Hi.
I don't know if this is a good place to ask about VDEX (as applied to
LOM), but since I'm not an IMS member, I will give it a shot...
Does anyone here have any idea how to create a VDEX XML file to encode
the values for vocabulary elements from the LOM specification?
For entering vocabulary element instance data in our LOM editor, rather
than having users type in a source and value for each vocabulary field
manually, we wish to provide a drop-list for vocabulary sources/values
populated based on VDEX data. Thus, as a first step, we are trying to
encode the vocabulary data from the LOM into a VDEX file.
My initial effort is attached, but not knowing much about VDEX, there
was a *lot* of guesswork involved...
Questions:
1) Can we use a single VDEX record to define values for all LOM
elements, or will we be forced to create a VDEX record for each
vocabulary element defined by the LOM?
Possibly misguided, I have tried to encode the entire LOM vocabulary
into the single VDEX file attached.
2) There can be many types of VDEX files, not all of which are
necessarily applicable to editing and filling in values for a LOM
metadata instance. When we are editing a LOM, how do we extract only
the applicable VDEX files from our general purpose VDEX server? Put
another way: How do you label a VDEX record as being suitable for use
against LOM vocabulary elements?
I decided to use a metadata element on the root vdex XML element
containing a LOM which has an IsBasedOn relation to a resource with the
identifier entry of the LOM namespace.
3) How do you specify which vdex terms are applicable to which LOM
elements? That is, my editor wants to know all the LOM vdex defined
terms for the LOM.General.Structure element, how does it extract these
from the VDEX instance?
I have chosen to create a VDEX file with a hierarchicalTokenTerms
profileType, with a term corresponding to each LOM vocabulary element
containing sub-terms for that element's values.
4) How do you encode a LOM vocabulary option as a VDEX term?
I started thinking, using LOM.Relation.Kind for example, that the term
identifier would be 'ispartof' and the caption would be 'Is Part Of',
and didn't bother to fill in description yet. The problem with this
approach is that VDEX uses the term identifier as a fragment in forming
a URI for the term by appending it to the vocabulary identifier - ie
VocabURI#TermID. Thus, term identifiers have to be valid URI
characters, and those can't contain spaces - which means when you get to
LifeCycle.Contribute.Role 'graphical designer', it's not a valid term
identifier.
For this reason, I then chose to make the LOM defined value the term
caption, with the readable version as the term description, and create a
valid term identifier based on the caption, though replacing spaces with
underscores.
Yeah, so, after all that, you get the attached initial effort. I would
be greatly appreciative of any feedback on this.
Much Thanks.
--
Chris Hubick
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://adlib.athabascau.ca/~hubick/
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