Andy Powell wrote:
> My feeling is that UK LOM Core has a major problem with the way it
> mandates so many elements.
>
<bigSnip>
> In summary, conformance with UK LOM Core should tell you more about how
> particular elements and values have been used than about which set of
> elements to expect in a record.
>
> Thoughts?
>
Hello Andy, Everyone
Well, that would be a fairly slim document, basically a reference to
CanCore, a couple of classification vocabularies and a couple of extensions
to existing LOM vocabularies. But it would be useful. Can anyone think of a
good way of saying that a service is offering this form of conformance? I
guess the term "Core" wouldn't really be appropriate, so how about "UK LOM
element usage"?
However, I still think there is value in the UK LOM Core doing more than
this. Much of the debate has focused on the difficulty of *providing* high
quality metadata with all the mandatory information, there isn't much said
about *why* it is being provided (there isn't much said about this in the
UK LOM Core document either). We want to provide teachers and learners with
enough information to locate appropriate learning resources, don't we? I
think Fred was getting at this when he wrote (I'm paraphrasing) that he
could see the importance of the elements and wouldn't want to see any
dropped. While it may be the best approach to creating metadata, in your
example scenario comprising:
> 1) An RDN hub provides the core descriptiove elements about a resource
> (title, description, subject keywords, etc.).
>
> 2) An LTSN centre provides some e-learning metadata about the same
> resource (level, semantic density, learning time, etc.).
>
> 3) A third-party service allows end-users to provide annotations about the
> same resource.
none of the three services offers enough information on its own. However an
aggregator service pulling data from these could provide enough
information, and it *would* be UK LOM Core compliant, and it would be
useful (in my opinion) for it to distinguish itself by saying so. The UK
LOM Core would be useful here in identifying gaps in data provision.
I also hope that the UK LOM Core will prove valuable in saying to
publishers and learning resource creators what metadata we need in order to
disseminate their resources effectively. Hopefully they will provide what
they can of it; the UK LOM Core could further help here by identifying
which elements are best provided by the creator/publisher, which by the
user, and which by a neutral/expert third party. Hopefully this will make
Fred's job less frightening.
Well, a Japanese friend of mine used to tell me that in Japan they always
seek compromise solutions rather than offending either party in an
argument, and it struck me that the Japanese seemed to prosper by this
approach (well, they did then). Is there any mileage in a scheme similar to
the WAI levels? UK LOM Core level 1 compliance could be as Andy suggests
with 2 mandatory elements, everything else would be highly desirable,
desirable or optional; level 2 would make the highly desirable elements
mandatory (and the desirable would be highly desirable?); level 3 would be
as we have now. Or is that too complex?
Phil.
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
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/
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