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A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs - The MOOChub as First Prototype

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The MOOChub is a joined web-based catalog of all relevant German and Austrian MOOC platforms that lists well over 750 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Automatically building such a catalog requires that all partners describe and publicly offer the metadata of their courses in the same way. The paper at hand presents the genesis of the idea to establish a common metadata standard and the story of its subsequent development. The result of this effort is, first, an open-licensed de-facto-standard, which is based on existing commonly used standards and second, a first prototypical platform that is using this standard: the MOOChub, which lists all courses of the involved partners. This catalog is searchable and provides a more comprehensive overview of basically all MOOCs that are offered by German and Austrian MOOC platforms. Finally, the upcoming developments to further optimize the catalog and the metadata standard are reported.
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A Metastandard for the International
Exchange of MOOCs
The MOOChub as First Prototype
Thomas Staubitz1, Sebastian Serth1, Max Thomas1, Martin Ebner2, Markus
Koschutnig-Ebner2, Florian Rampelt3, Alexander von Stetten4, and Andreas
Wittke5
1Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam
Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 23,14482 Potsdam, Germany
2Graz University of Technology
Münzgrabenstraße 36/I, 8010 Graz, Austria
3Stifterverband
Tempelhofer Ufer 11,10963 Berlin, Germany
4Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern
Luitpoldstr. 5,96052 Bamberg, Germany
5Technische Hochschule Lübeck
Mönkhofer Weg 239,23562 Lübeck, Germany
The MOOChub is a joined web-based catalog of all relevant German and
Austrian MOOC platforms that lists well over 750 Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs). Automatically building such a catalog requires that all
partners describe and publicly offer the metadata of their courses in the
same way. The paper at hand presents the genesis of the idea to establish
a common metadata standard and the story of its subsequent develop-
ment. The result of this effort is, first, an open-licensed de-facto-standard,
which is based on existing commonly used standards and second, a first
prototypical platform that is using this standard: the MOOChub, which
lists all courses of the involved partners. This catalog is searchable and
provides a more comprehensive overview of basically all MOOCs that are
offered by German and Austrian MOOC platforms. Finally, the upcoming
developments to further optimize the catalog and the metadata standard
are reported.
1The MOOChub
The MOOChub provides a centralized, searchable catalog of all courses on German
and Austrian MOOC platforms. The dedicated goal of the MOOChub is to provide
learners with a cross-platform overview of all available course offerings and enable
147
Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
them to find suitable courses for their learning needs, regardless of the MOOC
provider.
The genesis of the MOOChub goes back to two almost parallel activities. In
2015, in discussions between the TH Lübeck (MOOC platform oncampus, formerly
mooin) and the TU Graz (MOOC platform iMooX) the idea emerged to mutually
list each other’s MOOCs. Both platforms were dedicated to Open Educational
Resources (OER) and free accessibility of online courses, so they saw a good
opportunity to increase mutual awareness by listing each other’s offerings on their
websites. They also experimented to offer an online course simultaneously on
both platforms [10,11]. In parallel, the Hasso Plattner Institute’s MOOC platform
openHPI and SAP’s MOOC platform openSAP set up a project named mammooc
to combine the growing range of courses on an increasing number of world-wide
MOOC platforms. Their vision was to offer learners a one-stop shop to search for
new learning opportunities and centrally manage their course enrollments across
various MOOC providers. In addition to courses from openHPI and openSAP as
the directly involved platforms, MOOCs from other providers (such as Coursera,
edX, or FutureLearn) were also included in the mammooc course catalog via
proprietary interfaces. Finally, in cooperation with the TH Lübeck, the provider-
independent exchange format for course metadata, which was initially developed
as part of the mammooc project, premiered in early 2017.
