Hi Lorna,
Thank you for the question - its a very interesting topic.
Certainly, I think the creation of meta data is a complex concern. My
view is that formal metadata, adhering to common ontologies, is quite
necessary for access of any resource to be at its widest, accessible to
both human and software agents. However, it is certainly true that
attempting to collect detailed, formal data on point of entry from a
single human agent is unsustainable - I think this is also what you are
saying that resource developers feel - as the process will either be too
time-consuming for the individual, or if suitably streamlined the data
is likely to be incomplete or inconsistent.
As a solution to this problem I see it best that meta data in fact be
collected at point of entry by a combination of both human and software
agents. For example, where as a 'description' field is naturally
suitable only to be completed by a human agent, populating the sort of
data required by LOM's Technical object is best achieved via a software
agent reading the resource and populating the data behind the scenes;
the human agent need only give the URI of the resource, the software can
do the legwork. Such technical data is imperative for other agents to
then be able to disaggregate the OER and reuse it's constituent
individual resources with a question along the lines of 'Point me
towards all the mp3 resources within a certain category of OERs which
are under 3 minutes in length'. If OERs were presented according to our
proposal of using OAI-ORI as the aggregation descriptor and IEEE LOM as
the individual resource descriptor, such things are eminently doable.
As I understand it, the traction of the LOM standard is very established
and growing, not least due to the US Government's mandating of SCORM as
part of their recent announcement of massive funding to TAACCCT. A
debate about SCORM is no where near the scope of this discussion, but
the power that gives LOM in terms of establishing further traction I
think is undeniable. Regardless of this, to my knowledge there exists
no better standard to describe the individual resources within an OER,
it is certainly very well defined and very well established.
However, the main objective of our proposal is to implement the OAI-ORE
standard as an aggregation descriptor; should a better descriptor of the
individual resources be proposed we would welcome it to be appraised
against the value of LOM during the design period of the project, if we
were successful.
In terms of the 'distributed, publish anywhere' environment, this is
certainly an environment we embraced in our design of the OSTRICH
distributed repository. Or 'referatory'. I'm not quite sure which is
better :) Anyway, we do not intend to store the individual resources on
our servers, as we feel this would be fundamentally unscalable.
Instead, we refer to the resources at their own location, which might be
anywhere at all on the Web. However, we have then a clear need to be
able to describe these resources to both human and software agents, a
need which we feel is common to many, and hence our proposal. We
believe the it supports a distributed environment.
Alex
On 13/04/11 13:58, Lorna M Campbell wrote:
> I must admit I didn't read the OAI-ORE proposal as being "a repository". I've been interested in the potential affordances of using OAI-ORE for managing OER aggregation for some time, particularly in relation to connecting resources to distributed comments, ratings, rankings, and other paradata type stuff, so I'm quite intrigued by this bid.
>
> I do have one query for Alex though, I'm not entirely sure about the applicability of LOM to OERs. Certainly LOM could be used to describe OERs but I wonder how likely it is that this standard will gain traction in the distributed, publish anywhere type of information environment that has emerged over the last few years. We know that resource developers tend to see the creation of formal metadata as problematic which I think is part of the reason that there has been a move towards tagging and capturing more informal, or less structured, resources descriptions.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> All the best
> Lorna
>
>
> On 13 Apr 2011, at 12:03, Alex Lydiate wrote:
>
>> The 'ORE one', ie ours, is not a repository. We've got one of those
>> already - http://ostrich.bath.ac.uk , wouldn't wish to make another.
>>
>> It is rather a proposal to implement the OAI-ORE standard for the
>> purpose of presenting OERs as aggregations of resources, as resuable,
>> disaggregable objects of complex types.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13/04/11 11:45, Scott Wilson wrote:
>>> #1 I really like the "Cut and Paste Reuse Tracking" proposal - its novel but also connected to "real world" use. I suspect its actually the most technically challenging in reality but well worth pursuing.
>>>
>>> #2 I don't think OER Bookmarking is viable as it really would have to be "another delicious". HOWEVER - If it were instead a proposal to try to work with Yahoo! and other sites to offering bookmarking to get them to integrate better licensing into their sites, that would potentially be a far more interesting proposition though obviously with less predictable outcomes. (Another option might be to work with oEmbed. That probably goes for #1 too)
>>>
>>> #3 I think vocab management tools is a non-starter as vocabularies are principally a system-wide management and sustainability problem not a technical problem.
>>>
>>> #4 And finally, the ORE one is a repository.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> S
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Alex Lydiate
>> Software& Systems Developer
>> LTEO - WH5.39
>> University of Bath
>> 01225 383576
> --
> Lorna M. Campbell
> JISC CETIS Assistant Director
> University of Strathclyde
> Glasgow
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Phone: +44141 548 3072
> Skype: lorna120768
>
> The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC015263.
>
--
Alex Lydiate
Software& Systems Developer
LTEO - WH5.39
University of Bath
01225 383576
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