Given that there has been a fairly good discussion to date on Audience I
think it would be useful to also get some discussion going on some the other
key topic areas identified for DC-Education.
Our summary from meetings at DC7 identified that DURATION is one of 5 key
considerations fro Education. The semantics here are expressed in terms on
"use" time (as opposed to technical duration, as in a 30 minute audio
recording). Examples which fit the idea of "use" might be duration of:
- activity
- lesson
- unit
- exercise
- test
- subject
- course
- questionnaire or survey
- installation
also, other considerations a little different to the above list might
include
- preparation time
- life cycle (shelf-life)
The IEEE LTSC LOM (& therefore also IMS, Ariadne,..) identifies
Educational.TypicalLearningTime as its main durational element (5.9) in an
educational sense, though it also identifies Technical.Duration for
instances such as a 30 minute audio recording. Interestingly, the LOM
defines a group of elements under a broad definition of "Lifecycle"
(version, status, contribute, role, entity, date). However, none of these
elements actually capture the lifecycle (as intended shelf-life) of a
resource where it might relate to something like a 'call for papers' or a
research instrument such as a survey.
GEM identifies Duration in the sense of "use time" as outlined above.
DURATION has been put forward as a key consideration for the education
community. However, I also note that the FORMAT Working Group is proposing
EXTENT as a qualifier which picks up some overlapping semantics (in terms of
technical duration):
=snip=
This element qualifier for Format allows the metadata creator to indicate
the physical dimensions, filesize or duration of the resource.
Examples include:
DC.Format.Extent = 3419 bytes
DC.Format.Extent = 34 minutes
DC.Format.Extent = 2 x 3.5 inch floppy disks
The WG make no specific recommendations about how units should be
associated with the value.
==end
The demarcation of "educational" from "technical" duration in some ways
makes lots of sense. But I can also see possible problems arising in that
many educators (who may also be trying to manage metadata) will interpret
technical duration as being closely associated with an approved value list
for DURATION.
Jon
===========================
Jon Mason
education.au limited
178 Fullarton Road
Dulwich SA 5065
Australia
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http://www.educationau.edu.au
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