Based on these preliminary projects and considerations, all major German-
language MOOC platform operators first met in 2020 to discuss options for a
centralized platform catalog. In a regular exchange, they discussed how learners
could be provided with a common, cross-platform offering. This endeavor was
not entirely trivial for several reasons: the platforms have different operators and
operating models, different target groups, different course topics and, above all,
different technical infrastructures. Therefore, the most important objective was to
create a common understanding and define possible goals of joint activities. As a
result, the founding members namely the TH Lübeck (platform mooin/oncam-
pus), the Hasso Plattner Institute (platform openHPI), the Stifterverband (platform
KI-Campus), the Virtual University of Bavaria (platform OPEN vhb) and the TU
Graz (platform iMooX) agreed to operate an aggregator platform on which the
free, open online course offerings of all partners are listed. Gradually, this aggrega-
tor was put into practice and is now operated under the name MOOChub. The TU
Graz agreed to cover the technical part of the MOOChub platform development
and operation. The Hasso Plattner Institute agreed to take the lead in the further
development of the metadata format.
The guiding principles for the MOOChub include:
Joint regular exchange and cooperation to strengthen education
Openness of educational offers
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1The MOOChub
Interoperability, based on the Groningen Declaration6
High quality offerings
Supporting lifelong learning
Achieving Bologna Process goals through digital technologies
The following objectives were derived from this:
Making educational offerings visible by providing an overview of all available
online courses (the various MOOC offerings) of the partners
Common authentication of learners across platforms
Exchange on standards and frameworks to support the recognition and credit-
ing of digital educational offerings in higher education and vocational fields
Creation of technical standards, both at the level of the platforms and their
interfaces with each other
Creation of standardized processes and workflows
Common quality standards for digital education offerings
Pooling of resources and thus creation of a sustainable educational offers
At the current state, the first of these objectives has already been successfully
implemented in the form of the common course catalog with the MOOChub
platform. For this purpose, it was necessary to develop a common course catalog
metadata format for the description of the online courses. In this publication,
we want to present this course catalog format as well as its development and
application. Finally, we discuss the experiences so far and point out possible further
steps.
In addition to the MOOChub and the associated MOOC platforms using the
course catalog format for the data exchange, other providers as well as aggregators
were invited and encouraged to use and contribute to this format. In addition to
the founding members previously mentioned, the course offerings of the open-
SAP, LERNEN.cloud and eGov-Campus platforms, which are also free and openly
accessible, were added to the MOOChub catalog. On the aggregator side, the
Open Educational Resources Search Index (OERSI)
7
and the Kompetenznaviga-
tor Schleswig-Holstein
8
use the course catalog metadata format to list courses
6https://www.groningendeclaration.org/
7https://oersi.org
8https://www.findig.sh/
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Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
from the various MOOC platforms in their catalogs. OERSI is operated by the
library of Leibniz University Hannover and the university library center of North
Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The “Kompetenznavigator is a project of the Ad-
ministration Laboratory at the “Zentrale Einrichtung für Angewandte Forschung”
(ZEAF) of the University of Applied Sciences for Administration and Service in
Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Further discussions with other providers and aggre-
gators are held on a regular basis and we are always open for an exchange with
interested parties. Most recently, the format has also been approved as one of the
metadata exchange formats that will be used by the new “Nationale Bildungsplat-
tform” (NBP), a project funded by the German Ministry of Education, MERLOT, a
project funded by the German Ministry of Economics, and Digital.Campus Bayern,
a project funded by the Bavarian State Government.
2Existing metadata formats for learning resources
Before we started to develop a common course catalog format for easy delivery
of course metadata for MOOC platforms, we explored which existing metadata
formats for learning resources were available. The two most widely used standards
so far are the IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata [16], which is also part
of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model [25,22], and the more modern
community-based approach of schema.org
9
. Both standards, however, prove not
to be completely suitable for describing online courses and the specific charac-
teristics. In addition to analyzing the standards, we compared how the partners
and other established MOOC platforms provide metadata for their courses and
which standards they used. It became apparent early-on that although there was
no suitable standardized approach so far, there was a great deal of interest among
the platforms to collaborate and establish a standardized exchange format.
Early research on a MOOC aggregator identified the difficulties in this regard
as early as 2015 and showed the range from Linked Data to processing the ren-
dered web page in collecting necessary data [17]. According to the researchers,
a proprietary interface for retrieving the course catalogs was only available at a
later point in time across all major MOOC platforms [6]. The multitude of different
standards and formats in the learning context (and their specific advantages and
disadvantages) has been the subject of research even before the increased popular-
ity of MOOCs [19]. To some extent, there are also attempts to establish standards in
related areas (e.g. for micro-credentials at the European level; [2]). Sometimes, in-
9https://schema.org/
150
3Collaborative development of a common course catalog format
ternational standards such as LOM are adapted for specific use cases, for example
by the “Kompetenzzentrum für interoperable Metadaten” (KIM, [3,21]).
