Dear all,
Normally I would just summarise this information into the monthly digest
for you, but I feel that this news from IEEE is too important for me to
cover at the end of the month. The IEEE LOM draft 6.4 is almost a standard:
the developments are described below in a news update sent by Wayne Hodgins
to the LTSC-LOM mailing list. IEEE will now be looking at providing
bindings for the metadata. If you're familiar with any of the proposed
binding formats and would like to get involved, I'm sure you'd be welcomed
onto the new working groups. Read all about it below!
best wishes
Jenny
To all in the Learning Object Metadata community:
There is a great deal of exciting news and updates to bring to your
awareness which I would like to do so via this Email summary. While far
from finished, some very significant milestones have just been achieved and
we want to bring these to your immediate attention and keep you fully
informed and prepared.
LOM goes to RevCom!
===================
Easily the most exciting and most recent news is that we have just
completed the most significant milestone in LOM history by completing the
final draft standard document for the LOM data/information model! I could
not be more pleased and proud to inform you that last Friday, May 3rd, the
IEEE Review Committee, commonly referred to as "RevCom", formally accepted
the detailed submission of the P1484.12.1 LOM draft standard (v6.4) and
have scheduled it for review at their next meeting on June 12, 2002.
Leading up to this we worked extremely closely with the IEEE and RevCom
staff to go through the hundreds of pages in total of documenting the
process we have followed in developing the LOM draft and ensuring that
every detail of the documentation was complete and unambiguous prior to
their distribution of this documentation set to the RevCom members. This
was completed this by their deadline of Friday, May 3rd and is now being
distributed to the RevCom members in preparation for their formal review on
June 12th.
As most of you will recall from previous explanations of the IEEE process,
the primary purpose of the Review Committee is to ensure that the
development of the LOM draft standard followed the IEEE process and that it
is complete and ready for formal approval as an IEEE standard. Therefore
this is not a review of the content of the LOM draft itself but of the
process we followed and to ensure that in every other way the LOM draft we
have submitted is worthy of official accreditation by IEEE. Therefore,
with the exception of some final edits that will be made after the RevCom
approval, the LOM data model specification will be as documented in v6.4
Congratulations and Thanks!
======================
Words can not begin to capture the enormous debt of gratitude that both the
LOM community, the education, training and learning communities and the
metadata communities have for the dedication and work of those amongst us
who have served on the Working Group, the Balloting Group and the Ballot
Review Committee for LOM. It would be difficult to even estimate the
number person hours or magnitude of human capital which has been devoted to
reaching this milestone. Suffice it to say that your work and results are
very much being noticed and appreciated by these communities. I would ask
that we each in our own ways, recognize and appreciate those who have
brought us to this new level., and most importantly perhaps, go on to
embrace and extend this work with our words and actions as we now continue
the work to implement and further develop LOM. The success of LOM is
perhaps most accurately measured by the degree to which it becomes not only
an IEEE "dejura" standard but also a "defacto" standard on the basis of its
wide spread voluntary adoption and us. In so doing we will improve the
universal effectiveness of metadata and learning.
We are NOT done yet!!
=================
It is EXTREMELY important to note that while we have much to be proud of
and have passed a significant milestone in submitting the LOM data model to
RevCom, we have NOT finished the complete process of having and accredited
IEEE standard!! So please delay (but prepare for) any celebration until
the full IEEE process has been completed and we have full, official and
final approval of LOM.
In brief, the steps remaining are the final judgment of the IEEE RevCom to
approve (we hope) the LOM draft standard we have submitted and then the
final processing of the LOM to be a full IEEE standard.
It is also important to note that there will be some additional changes,
mostly all very editorial in nature, which will be made by IEEE to final
and official P1484.12.1standard document. The IEEE process requires that
the draft submitted to RevCom is the EXACT draft document which was last
balloted by the LOM Ballot group and that ABSOLUTELY NO changes of any kind
be made to the draft which is submitted to RevCom. ONLY the IEEE staff can
do so. Therefore, there will be some additional changes to the document
which is finally published. These will include for instance the new
revised wording of the Scope and Purpose statements that have just (today
May 9, 2002) been approved by IEEE as well as some additional edits to the
document which were identified after the last LOM ballot and were submitted
to IEEE RevCom for them (see previous Email postings for details)
Thus, you are welcome and encouraged to use the LOM document v6.4 which is
currently posted on the LOM web site (http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12 ) please do
so knowing that there will be one LAST set of changes to this document in
the form of the final approved LOM standard document.
