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Connecting Learning Object Repositories: Strategies, Technologies and Issues
Abstract
The rapid growth of digital learning resources has brought forward a number of issues concerning availability, distribution and use. Altogether, the issues are a mix of interplaited technological and pedagogical considerations. Some of those issues, mainly related to repositories and the distribution of digital learning resources, are examined and described in this article. A particular focus is put on how resources can be described and indexed using metadata, and on how access to digital learning resources can be improved and facilitated through federation and/or harvesting of metadata in order to tie several repositories together to provide a service that offers one single access point. The study also examined how this single point of access can be moved closer to the user (i.e. to the environment where digital learning resources are used) through simple federation of the service, enabling access to the network of repositories from any virtual learning environment. The study was carried out by experiments connected to a real-life case. The study concludes in several suggestions for how access to digital learning resources can be enhanced, as well as in the identifications of a couple of new issues that need to be
... This would permit a wide range of data types connected to NSDs capturing, for example, work activities in apprenticeship education, individual development plans, and digital learning resources. In Sweden, a brokerage service for learning resource repositories, the Spider, makes digital learning resources from various repositories available for searching [16] to facilitate teachers and learners. By adding NSD connections to learning resource metadata, it would be possible to search for learning resources relevant to specific knowledge requirements or core contents. ...
Steering documents for school, i.e. curricula, syllabi, subject plans and the Education Act, are not generally available in a digitally usable format. That complicates, for example, the process of building advanced curriculum-based services for schools in which individual elements are traceable. To address this problem, Swedish subject syllabi incorporating knowledge requirements for compulsory school were analyzed in terms of their structure, content type and relationship to the subject, year, and grade level. Markup describing the documents was added using Semantic Web technologies such as RDF and Linked Data to make the documents digitally usable. This paper presents a method for analyzing and marking up national steering documents. Digitally usable steering documents open up for services in which digital learning resources are connected to specific parts of the steering documents or in which steering documents from various countries can be compared, for example concerning PISA results.
... As stated in (Paulsson, 2009), access to digital learning resources could be improved if common metadata schemes and vocabularies were used to describe them. This not even a reality for specific initiatives such as OCW, as every institution has created its own taxonomy and hierarchy or there is no structure at all. ...
Most educational institutions include nowadays a digital repository as part of their development and positioning strategy. The main goals of a digital repository are preservation and dissemination, which are some how contradictory, especially if the repository follows an open approach, as it is designed, built and managed from an institutional perspective, although it is intended to be used by teachers and learners. This fact may lead to a low level of usage, as final users are not able to integrate the learning object repository into their learning process. In this paper we will discuss how to promote open educational resources by connecting open repositories with open social networks, bridging the gap between resources and final users (teachers and learners).
This paper presents and analyzes the experience of applying certain data mining methods and techniques on 932 Systems Engineering students’ data, from El Bosque University in Bogotá, Colombia; effort which has been pursued in order to construct a predictive model for students’ academic performance. Previous works were reviewed, related with predictive model construction within academic environments using decision trees, artificial neural networks and other classification techniques. As an iterative discovery and learning process,
the experience is analyzed according to the results obtained in each of the process’ iterations. Each obtained
result is evaluated regarding the results that are expected, the data’s input and output characterization, what
theory dictates and the pertinence of the model obtained in terms of prediction accuracy. Said pertinence is
evaluated taking into account particular details about the population studied, and the specific needs manifested by the institution, such as the accompaniment of students along their learning process, and the taking of timely
decisions in order to prevent academic risk and desertion. Lastly, some recommendations and thoughts are laid
out for the future development of this work, and for other researchers working on similar studies.
Window to research is a digital learning object oriented support the training of young’s and children in science, technology and innovation, particularly in developing research proposals and active participation in seed. Designed and developed in adobe captivate integrating instructional design concepts and meaningful learning. Created within the project design and development of learning objects using tools rapid elearning.
Taking global Frameworks of ICT4E for developing M&E (Monitoring & Evaluation) research: ¿How to compose an integral schema to assess the state of inclusion, use and appropriation of ICT4E in institutions at Tunja, Colombia? Objective: Design an integral M&E schema of Inclusion, Use and Appropriation of ICT4E. Methods: The Evaluation schema was designed by correlation of Core Indicators of 7 educational Frameworks. The Monitoring scheme is composed of the steps for evolution assessment. Final assessment was performed to the 14 official institutions. Results and Conclusion: Public Educational Institutions at the city of Tunja are in the second stage of evolution, called Use. Individual Frameworks' scores supports the data behavior. It´s the first time the institutions of the municipality are assessed about their ICT4E skills, so the given information should be taken as a preamble for further assessments; these should line up with national policies and goals.