Particularly relevant for the further use of learning materials described by the
corresponding metadata, is often their free availability as Open Educational Re-
sources (OER). Projects such as MERLOT
10
therefore have been collecting free
educational resources for over 20 years and have been describing the relevance
of equally free interfaces for retrieving the metadata [24]. In this context, the sup-
port of standards by content providers is considered a prerequisite for building a
comprehensive collection of learning materials [5]. As illustrated by the OpenupEd
platform, this can also help to counterbalance the leading, mostly U.S.-based con-
tent providers at the European level [13]. In addition to the OpenupEd platform
(operated by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities [7]), there
were further efforts between 2016 and 2019 with EMMA as European Multiple
MOOC Aggregator [1] to collect courses from the European context and offer them
simultaneously in multiple languages.
Besides those initiatives focusing on European offerings, other platforms with-
out such a focus were created, listing as many courses from various providers as
possible. These usually include advertisements or commercial offers to the listed
platforms. When learners enroll in a paid course by clicking on one of the affiliated
links shown by the MOOC aggregators, MOOC platforms pay a commission to
the respective aggregator. Examples of MOOC aggregators financed by affiliate
links and advertisements include Class Central11, Coursesity12, and MOOC-list13 .
Therefore, these providers can allocate more resources in developing and maintain-
ing their platform, including an adaption to more formats. With the MOOChub,
we envision an ad-free catalogue of OER resources, inviting partners to join our
efforts by providing data in an open schema.
3Collaborative development of a common course
catalog format
The development of the MOOChub schema required intensive discussions with all
partners and is based on the experiences from the mammooc project [23]. The meta-
data format
14
developed in this project formed the conversational foundation for
10https://merlot.org/merlot/
11https://www.classcentral.com/
12https://coursesity.com/mooc
13https://www.mooc-list.com/
14https://github.com/MOOChub/schema
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Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
defining the current MOOChub schema for data exchange. Further development
involved identifying the existing similarities between the course offerings, working
out trade-offs for differences, and considering new developments in the MOOC
context. Given the differences between offerings of the involved MOOC providers,
the format was defined to include a basic set of mandatory fields on one hand and
a set of optional fields on the other. This allows adapting the format to the specific
use cases of each MOOC provider. At the same time, though, the format allows
for a largely homogeneous presentation of the courses from all providers on the
MOOChub website as well as by other aggregators.
The selection and naming of the fields in the MOOChub schema are based on the
preliminary work performed by the mammooc project and the existing “Course”
standard of schema.org
15
. However, minor changes were made to adapt to the
special circumstances of MOOCs, for example by allowing to specify several dates
for the course start, deadlines, or availability. Schema.org was introduced in 2011
by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex to create a uniform vocabulary to be
used on the web [14]. Further development of the standard is done in an open
process with the community. Based on the preliminary work, it was agreed to
use the schema.org format as the basis for the MOOChub schema. Given that
the MOOChub schema only extends schema.org and as long as these extensions
are optional, compatibility with the original standard is guaranteed. The use of
such a widely accepted basis facilitated the agreement process among stakeholders
immensely. Another advantage of using schema.org as a basis is that this also has
a positive impact on search engine rankings. Providers who are only compatible to
the original schema.org standard can thus use at least the basic functionality of the
MOOChub schema. However, additional features that require special data from
the optional fields may be reserved for providers that support the full format.
In theory, as it is often the case, the practical implementation diverged at some
point from the theoretical foundation. During the ongoing development and further
distribution of the MOOChub schema, elements were included in the implementa-
tion that are no longer compatible with schema.org. For this reason, a revision of
the format is currently being prepared to restore compatibility with schema.org.
In addition to the technical aspect, it should be mentioned that the chosen
“grassroots approach” has proven to be very successful in the implementation so
far. The steadily growing number of partners using the course catalog format, both
on the MOOC platform side and on the aggregator side, immensely strengthens
the argumentation standpoint towards new potential partners. The existing and
demonstrably well-functioning format is often gratefully accepted.
