All
Personally I vote for  the "association implicit" and keeping it simple.

If the idea of a metadata instance or record is accepted (as is the case in
the vast majority of implementations I am aware of, though I have no
empirical evidence)..

... then the "educational activity", or whatever, can be explicit because it
is bound up with the other values given to properties in that instance.

If the metadata creator thinks a property is not universal and differs for
other "activities" then a new instance is created.

So one instance might include
Level 3, audience = deaf children age 12 to 14, and typical learning time 15
minutes, curriculum topic (from curriculum in Scotland) = understand
movement in a variety of mammals

And another for the same fictional resource can be
Level 2, audience = children age 5 to 7, and typical learning time 20
minutes, curriculum topic (from curriculum in England) = where do rabbits
live

On the other hand adding "significant complexity to the model - which may
well end up confusing the hell out of just about everyone!" may be good for
metadata consultants who half understand what the hell is going on - so I
can personally see the benefit.

Cheers
Mike 7:-D
-----------
Mike Collett, Schemeta
+44 7798 728 747
------------
www.schemeta.com
email: [log in to unmask]

people are the network


> From: Andy Powell <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Andy Powell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:37:53 +0000
> To: DC-EDUCATION <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Functional requirements and the model
> 
> In modelling terms... or rather, in terms of how I am modelling the world in
> my head :-) a 'learning resource' has an "intended learning time" only because
> the resource creator had a particular 'educational activity' in mind when they
> created it.  I.e. the 'intended learning time' is always a property of the
> 'educational activity', not of the 'learning resource' itself.  The problem is
> that the association between the 'learning resource' and the 'educational
> activity' is often (nearly always?) implicit (but it is, nonetheless, a real
> association).
> 
> A 'learning resource' with no associated 'educational activity' (either
> implicit or explicit) is just a 'resource' (and should be described as such -
> i.e. without the use of any learning-specific properties).
> 
> All learning-specific properties are actually properties of the 'educational
> activity', not of the resource itself (even where that 'educational activity'
> exists only in the head of the resource creator).
> 
> For me, the issue at hand is...
> 
> Do we want to explicitly model the association between a 'learning resource'
> and its associated 'educational activity/ies' OR do we want to leave that
> association implicit (as it is with current metadata approaches).
> 
> The advantage of explicitly modelling it is that the model can then cope
> unambiguously with situations where a 'learning resource' is taken away from
> the 'educational activity' that the original creator had in mind and used in
> the context of a completely different 'educational activity' (with different
> target audiences, levels of difficulty, learning time, etc.).
> 
> The disadvantage of explicitly modelling it adds significant complexity to the
> model - which may well end up confusing the hell out of just about everyone!
> 
> Note: I've created complex models before, SWAP springs to mind :-), and gone
> on to see them used by almost no-one... so I'm under no illusions that this is
> not a real issue.
> 
> Andy
> 
> --
> Andy Powell
> Research Programme Director
> Eduserv
> t: 01225 474319
> m: 07989 476710
> twitter: @andypowe11
> blog: efoundations.typepad.com
> 
> www.eduserv.org.uk
> 
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stuart Sutton [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: 10 February 2010 22:32
>> To: Andy Powell; [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: RE: Functional requirements and the model
>> 
>> Andy, I'm not sure I would agree.  The semantics for "difficulty" in
>> LOM state: "How hard it is to work with or through this learning object
>> for the typical intended target audience" [1] which is quite different
>> from "How hard it WAS to work with this learning object for the ACTUAL
>> target audience." If you look at the definitions of nearly all of the
>> DCEd properties (of which I have a more than passing familiarity) and
>> the LOM [1], they are framed in terms of design and intention--things
>> designed for intended use ("intended or useful", "described resource is
>> intended", "intended to take place", "typical intended user", "typical
>> intended target audience" "approximate or typical time").
>> 
>> We keep throwing out typicalLearningTime as not applying to things like
>> lesson plans and descriptions of designed activities etc. but rather
>> being appropriate to apply to an activity instance (some actual event).
>> I'd note that notions like typicalLearningTime and typlicalAgeRange are
>> quite different from actualLearningTime and actualAgeRange that would
>> adhere to an activity instance where there is no longer the 'typical'
>> but rather the 'actual'.
>> 
>> It does not seem to me that we need new properties to talk about all of
>> these millions of resources I noted--not given the semantics of our
>> existing properties.  If anything, we need new properties for
>> describing an activity instance. That's the new kid on the block.
>> 
>> Stuart
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/Existing_20DCMI_20Education_20Prope
>> rties
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: DCMI Education Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On
>>> Behalf Of Andy Powell
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:48 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Functional requirements and the model
>>> 
>>> Agreed... maybe.
>>> 
>>> But we come back to the central problem... namely that very few so-
>>> called learning objects have an inherent 'difficulty level' and even
>>> those that do can be used in different ways which means we have to
>>> associate properties like 'difficulty' with an educationalUsage
>> rather
>>> than with the Resource itself.
>>> 
>>> I suppose we could define properties like 'intendedDifficulty' with
>>> definitions like 'the intended level of difficulty, as envisaged by
>> the
>>> creator of the learning resource' but it seems to me that would be a
>>> significantly less useful property than something like 'difficulty'
>> ??
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> --
>>> Andy Powell
>>> Research Programme Director
>>> Eduserv
>>> 
>>> t: 01225 474319
>>> m: 07989 476710
>>> twitter: @andypowe11
>>> blog: efoundations.typepad.com
>>> 
>>> www.eduserv.org.uk
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: Stuart Sutton [[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: 10 February 2010 17:47
>>> To: Andy Powell; [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: RE: Functional requirements and the model
>>> 
>>> Andy, here we hit upon rough shoals because limiting use of these
>>> education properties (DC and LOM)  to resources "that HAVE BEEN USED
>> as
>>> part of educational activities" eliminates 99% of all the resources
>> of
>>> interest to the community to which these properties have been
>> applied-
>>> millions of resource descriptions.
>>> 
>>> Stuart
>>> 
>>> From: DCMI Education Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On
>>> Behalf Of Andy Powell
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 8:33 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Functional requirements and the model
>>> 
>>> I was just taking a quick look at the functional requirements
>>> (http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/Functional_20Requirements).
>>> 
>>> As written, I think we have a problem with these in terms of the
>> model
>>> (http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/Model).
>>> 
>>> We currently say things like:
>>> 
>>> Support the discovery of learning resources and activities targeted
>> at
>>> particular levels of difficulty.
>>> 
>>> What I think we should be saying (in terms of the model) is:
>>> 
>>> Support the discovery of learning resources that have been used as
>> part
>>> of educational activities targeted at particular levels of
>> difficulty.
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Andy Powell
>>> Research Programme Director
>>> Eduserv
>>> t: 01225 474319
>>> m: 07989 476710
>>> twitter: @andypowe11
>>> blog: efoundations.typepad.com
>>> 
>>> www.eduserv.org.uk