Informal (and non-formal) learning becomes one of the main open questions in Education, when we discuss how to integrate formal itineraries with the actual world, outside the classroom. Furthermore, how to combine the most and the best from both worlds which are, in fact, the one and only? Information and educational resources are everywhere: inside and outside the Internet, inside and outside major mainstreams, inside and outside publishing houses, and a large number of sources. In addition, we count thousands of formal courses, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate programmes, and other accredited, official ways to acquire competences, achieve objectives and improve the personal background and the options for the future. The key question is how to integrate both, so that the student and the professor work with every single quality resource at hand to reach the same goals, or other complementary goals. Open Educational Resources (including MOOCs, but not only) provide the user (I mean, THE user, from every profile) a never-ending, multi-device, multi-focus, multi-source of knowledge. How can we dare to neglect the right use of this world? How can we dare not to use it, at hand, for so many people in need for Education? And far from that dramatic, obvious question, how can we dare not to make excellent what is already good, to make the best what is already excellent?
This congress, hopefully the first in a series with UNESCO and Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) as partners, dives into technology, methodology and policy to make a contribution into the Society. It highlights some challenging approaches along the three main tracks and the invited talks. The final goal stresses the relevance of a required evolution towards a renovated paradigm that takes very much into consideration the current ways of interaction, learning, contribution and sharing that the students, teachers, professors, tutors, administration staff and policy stakeholders deal with, every day, in every classroom, across the World. The whole organization team welcomes you to the proceedings of the congress, as a live proof of the promising integration that we all aspire to.
Edurep indexes learning object metadata from several repositories, offering a webservice interface on which portals can build their own search implementation. At Edurep query log level, no obvious distinction can be made between human users and webcrawlers visiting these portal sites. This makes it impossible to gather any meaningful data on user search behaviour. Four query types, distinguished from the six largest portals' websites were related to one month of query logs. For two query types a distinction between human and automatic generated traffic could be found. However, these results can only be used to advise connected portals on their interface implementations. More research is needed to actually perform any reliable filtering.
This paper presents the outcome of a study performed in the Netherlands on handling multiple metadata streams regarding digital learning material. The paper describes the present metadata architecture in the Netherlands, the present suppliers and users of metadata and digital learning materials. It furthermore describes the roles of suppliers and users that were defined. Based on the needs of the present and new roles, and based on the present architecture the necessary changes to the metadata architecture are described to make it more future-proof and to ensure it can handle multiple metadata streams.
This paper presents a conceptual metadata framework for Dublin Core metadata, intended to support the development of interoperable metadata standards and applications. The model rests on the fundamental concept of an "abstract model" for metadata, as exemplified by the DCMI Abstract Model, and is based on concepts and ideas that have developed over the years within the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The model thus incorporates the concepts of metadata vocabularies, schemas, formats and application profiles into a single framework that can be used to analyse and compare metadata standards, and aid in the process of harmonization of metadata standards. IThe model is used to briefly compare the structures of the Dublin Core metadata specifications and the IEEE LOM standard. Some fundamental differences between the two standards are discussed briefly, and important gaps in the current set of Dublin Core metadata specifications are noted.
Repositories provide mechanisms to encourage the discovery, exchange and re-use of learning objects. This paper describes Portals for On-line Objects in Learning (POOL), a consortium project of the TeleLearning NCE to build a learning object repository scalable to the national level. Funded in part by the Canarie Learning Program, POOL contributes to the development of two focal technologies: "POOL POND and SPLASH" a distributed architecture for a peer-to-peer network of learning object repositories, and CanCore, a practical metadata protocol for cataloguing learning objects.
In this paper, we describe the first steps of the content enrichment approach that European Schoolnet, with its partners in the MELT project, has taken to allow users collaboratively annotate the existing learning resources. The paper will briefly outline the MELT strategy for co-existence of structured and unstructured learning resources metadata (LOM), then it will outline the envisaged enrichment services for multilingual folksonomic approach. Moreover, we give the first evaluations on multilingual user-given free-keywords on learning resources which leads us to outline our approach to manage tags in multiple languages within the MELT federation of learning resource repositories.
