-------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: UKCMF Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 17:55:28 -0500 From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] CC: [log in to unmask] Hi Nik, (Phil please cc to MD SIG mailing list please, thanks.) NJ> I have a few questions that I hope you won't mind me putting to you. I raise these more to check my understanding than anything else. LMC>Thanks very much for your comments. This is exactly the kind of input we need to refine the framework and ensure it meets the communities requirements. NJ> 1. Re. 4.3 technical.location - This is listed as a mandatory element with preferably URL or URI. I appreciate that IMS/IEEE specs are designed for digital resources, however many SCs have offline resources that they are going to want/be asked to catalogue using the UKCMF. Do you think it will be possible to broaden this beyond URL/URI and (for someone? to) provide guidelines on other identifiers? LMC> Hmm, as far as I know the Learning Object Metadata standard is designed only for use with digital objects. If you require identifiers for non digital objects you would probably need to extend the application profile. However it's important to remember that the UKCMF represents a basic element set, a starting point that others can build on. We don't necessarily expect the UKCMF to meet all the requirements of the RDN / LTSN as is, it's very likely that it will require modification. In terms of who should do this I would suggest that the RDN / LTSN community should develop their own application profile taking the UKCMF as a starting point. CETIS and LTScotland can also input comments, advice and guidance. I realise this is a bit of a fudge of an answer so I'll see if I can some up with something more sensible once we're back in the UK. 2. Re 7.1 relation.kind - The list here does not include 'references'. Is this an oversight or deliberate? I've looked at the CanCore guidelines and it is included there. LMC> My apologies, that's a typo, the omission of "references" is unintentional. That's our fault for trying to rush the document out as quickly as possible. We'll release an update with this vocabulary corrected. NJ>The reason why I ask is that dc.relation.references is vital to us. We currently use it with our PedR to express the relationship between a review or summary and the article/book/whatever that the review or summary is of. Expanding that to the domain of LOs rather than PedR for which the UKCMF is intended, is it intended that the relation should be the other way (assuming dropping 'references' is deliberate); that is, that an LO should point outwards to a review or case study or whatever related to it? I can see a certain logic in that. However, and this is a second question, I kind of get the impression that this element is not intended to be used in this way; that is, all the documentation points to the relations between two LOs and not between LOs and reviews/case studies. If that is the case, how should these relations be expressed? I imagine the answer is that this is not in the domain of the metadata for an LO but in the domain of the metadata for the review or case study that may be better described with DC anyway. Does that make sense or am I just rambling? LMC> No you're not rambling at all, that's a perfectly valid point and you're absolutely right. My understanding is that the "references" field is designed to describe the relationship between LOs and not to describe the relationship between a LO and a reference to it's use. This is the type of information that is often referred to as secondary metadata or secondary usage metadata. User reviews, use contexts and histories of use are other examples. Everyone agrees that this kind of information will be invaluable for users of learning objects but there are currently no metadata schemes that deal directly with this. You can use the LOM annotation field or DublinC ore as you mention but this is a rather minimalist solution. The new IMS Metadata Special Interest Group discussed the question of secondary metadata this morning but recognise that this is a difficult issue to deal with. As a first step the SIG are proposing to gather use cases regarding the use of secondary metadata which will help us to identify user requirements in this area. This is a first step towards preliminary research so don't expect a new specification to appear next week! I have agreed to contribute a use case on behalf of JISC / CETIS and plan to contact the CETIS Metadata SIG for input. So if you have a particular use case or scenario in mind make a note of it now and keep an eye on the CETIS MD SIG mailing list. NJ> 3. The $64,000 question: What's the plan regarding the educational metadata vocabs? Is there a plan? Is there an ETA? Don't take this the wrong way, I'm just completely ignorant of whatever developments or planning is going on here amongst the metadata community. As an aside, Phil will know that we adopted FAILTE vocabs initially for this, but will switch now to the LOM ones and try to interpret them as best we can for our cataloguers/community (there is no wasted effort here as we have been holding off doing any cataloguing of these fields whilst things have been up in the air regarding RDN-LTSN interoperability). Or does that not sound sensible as a plan? LMC> This sounds like a very sensible plan. The UKCMF is based on common practice and since very few people have effectively implemented the LOM education fields there is very little common practice for us to base our recommendations on. That was our rationale for making these fields optional rather than mandatory. However we would always encourage users to implemet these fields as this is the only way we will be able to assess their applicability and effectiveness. In terms of research going on within the MD community I believe Dublin Core are conducting ongoing research into educational elements (perhaps Andy could comment on this?), in addition ISO SC 36 are looking into this issue. The IMS MD SIG have decided to try to monitor this work and to encourage people who have implemented these fields to submit applications profiles in order to assess the use of these fields. More on this later. NJ> Thanks and sorry to bombard you. I'll probably have more questions in future. LMC> Hope this helps to address some of your queries. Please keep the comments coming, as we really need to encourage this debate. All the best Lorna -- 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/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . -- Phil Barker Learning Technology Advisor ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327 Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/