Hi Jon,
Thanks for this comment. Hope it inspires others to look at the detail
of the AP document too! Some discussion below- I'd appreciate further
feedback from others on this (although those who originally created the
DC property Audience Education.Level may find this reiterates previous
discussions- however, no harm in re-visiting I feel).
> re:
> *4. Use of further IEEE LOM elements in the DC-Ed AP.* The working
> draft has a table listing relevant LOM elements and giving information
> about them. Do any of these look like properties you would wish to
> describe for educational resources? Have we missed anything important?
>
>
> The draft AP maps Audience educationLevel to LOM 5.6 Educational.Context
NB: The Dublin Core definition for the Audience.educationLevel property
states "A general statement describing the education or training
context. Alternatively, a more specific statement of the location of the
audience in terms of its progression through an education or training
context." -- http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
I took this to mean that this DC property is rather broadly interpreted
to include both broad context and more specific educational levels. The
original proposal for this property directly linked it to LOM 5.6
Educational.Context as well:
http://dublincore.org/groups/education/Audience-Level-Proposal.shtml
So, to my mind, technically the mapping works with DC's intention for
this property. However, your point is a valid one. More below:
>
> I think this mapping is not really accurate & fits much better with
> LOM 5.7 Educational.TypicalAgeRange, but even then is not a great fit.
> The semantics that I interpret from LOM Educational.Context are to do
> with educational "setting" (k-12, university or higher education, &
> vocational training). It may be true in some examples that these
> settings could be described in terms of "level" but I really think
> it's wrong to do so.
I do think that the closest fit to what you are talking about, Jon, is
the LOM Classification element (Purpose: Educational Level), for which,
as an example, the UK LOM Core application profile recommends use of the
UK Educational Levels vocabulary:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/education/ukel/ which provides a central
spine that UK educational levels are mapped to.
However, the UK LOM Core also recommends the use of UK Educational
Contexts for LOM 5.6 Educational.Context, which reads as follows (
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/education/ukec/ ):
* nursery education
* primary education
* secondary education
* sixth form college
* further education
* higher education
* continuous professional development
* vocational training
* community education
Most of which looks like educational levels to me, but gets a bit fuzzy
around "continuous professional development", "vocational training" and
"community education" which aren't really levels at all, rather are more
purely contexts.
>
> Having said that, I think that LOM 5.6 Educational.Context is a very
> useful element. For example, in an Australian profile of SCORM known
> as "Vetadata", there is a default value for LOM 5.6
> Educational.Context (= training) -- this automatically groups Vetadata
> resources as being useful within the vocational education & training
> (VET) sector.
>
> So, I'm wondering whether we need a new refinement for Audience that
> maps more directly to LOM 5.6 Educational.Context?
I'm wondering now too: but I'm also wondering if we really need to
re-think the original intention of the DC property- is keeping it simple
and folding these quite similar things into one property OK? Do we need
to replicate the LOM by having a load of different elements? I'm really
not sure- the metadata purist in me sees the point, but I also like the
idea of keeping it simple when the boundary between the two is quite fuzzy.
Thoughts?
S.
--
Sarah Currier
Co-Moderator, Dublin Core Education Community
Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd.
http://www.intrallect.com
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