Thanks to recent developments on automatic generation of metadata and interoperability between repositories, the production,
management and consumption of learning object metadata is vastly surpassing the human capacity to review or process these
metadata. However, we need to make sure that the presence of some low quality metadata does not compromise the performance
of services that rely on that information. Consequently, there is a need for automatic assessment of the quality of metadata,
so that tools or users can be alerted about low quality instances. In this paper, we present several quality metrics for learning
object metadata. We applied these metrics to a sample of records from a real repository and compared the results with the
quality assessment given to the same records by a group of human reviewers. Through correlation and regression analysis, we
found that one of the metrics, the text information content, could be used as a predictor of the human evaluation. While this
metric is not a definitive measurement of the “real” quality of the metadata record, we present several ways in which it can
be used. We also propose new research in other quality dimensions of the learning object metadata.
LIMBS is an open source brokerage system developed in the framework of the CALIBRATE project. LIMBS relies on open standards and open contents to promote exchanges of learning resources within a federation of e-learning systems. Contrary to the CELEBRATE brokerage system, from which it derives, LIMBS's role is limited to carrying and routing messages exchanged by the federation members rather than to enforcing semantic interoperability. With LIMBS, semantic interoperability becomes the responsibility of the federation members that rely on "clients" to communicate with the brokerage system and to support the negotiation of common query languages and metadata formats. LIMBS itself adopts a service-oriented architecture so that each service (e.g., resource discovery, digital rights management) can be used separately and combined with any (group) of the others
In this paper, we survey the field of learning object repositories. Learning objects are typically relatively small content components that are meant to be reusable in different contexts. Associated to these learning objects are metadata, so that they can be managed, searched, etc. As the international standardization in this area is making important progress, the number of these repositories is growing rapidly, and the whole field of learning objects is rapidly maturing as a research area in its own right.
Findings are reported from four projects initiated through funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001 to explore applications of metadata harvesting using the OAI-PMH. Metadata inconsistencies among providers have been encountered and strategies for normalization have been studied. Additional findings concerning harvesting are format conflicts, harvesting problems, provider system development, and questions regarding the entire cycle of metadata production, dissemination, and use (termed metadata gardening, rather than harvesting).
A common perception is that there are two competing visions for the future evolution of the Web: the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. A closer look, though, reveals that the core technologies and concerns of these two approaches are complementary and that each field can and must draw from the other's strengths. We believe that future web applications will retain the Web 2.0 focus on community and usability, while drawing on Semantic Web infrastructure to facilitate mashup-like information sharing. However, there are several open issues that must be addressed before such applications can become commonplace. In this paper, we outline a semantic weblogs scenario that illustrates the potential for combining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies, while highlighting the unresolved issues that impede its realization. Nevertheless, we believe that the scenario can be realized in the short-term. We point to recent progress made in resolving each of the issues as well as future research directions for each of the communities.
In this paper, we focus on the development of a framework for automatic metadata generation. The first step towards this framework is the definition of an Application Programmer Interface (API), which we call the Simple Indexing Interface (SII). The second step is the definition of a framework for implementation of the SII. Both steps are presented in some detail in this paper. We also report on empirical evaluation of the metadata that the SII and supporting framework generated in a real-life context.
In this paper we discuss the design of the SCAM framework, which aims to simplify the storage and access of metadata for a variety of different applications that can be built on top of it. A basic design principle of SCAM is the aggregation of metadata into two kinds of sets of different granularity (SCAM records and SCAM contexts). These sets correspond to the typical access needs of an application with regard to metadata, and they constitute the foundation upon which access control is provided.
The overall goal of the Stanford Digital Library project is to provide an infrastructure that affords interoperability among heterogeneous, autonomous digital library services. These services include both search services and remotely usable information processing facilities. In this paper, we survey and categorize the metadata required for a diverse set of Stanford Digital Library services that we have built. We then propose an extensible metadata architecture that meets these requirements. Our metadata architecture fits into our established infrastructure and promotes interoperability among existing and de-facto metadata standards. Several pieces of this architecture are implemented; others are under construction. The architecture includes attribute model proxies, attribute model translation services, metadata information facilities for search services, and local metadata repositories. In presenting and discussing the pieces of the architecture, we show how they address our motivating requirements. Together, these components provide, exchange, and describe metadata for information objects and metadata for information services. We also consider how our architecture relates to prior, relevant work on these two types of metadata.
