Hi all
I know I've been absent for a while on this list but I have been kept
properly engaged and active on stuff, in case anyone thinks I was off on an
extended holiday or something!
In moral support of Lorna and in defence of UK LOM Core I thought I'd add in
my two pence worth.
I feel the original intention of the UK LOM Core is being lost somewhere in
the discussion, perhaps the number of mandatory elements is too many but to
argue as little as two is to miss the point of it in the first place.
The initial need was identified to allow the players in the UK education
arena to be able to meaningfully exchange information about learning
resources across all the sectors involved. Remember this includes HE in
England through to (in theory) nurseries in Northern Ireland and anything in
between. One intention was to agree on some vocabularies that we could in
theory all use (I stress in theory as remember this was part of a master
plan but a reaction to a perceived problem from individuals who happened to
have a few spare hours).
The mandated information was thought of a 'record' in the sense that it
would meet the needs of an learning resource information seeker who isn't
necessarily a learner btw. Not all the information contained would also have
to be exchanged or exposed in all circumstances of course. And not all
atomic things requiring metadata would need all mandatory parts of the UK
LOM Core completed. It was only really concerned with learning resources,
not necessarily for an individual question that may one day be contained in
a learning resource or assessment instrument.
It is not that the UK LOM Core is trying to be everything, more that many
people are trying to everything with it.
It may be helpful to see UK LOM Core as a collection of different parts. The
mandatory elements can stand apart from the recommended vocabularies and
from the cataloguing guidance for a UK context accompanying all the
elements. If this was the case the question of the mandatory elements only
comes into question when you consider the needs of an learning resource
information seeker. I would still argue that a statement outlining what the
user is allowed to do with a learning resource encapsulated in a Rights
elements is necessary and therefore a candidate for being mandatory.
So in summary, lets be clear why it exists, what aspects of it are valuable
on their own, what other things do people actually need and how are these
met. And remember, the 'people' concerned are all those engaged at whatever
level in UK education.
Perhaps we need to think [use cases] of different sets of
mandatory/recommended elements for different purposes all using the same
localised LOM vocabularies and cataloguing guidance.
Cheers
Gerry ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Lorna M. Campbell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 July 2004 13:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: UK LOM Core: what is it for (was Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements)
Hi there,
How come you guys always answer one question with another question??!
Ok, what's it for? I said that the aim of UK LOM Core was to facilitate
basic interoperability but as Phil pointed out if that was simply the case
we could just point to CanCore :-)
Scott said:
>Of course, is this a minimal set that should be supported as a search
>index for interoperable search? Or is it disconnected from search
>functions, and is about usage hints to a delivery process? Or is it
>both, everything, or nothing??
I think part of the problem is that the UK LOM Core is trying to be
everything :-} I also think the fact that the core started out as a rather
ad hoc development is starting to tell. We started of by assessing common
practice and then created a profile on the basis of this common practice.
What we didn't do was formally gather requirements and use cases. Use cases
might help us to answer some of the questions we're struggling with now.
When Gerry and I wrote the first draft of the profile is was based on a
comparison of about a dozen existing profiles, including SCORM, which Scot
mentioned. We wanted to see if there was any commonality in the elements
that other profiles used and, if so, to recommend the use of these elements
to the UK educational community. The type of scenario we had in mind was
that a teacher searching any repository would know that there would always
be a minimum set of factors that they can search for (title, contributor,
language, rights). At the same time if two applications (e.g. a local
repository and a national hub) are exchanging metadata instances then there
will be a common set of elements that each application will recognise
regardless of extensions, customised elements & vocabularies etc. We also
wanted to ensure that all of the recently funded X4L project would use a
common set of elements.
This doesn't really answer the questions raised by Phil and Scott but
hopefully it'll help clarify the origins of the profile. Where do we go
from here though??
Bye
Lorna
On 16 Jul 2004, at 12:31, Phil Barker wrote:
Lorna M. Campbell wrote:
> If we were to keep a mandatory element set, ideally what should this
> core consist of?
>
That depends what the UK LOM Core is for! If it aims to promote
interoperability, then it is enough for it to work on an element-by-element
level providing definitions and vocabularies suitable for UK use. It'll be a
small document I guess, saying use CanCore with these changes.
If it aims to promote the creation/supply of enough metadata to satisfy the
needs of Learning Resource users, then I think the current core might be
justified. (Although we need to make sure that we don't limit the way the
metadata creation process is managed in such a way that inhibits practices
aimed at improving the quality of the metadata produce).
It's because I believe there needs to be a broader aim than just swapping
bits of metadata (a metadatum anyone?) that I think that the WAI model is
worth considering (and perhaps rejecting).
Phil
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematics and Computer Science
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: work - 0131 451 3278 home - 0131 221 1352
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
--
Lorna M. Campbell
Assistant Director
Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS) Centre
for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
+44 (0)141 548 3072
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
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