15https://schema.org/Course
152
4Course catalog format description
4Course catalog format description
The exchange of metadata for the courses is based on the JavaScript Object No-
tation (JSON). The MOOC providers make this data available via an Application
Programming Interface (API). In this regard, both the use of an API and the JSON
format are in line with the current industry standard for metadata exchange. In the
JSON format, fields are defined as key-value pairs and nested objects. Here, each
key corresponds to a unique, predefined identifier. Depending on the definition,
specifying values in accordance with the respective data type is mandatory or can
be voluntary. Figure 1shows an excerpt from the JSON format.
Figure 1:
Excerpt from a JSON file with course data according to the MOOChub
schema
4.1Required fields
The use of the MOOChub schema requires participating MOOC providers to
provide a mandatory set of metadata for each course. This set includes:
“name”: the course title. It is stored in the form of a string and is mostly used
as a heading in the catalog display.
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Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
“courseMode”: the course type. The course type is specified in the form of a
string. Currently, “MOOC” is the only valid value. With an upcoming revision
of the MOOChub schema, the list of allowed values will be extended in the
future.
“instructors”: the instructor(s). This is a list of the complex data type “instruc-
tor”. This data type was defined specifically for the MOOChub schema and is
therefore not compatible with the original standard. We will deal with this and
other necessary changes in the chapter “Discussion and Outlook”.
“moocProvider”: the provider of the course. This is also a separate complex
data type.
“url”: the URL to the course content. A string in the form of a valid Internation-
alized Resource Identifier (IRI according to RFC3987,[8]) is stored here.
“courseLicenses”: the course licenses. The specification is made as an array
of the complex, own data type “courseLicense”. By using multiple licenses,
different usage scenarios of MOOC providers including multi-licensing are
covered.
“access”: the access modifier. In an array of strings, the modifiers “free”, “paid”,
“member-only” and “other” can be specified. This field indicates whether the
course is available with or without fee, or if it is only offered to a certain group
of participants (such as students enrolled at a university).
This minimum data set is intended to ensure that courses can be represented
consistently in the MOOChub catalog. Other aggregators and search services can
also rely on the delivery of this data.
4.2Optional fields
In addition to the mandatory fields that have been listed in the previous chapter, an
additional set of metadata can be provided optionally. These fields include, among
others:
“description”: a description of the course content. A string can be specified here
to provide a more detailed description of the course. The string can include
HTML tags.
“language”: the language of the course. The language versions of the course
can be stored in this array of strings. The language must be specified as an
abbreviation according to BCP 47 (RFC6497,[4]).
154
4Course catalog format description
“workload”: the estimated weekly course completion time for learners in hours.
This field allows an integer value (if known) or “null” as value (if explicitly not
known).
The described extensions to the course catalog format help aggregators and
learners to search for courses attributes and, therefore, are also a useful addition for
learners to find most suitable courses. Hence, it is advisable for MOOC providers
to include as much metadata as possible including the optional fields.
Nevertheless, providers who do not want to or cannot provide all data are not
prevented from using the MOOChub schema.
4.3Data types
For efficient processing of the data, not only the identifiers of the fields but also
the data types of the passed values must be standardized. Most fields can simply
contain strings. In some cases, however, special specifications must be applied.
Dates, for example the start date of a course, can only be passed in a date format
according to ISO 8601 (2019) or RFC 3339 [20]. The URL reference to the course
homepage has to be delivered as a valid IRI. In addition, simple HTML markup [15]
can be used as a markup language, for example in the human-readable description
of the course content.
Some fields require complex data types that have been embedded as additional
objects in the JSON format. An example of such a complex data type is the speci-
fication of the instructor(s) (“instructor”). This field is defined by the instructor’s
name (as a string), the instructor’s type (identified as a person or organization), the
instructor’s role, an image if applicable (stored as a URL), and a brief description
of the person or organization. The “instructors” field itself is created as an array,
so that multiple instructors can be added.