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Erik DuvalErik.Duval@cs.kuleuven.ac.beStrategic FuturistAutodesk Wayne Hodginswayne.hodgins@autodesk.comAssociate Professor, The Information SchoolUniversity of Washington Stuart Suttonsasutton@u.washington.eduExecutive DirectorDublin Core Metadata Initiative Stuart L. WeibelWeibel@oclc.org
The use of digital learning resources creates an increasing need for semantic metadata, describing the whole resource, as well as parts of resources. Traditionally, schemas such as Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) have been used to add semantic markup for parts of resources. This is not sufficient for use in a â€Âmetadata ecologyâ€Â, where metadata is distributed, coherent to different Application Profiles, and added by different actors. A new methodology, where metadata is “pointed in†as annotations, using XPointers, and RDF is proposed. A suggestion for how such infrastructure can be implemented, using existing open standards for metadata, and for the web is presented. We argue that such methodology and infrastructure is necessary to realize the decentralized metadata infrastructure needed for a “metadata ecology".
This paper identifies requirements for querying and accessing context information in mobile and pervasive computing environments. Furthermore it studies existing query languages showing that they satisfy only a subset of these requirements or cover some of them only to a limited extent. A new context query language is presented to overcome these shortcomings, improving the state of the art in several respects: heterogeneous representations of context information, definition of complex filtering mechanisms, elaborate aggregation functions and ontology integration, all in one language.
In the 1990s, recognition of the potential economies of reusing educational materials spawned the development of metadata standards for sharing and storing learning objects. Metadata is data that describes a physical or electronic resource and can be used to manage collections of documents, images, and other information in a repository such as an archive or museum. Some metadata elements, such as title, description, subject, and keywords, are similar to those that libraries use to catalog their holdings. Other elements, such as the uniform resource identifier (URI), are specific to a digital, Web-based environment. Metadata can be stored in a digital library or repository that provides services to search or browse for educational materials. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and IEEE Learning Object Metadata are two popular metadata standards that facilitate cataloging, searching, and reuse of such resources.
This paper will discuss some of the advantages and complexities in using the Resource Description Framework, RDF, to express learning object metadata following the IEEE LOM standard. We will describe some details of the current draft for a complete RDF binding for LOM and discuss some of the constructs used in that binding. We will then present a so-called SHAME Query Model of this binding that can be used to specify and visualize application profile constraints when using this binding. A metadata editor for RDF-based LOM metadata, which was built with the help of this Query model, will be briefly introduced.
this article, we explain the role of ontologies in the architecture of the Semantic Web. We then briefly summarize key elements of XML and RDF, showing why using XML as a tool for semantic interoperability will be ineffective in the long run. We argue that a further representation and inference layer is needed on top of the Web's current layers, and to establish such a layer, we propose a general method for encoding ontology representation languages into RDF/RDF schema. We illustrate the extension method by applying it to OIL, an ontology representation and inference language.
The next generation of the Web is often characterized as the "Semantic Web": information will no longer only be intended for human readers, but also for processing by machines, enabling intelligent information services, personalized Web-sites, and semantically empowered search-engines. The Semantic Web requires interoperability on the semantic level. Semantic interoperability requires standards not only for the syntactic form of documents, but also for the semantic content. Proposals aiming at semantic interoperability are the results of recent W3C standardization efforts, notably XML/XML Schema and RDF/RDF Schema. In this paper, we make the following claims: . A further representation and inference layer is needed on top of the currently available layers of the WWW. . To establish such a layer, we propose a general method for encoding arbitrary ontology representation languages into RDF/RDF Schema. . We illustrate the extension method by applying it to a particular ontolo...
SRW/U (the Search/Retrieve Webservice) and OAI (Open Archives Initiative) are both modern information retrieval protocols developed by distinct groups from different backgrounds at around the same time. This article sets out to briefly contrast the two protocols' aims and approaches, and then to look at some novel ways in which they have been or may be usefully co-implemented. While using SRW as a search service to an OAI repository or aggregated data set is an obvious synergy, there are also many other useful architectures that can be constructed without bending the protocols' semantics. Copyright © 2005 Robert Sanderson and the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
The use of information structure and metadata for the National Curriculum becomes more and more crucial as the demands for advanced eLearning services increases. In a Swedish pilot project a simple information model was developed and tested on the National Curriculum. An implementation of a common XML based Mark-up Language called TEI was used for the first approach. An alternative model where three different kinds of metadata where identified and separated using RDF, XML and Annotea as core technologies was used for the second approach. Two approaches where tested and evaluated against five criteria. It was found that XML-based mark-up languages like TEI fail in cases where complex metadata and a combination of several metadata models are required. In conclusion we argue for the importance of separating information structure, descriptive metadata (including semantics) and catalogue metadata.