New Working Groups and PAR's approved
===============================
With the first version of the LOM data model complete, we now need to turn
our attention to IMPLEMENTATION! Specifically, to developing the critical
codification or binding of the LOM data model. To this end and more
updates, I am pleased to inform you that we have received approval from
IEEE for the three next "parts" of the multi-part LOM standard. These are:
P1484.12.2 XML binding of the LOM data model lead by Erik
Duval ([log in to unmask])
P1484.12.3 ISO 11404 binding of the LOM data model lead by Frank
([log in to unmask] )
P1484.12.4 RDF binding of the LOM data model lead by Jon
Mason ([log in to unmask] )
In the coming weeks you will see additional and more detailed information
from each of these working group leads as they now work to form their
respective working groups, schedule times and means by which to do their
work, etc. It would be important to note that the nature of the work of
these groups will be dramatically different that the previous work and
methods we have utilized and evolved for developing the LOM data model.
The nature of the work is obviously now very technical, tightly scoped and
specific. The needed result is a specific and well detailed and working
binding of the LOM data model using each of the respective codification of
binding models of XML, ISO 11404 and RDF. Therefore these groups will need
to have a very different set of skills in the working group and have very
different group meeting styles and schedules in contrast to those from
developing the very conceptual LOM data/information model. If you would
like to be a WORKING member of these WORKING groups please send an Email to
this effect to the appropriate lead person listed above. Each group will
have its own Email alias, meeting schedule, etc. however we will report
updates from all of them to this overall LOM reflector as they develop.
Each group will also have information posted to the LOM web site as they
develop documents, bindings, and have notes from their meetings.
Each of these groups will also have agenda time at the next LOM and LTSC
meetings in Seattle next month, June 18-20th, 2002
On to ISO accreditation:
==================
At the last meeting of the ISO JTC1/SC36 meeting in Adelaide Australia on
March 7, 2002, the IEEE LTSC presented the update on LOM and a proposal to
submit this work for what is known at ISO as "fast tracking" to make LOM an
ISO standard. The result was a request to submit the LOM draft standard
document to the ISO JTC1/SC36 members (each from a participating national
body), for their review and consideration for follow up action to initiate
the fast tracking process. With the completion of the LOM draft standard
(v6.4)
Recent publications and useful references
================================
There are two recent publications which are likely of interest and value to
most anyone interested in LOM, standards and metadata overall. Please see
below for an overview of each and links to the respective documents. Both
of these have received an amazing degree of positive response and downloads
since their release a few weeks ago and I suspect many of you are aware of
them already. This note is to ensure that everyone in the LOM community is
fully aware of these recently published resources. If any of you have
additional such resources that you feel are of strong value and relevance
to this LOM community, please send them to me ([log in to unmask] )
for consideration and inclusion in the next update.
Next Steps:
==========
* Stay tuned to this Email alias for future announcements and updates on
the completion of the remaining stages of the IEEE processing and
accrediting of the LOM data model. We will have final word from RevCom
shortly after their June 12th meeting.
* Consider attending the LOM (and other) working group meetings at the
next LTSC meeting in Seattle, Washington (state) USA on June 18-20, 2002
* If you or someone you know, has expertise in XML, ISO 11404 or RDF and
metadata or LOM, please be encouraged to serve on one or more of the
appropriate new LOM "binding" groups noted above by sending an Email to the
leads noted above.
* Start planning for effective ways to communicate and disseminate the
imminent IEEE approval of LOM as a full IEEE standard and the first such
accredited standard for learning.
Again, thank you, thank you, thank you, to every one who has contributed to
LOM reaching this pivotal point! Stay tuned for the next updates and news
that LOM has been approved as a full IEEE standard.