4.4Versioning and pagination
In addition to the specification of the MOOChub schema in JSON format, the
API also includes a versioning agreement for the data format of the respective
MOOC platform. This ensures that changes in the course catalog format can be
implemented independently by the MOOC platforms and the MOOChub, and
that the exchange of the metadata automatically adjusts using the compatible
versions. To keep the configuration effort as low as possible and to avoid URL
customization, version negotiation takes place via HTTP Content Negotiation (RFC
9110,[12]). This allows the MOOChub as a client to specify a preferred version of
the course catalog format, which the MOOC platform as a server uses to respond to
the request whenever possible. Using this mechanism, different MOOC platforms
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Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
can (temporarily) deliver different versions, so that the synchronization efforts
required to implement breaking changes to the MOOChub schema can be reduced
to a minimum for all involved partners. Optionally, the end of support for a specific
API version can be defined using the HTTP Sunset Header (RFC 8594,[26]).
In addition to the versioning described above, the MOOChub schema allows
the course catalog to be split across multiple pages when retrieving it through the
API. This allows the MOOChub to gather the courses from the individual MOOC
platforms in a resource-efficient manner and process them in smaller page sizes.
Therefore, we specified that an API should use the JSON API standard [18], which
allows linking to subsequent pages directly in the response.
Figure 2:Filter options on the MOOChub website16.
16Screenshot of the website https://moochub.org as of March 7th,2023
156
5Discussion and outlook
Figure 3:Further aggregators using the MOOChub metadata format17.
5Discussion and outlook
Once all platforms involved had agreed to cooperate with each other and jointly
promote the digital education through MOOCs, the actual technical implemen-
tation presented a comparatively small hurdle. As soon as the common course
catalog format was established, the self-confidence and the range of arguments
vis-à-vis other platforms and aggregators increased with each new partner. The
steadily growing interest is underlined by the increasing access figures.
The “grassroots approach” taken to establish this course catalog format more
firmly, bit by bit, through a steadily growing user base, has been very successful.
With some justification, we can now claim that the format has become a de-facto
standard for MOOC platforms in the German-speaking area. In principle, there
is little standing in the way of expanding the user base to include other online
17Screenshot of the websites https://oersi.org/ and https://www.findig.sh/ as of March 7th,2023
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Staubitz et al.: A Metastandard for the International Exchange of MOOCs
course formats. For some time now, discussions have also been taking place at the
European level, although there is still a comparatively large need for coordination
and harmonization of the various needs. To this end, the major European MOOC
providers have recently submitted a joint project application that deals with the
creation of a European portal solution comparable to MOOChub. If this applica-
tion is approved, the development of a European solution based on the current
MOOChub schema is very likely. Additional project grants potentially leading to
further standardization of the course catalog format are currently evaluated or
have already been approved. Among others, the MOOChub schema was recently
approved as one of the supported metadata exchange formats as part of the NBP
project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. There, par-
ticular attention is also being paid to how such a format can serve as a basis for
recommendation services and AI-supported learning path creation. Another goal
here is also to move the format from the status of a de-facto standard to the status
of an official standard in collaboration with the German Institute for Standardiza-
tion (DIN). Next to the NBP, the Digital Campus of the German federal state of
Bavaria has also agreed to use the MOOChub schema to exchange metadata of
online courses.
On the technical side, we still have to implement several necessary changes to the
MOOChub schema. First, the compatibility with the original schema.org standard
needs to be restored. This requires renaming some of the existing fields. While a
preview of the updated schema is already available, we expect that the transition
of the MOOChub and all partners will be finished by the end of 2023.
In addition to these relatively straightforward adjustments, the requirements for
the MOOChub format have expanded. To integrate the courses into learning paths,
further information is required, such as thematic keywords and classification of the
courses into competence levels. AI-based recommendation services also need such
unified course data. Smart algorithms, therefore, must be enabled to create entire
learning paths for individuals based on different courses from various providers.
The MOOChub and its described standardization of the course catalog format
is, therefore, a necessity to enable modern learning as well as to support learners
and teachers in the best possible way in selecting or creating suitable learning
opportunities.
Acknowledgment
The paper at hand is based on a paper in German language that has been published
in the Austrian journal “Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung” in March 2023 [9].
158
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