Thanks to recent developments on automatic generation of metadata and interoperability between repositories, the production, man- agement and consumption of metadata is vastly surpassing the human capacity to review or process this information. However, we need to as- sure that low quality metadata does not compromise the performance of the services that the repository provides to its users. We contend there is a need for automatic assessment of the quality of metadata in digital repositories, so tools or users can be alerted about low quality records. In this paper, we present several quality metrics for metadata based on quality evaluation frameworks used for human quality review. We applied these metrics to a sample of records from a real repository and compared the results with the quality assessment given to the same records by a group of human reviewers. Through correlation and regression analysis, we found that one of the metrics, the text information content, could be used as a predictor of the human evaluation. While these metrics are not proposed as a definitive measurement of the complete multi-dimensional quality of the metadata record, we present ways in which they can be used to enhance the functionality of digital repositories.
This paper proposes a model for metadata crosswalks that associates three pieces of information: the crosswalk, the source metadata standard, and the target metadata standard, each of which may have a machine-readable encoding and human-readable description. The crosswalks are encoded as METS records that are made available to a repository for processing by search engines, OAI harvesters, and custom-designed Web services. The METS object brings together all of the information required to access and interpret crosswalks represents a significant improvement over previously available formats. But it raises questions about how best to describe these complex objects exposes gaps that must eventually be filled in by the digital library community.
Purpose
In contrast with recent studies noting the necessity of library and information science (LIS) skills in digital library and repository projects, this study aims to examine the impact of metadata quality requirements on how LIS professionals apply their skills outside a library setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews the concept of metadata quality and examines the implications of this for LIS professionals by reviewing the differences between the context of the library community and other relevant communities of practice.
Findings
The paper argues that, although much needed, LIS skills require contextualisation before application outside library settings.
Research limitations/implications
Many of the new opportunities for and settings of LIS skills are immature – consequently this analysis may date as the context of these settings mature. Current trends, however, suggest that it will not.
Practical implications
Training in LIS skills should take account of how they might apply differently outside libraries. Librarians co‐operating with colleagues outside the library should appreciate the potential metadata “compromises” they might have to make and why they are necessary.
Originality/value
The paper provides food for thought on the increasing number of LIS professionals working outside library settings.
A common perception is that there are two competing visions for the future evolution of the Web: the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. A closer look, though, reveals that the core technologies and concerns of these two approaches are complementary and that each field can and must draw from the other’s strengths. We believe that future Web applications will retain the Web 2.0 focus on community and usability, while drawing on Semantic Web infrastructure to facilitate mashup-like information sharing. However, there are several open issues that must be addressed before such applications can become commonplace. In this paper, we outline a semantic weblogs scenario that illustrates the potential for combining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies, while highlighting the unresolved issues that impede its realization. Nevertheless, we believe that the scenario can be realized in the short-term. We point to recent progress made in resolving each of the issues as well as future research directions for each of the communities.
In this article I outline the ideas behind the Open Archives Initiative metadata harvesting protocol (OAIMH), and attempt to clarify some common misconceptions. I then consider how the OAIMH protocol can be used to expose and harvest metadata. Perl code examples are given as practical illustration.
Motivated by preservation and resource discovery, we examine how digital resources, and not just metadata about resources, can be harvested using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). We review and critique existing techniques for identifying and gathering digital resources using metadata harvested through the OAI-PMH. We introduce an alternative solution that builds on the introduction of complex object formats that provide a more accurate way to describe digital resources. We argue that the use of complex object formats as OAI-PMH metadata formats results in a reliable and attractive approach for incremental harvesting of resources using the OAI-PMH.
The use of metadata and international standards is essential for the distribution of learning material as learning objects and learning components. SCAM is an archive system for storing and distributing learning components. By using existing standards for learning related metadata and metadata in general, such as IMS metadata and RDF, an advanced metadata model is implemented. The metadata model in SCAM supports the use of multiple metadata sets on the same resources, using different vocabularies and taxonomies in a layered manner. Based on the SCAM system, different types of archives can be built, such as e.g. portfolios or general learning component archives. Archives can be connected to each other by the use of an Edutella peer. SCAM addresses some of the more common, meta data related problems of storing and distributing learning components. Keywords E-learning, semantic web, learning object, learning component, SCAM, interoperability, archive, metadata, RDF, learning technology standards. (of 5)
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