Hi Phil and Aida
Your comments have been a great help:
Phil (his comments are below)
I like your idea though for representing this information. One of the things
that is emerging in our project is that this kind of information can be far
more valuable than the object it may be associated with. Your suggestion
would make it easier I think to update this information.
Aida (seperate post)
Aida Slavic has just posted me suggesting that what I am talking about is a
secondary resource rather than secondary metadata and that makes a lot of
sense to me (Thanks Aida) which is what Phil is saying as well. Aida also
gives this hierarchy of information about a resource which related to the
'distance' it is from the original - I hope I am not misrepresenting you
here Aida:
primary (learning resources)
secondary (information about learning resources)
tertiary (directory/compendium of information on learning resources)
Me
So, I think I have a solution (which is not bad for a Friday afternoon)
1. stop calling this stuff secondary metadata and call it secondary
resources
2. when the object is made associate any secondary resources with it
suggested and identify it in the LOM as Phil suggests.
From an educational point of view this is also quite a handy way of
separating pedagogic information from the resource itself and making it
possible to access and share that separately. One of part of our project is
concerned with using a simple pedagogic framework (there are many) based on
the work of Tom Shuell that will give our project a basic common pedagogic
vocabulary.
We will probably still put the first version of this secondary information
in the object to start with as well, but after that we will update the
separate secondary resource and see how we go.
So one last question: what is secondary metadata? :-)
Thanks a lot
John
> John Casey
> Project Officer
> Learning to Learn - an X4L Project
> DAICE
> Airthrey Castle
> University of Stirling
> Stirling
> FK9 4LA
> Tel: +44 (0)1786 467943
> email: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.stir.ac.uk/departments/daice/l2l/
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Barker [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 10 October 2003 14:03
To: John Casey {DAICE}
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Secondary Metadata Part1
Hi John,
My solution to this is similar, but I don't think of it as secondary
metadata. Metadata has to be *structured* data about data. I think what you
are talking about, and what is needed, is further information. So, I would
create the tutor notes/suggestions/design ideas/reviews etc in a suitable
format (html, pdf, rtf, word [in rough order of preference]). In an ideal
world I would give it an ID (POI, DOI ...) and put it on a webserver / in a
repository so that it gets a URL. Then in the LOM record for the original
resource I would put
relation
-kind = isReferencedBy
-Resource
-Identifier
- Catalog = [POI, DOI, ...]
- value = [id]
-Identifier
- Catalog = URL
- value = http://...
-Description = "a [case study] of the use of this resource ..."
Alternatively or addtionally in the metadata for the additional information
resource I would use the LOM or DC relation field with relationship kind of
references to point back to the original resource preferably using its ID,
so that a service could come to my metadata catalogue of additional
resources and say "give me additional information about the resource known
as [id]". (There's a use case for identifiers there for anyone interested)
Phil.
John Casey {DAICE} wrote:
> Apologies for cross postings
>
> Dear All
> The question of secondary metadata (tutor notes, suggestions, design
ideas,
> reviews etc) has been a vexed one and has thrown up some interesting
debate,
> including the question of whether anyone wants it or not. That debate, for
> me, leads to some very interesting places but I don't what to explore them
> just yet....Instead I want ask a simple question and get your opinions.
>
> Secondary Metadata: The project I am working on and the teachers I am
> working with want to use secondary metadata in the context of learning
> objects as an extension of their current practice (in fact they already
use
> it in their normal 'real world' non-digital work). But we have some
> problems. The annotations field is not much good for it and a restricted
or
> shared vocabulary looks unlikely (or even desirable given the multiplicity
> of pedagogic models out there - from the ever-present transmission model
to
> some of the more 'far-out' models, if you are interested in the models
this
> link is very handy http://tip.psychology.org/).
>
> So, instead of trying to bend the LOM (Learning Object Metadata) into to
> doing something it was not really designed to do what about this simple,
and
> crude, suggestion?
>
> For those that want secondary metadata then they create it in a rich text
> file and place it in an agreed place within the object. If that is a
> workable way forward then it would be good if the file had a common name
> like say 'notes'. This way all we would be specifying would be where the
> secondary metadata is located in an object and where people should look if
> they wanted to find it. Of course many objects would not have any
secondary
> metadata - i.e. it would not be mandatory. But if there was any then it
> would be useful if there was a convention to place it somewhere and give
it
> a common name.
>
> What goes inside the secondary metadata file would be totally up to the
> authors / creators etc and if you were interested in what they had to say
> you would have to engage with that on their terms, at least initially, -
> rather like we do in the real world.
>
> So, this secondary metadata file would be just a 'common space' where
> secondary metadata could be placed and read - by people, not machines. If
> this was so then we could say in the annotations field of the LOM "see the
> 'notes' file for more information' - some such. If we agreed on a set name
> for the secondary metadata file the presence of that secondary metadata
> information (yes /no) could even be denoted in some way in the LOM - and
be
> machine readable.
>
> They way I see it metadata and learning objects exist on a spectrum which
at
> the 'sophisticated' end have detailed 'well formed' metadata and may have
> SCORM and Learning Design attributes and characteristics - and very
exciting
> and full of potential all that is.
>
> [But the development of these technologies and things like the
integration
> of runtime systems, learning objects, student records and enterprise
systems
> and so on is also throwing up (as they do) lots of unforeseen questions
> about the our professional cultures and institutions. See this article for
> interesting ESRC research on this relatively neglected 'systems' aspect of
> our kind of work: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/virtual-universities/]
I
> digress....
>
>
> As we go back down through the spectrum of learning objects we move
towards
> the 'primitive' end where people are using repositories as very simple
> digital libraries - and getting very immediate benefits, that's where I am
> coming from.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thanks
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>John Casey
>>Project Officer
>>Learning to Learn - an X4L Project
>>DAICE
>>Airthrey Castle
>>University of Stirling
>>Stirling
>>FK9 4LA
>>Tel: +44 (0)1786 467943
>>email: [log in to unmask]
>
> web: http://www.stir.ac.uk/departments/daice/l2l/
>
>
> --
> The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
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--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
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Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327
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--
The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA. Privileged/Confidential Information may
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in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such
person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone
and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is
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