to support description of the educational aspects of resources This means that it will focus on the educationally significant properties available in Dublin Core + any other educational properties, e.g. from the IEEE LOM Therefore it will not define or give guidelines for usage of properties / elements that may be covered elsewhere This will enable people to “plug in” the AP with other APs they are using, e.g. the Libraries AP, the ePrints AP described earlier by Julie Allinson, or a local AP

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile For 2006/2007, DC-Ed is focusing on the following aspects of the DC-Ed AP: 1.Gathering use cases specifying requirements for the AP 2.Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP 3.Looking at LOM elements and vocabularies to determine which (if any) are candidates for inclusion in the AP

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 1.Gathering use cases specifying requirements for the AP We have three use cases available on the DC-Ed wiki: -See handout -Discussion / feedback / any further use cases? -Join the JISCmail list or contact Diane Hillmann directly if you have any feedback:

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP We are focusing this year on vocabularies for -InstructionalMethod -Type We are looking at jurisdictional and non-jurisdictional vocabularies (i.e. local and global) We are looking at what criteria we have for vocabularies, i.e. how do we decide what vocabularies we put forward to DC-Ed implementers? What standards / criteria should be used?

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP InstructionalMethod Usage Guide: “ Element Description: A process, used to engender knowledge, attitudes and skills, that the resource is designed to support. Instructional Method will typically include ways of presenting instructional materials or conducting instructional activities, patterns of learner-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interactions, and mechanisms by which group and individual levels of learning are measured. Instructional methods include all aspects of the instruction and learning processes from planning and implementation through evaluation and feedback. Guidelines for content creation: Best practice is to use terms from controlled vocabularies, whether developed for the use of a particular project or in general use in an educational context.”

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP Type Usage Guide: “Element Description: The nature or genre of the content of the resource. Type includes terms describing general categories, functions, genres, or aggregation levels for content. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the DCMIType vocabulary ). To describe the physical or digital manifestation of the resource, use the FORMAT element.DCMIType vocabulary Guidelines for content creation: If the resource is composed of multiple mixed types then multiple or repeated Type elements should be used to describe the main components. Because different communities or domains are expected to use a variety of type vocabularies, best practice to ensure interoperability is to include at least one general type term from the DCMIType vocabulary in addition to the domain specific type term(s), in separate Type element iterations.”

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP Gathering vocabularies: JISC-CETIS Pedagogical Vocabularies Review: Report 1 -In 2006 JISC-CETIS published three review documents as a result of a study on the current landscape relating to pedagogical vocabularies. -Report 1 is the Pedagogical Vocabularies Review, which inventories existing pedagogical vocabularies, including flat lists, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies and classification schemes, relevant to the UK post-16 and HE education sectors, with reference to current work in Europe. -The pedagogical vocabularies described in this report include those that cover mainly instructional method, but due to the blurring of the two areas in some vocabularies, resource type as related to education is also covered. -DC-Ed work and some relevant American vocabularies are also included.

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP Gathering vocabularies: Becta Vocabulary Bank -Aims to be the premier repository for controlled curriculum vocabularies used in UK education. -These vocabularies are freely available to providers of digital learning resources to the education sector. -At present, the vocabularies mainly cover curriculum areas by subject. -However, it is likely that other educational vocabularies will be submitted in future. -For instance, the Adult and Community Learning vocabulary currently held in the Bank includes sub-nodes for Teaching Resources by Type, and for Course Delivery, which includes instructional method terms.

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP Gathering vocabularies: DCMI Type Vocabulary: collection; dataset; event; image; interactive resource; moving image; physical object; service; software; sound; still image; text IEEE LOM learningResourceType vocabulary: exercise; simulation; questionnaire; diagram; figure; graph; index; slide; table; narrative text; exam; experiment; problem statement; self-assessment; lecture

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP -We are currently discussing via the JISCmail list a set of criteria for selecting vocabularies for inclusion -Diane Hillmann put forward 4 criteria: 1.The vocabulary is openly available 2.The vocabulary includes definitions 3.A standard encoding is available for the vocabulary 4.URIs have been assigned to the terms and/or the terms are registered. See handout and discuss!

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 2. Defining a candidate list of vocabularies for the AP: A detour into registering vocabularies: 1.URIs have been assigned to the terms and/or the terms are registered

Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile 3. Looking at LOM elements and vocabularies to determine which (if any) are candidates for inclusion in AP - This work is still ongoing – any feedback?

Dublin Core Educational Work Please join the DC-Ed Community! me or Diane Join the JISCmail list to be notified of new developments and take part in discussions Register vocabularies! You can use the NSDL Registry, or … see the next presentation re the Becta Vocabulary Bank …