Wayne Hodgins
Chair,
[log in to unmask]
Erik Duval, Erik Duval
Technical Editor
[log in to unmask]
IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)
Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) P1484.12
http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12
INDUSTRY REPORT on LEARNING STANDARDS:
==================================================
The best and most recent reference for you is the recently released (March
2002) Industry Report entitled "Making Sense of Standards and
Specifications: A Decision Makers Guide to their Adoption" from the Masie
Center eLearning Consortium This extensive report has been put into the
public domain and is available at http://www.masie.com/standards/
The phrase "learning standards" is one of the most powerful and most
misunderstood aspects of the e-Learning revolution. As organizations make
significant investments in digital learning content, there is a strong
desire to have greater assurances portability and reusability. As
organizations focus on providing learners with the "just right" content and
activities, there is a strong desire to have the ability to more easily
store, search, index, deploy, assemble and revise content. All of these
hopes are part of the story of "learning standards". To lower industry
confusion about learning standards and to accelerate their adoption, The
MASIE Center's e-Learning Consortium organized and facilitated a group of
learning professionals who worked together for several months to generate a
collection of information and job aids.
METADATA PRINCIPLES and PRACTICALITIES:
=======================================================
This report entitled "Metadata Principles & Practicalities" is the result
of the "Ottawa Task Force" team which has been previously described, and is
an extension of the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the Dublin
Core and IEEE LTSC LOM from last year. This is an extremely significant
activity as it brings together many of the world's leading authorities and
groups working on metadata overall, and is now articulating the very high
degree of common understanding, principles, coordination and cooperation
amongst all these various groups and efforts.
Thanks to Stu Wiebel of OCLC and Dublin Core, this paper is initially being
published in "D-Lib magazine" which is produced by the Corporation for
National Research Initiatives <http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/> (CNRI), has
been sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
<http://www.darpa.mil> (DARPA) on behalf of the Digital Libraries
Initiative, and is currently being funded by the National Science
Foundation <http://www.nsf.gov> (NSF)
Here is a short abstract of the report and the full copy is available at:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/weibel/04weibel.html
As is so often the case with an idea whose time has come, many communities
set about creating metadata schema for information objects, starting in the
mid to late 1990's. The education and training communities produced
several initiatives that coalesced into two major ones, the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and Learning Object Metadata (LOM) working group
of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee. Other groups, such as
ARIADNE, EdNA, GEM, and the IMS, have contributed to these initiatives and
use the resulting metadata schema. To understand functional relationship
between the two schemas and the basis for their common application, it is
necessary to understand several of the functions of metadata in the
education and training domains.
The rapid changes in the means of information access occasioned by the
emergence of the World Wide Web have spawned an upheaval in the means of
describing and managing information resources. Metadata is a primary tool
in this work, and an important link in the value chain of knowledge
economies. Yet there is much confusion about how metadata should be
integrated into information systems. How is it to be created or extended?
Who will manage it? How can it be used and exchanged? Whence comes its
authority? Can different metadata standards be used together in a given
environment? These and related questions motivate this paper.
The authors hope to make explicit the strong foundations of agreement
shared by two prominent metadata Initiatives: the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative (DCMI) and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Working Group. This
agreement emerged from a joint metadata taskforce meeting in Ottawa in
August, 2001. By elucidating shared principles and practicalities of
metadata, we hope to raise the level of understanding among our respective
(and shared) constituents, so that all stakeholders can move forward more
decisively to address their respective problems.
The ideas in this paper are divided into two categories. Principles are
those concepts judged to be common to all domains of metadata and which
might inform the design of any metadata schema or application.
Practicalities are the rules of thumb, constraints, and infrastructure
issues that emerge from bringing theory into practice in the form of useful
and sustainable systems.
Even though just released, it has already started to attract broad
attention and accolades such as this note from April issue of "Current
Cites" a journal for the library community which is edited by Roy Tennant
of The Library, University of California, Berkeley : "For those of us still
struggling with basic concepts regarding metadata in this brave new world
in which cataloging means much more than MARC, an article like this is
welcome indeed. In this 30,000-foot overview of the metadata landscape,
broad issues such as modularity, namespaces, extensibility, refinement, and
multilingualism are discussed. In addition, "practicalities" like
application profiles, syntax and semantics, metadata registries, and
automated generation of metadata are explained. Although this piece is not
exhaustive of high-level metadata issues, it is nonetheless a useful
description of some of the most important issues surrounding metadata
creation and use."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny Slater,
LTSN Engineering, Loughborough University,
Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK
Tel. (+44) 01509 227 176
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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