Use Cases for Learning Metadata

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. The current standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. This week's call (I am using a smartphone for the audio and WebEx for the visuals), was on use cases.

The group has a formal meeting every other week, with an agenda, minutes and voting. This week  it is less formal with presentations. This is part of the process of the participants getting used to each other as well as their approach to the topic. This is important in standards work where a global disparate group has to agree on something. 

Some example of a use case I suggested were:

The importance of defining levels in education. One is the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) with ten levels,  with 10 the highest (a doctorate). 

Another use case which might be useful is micro-credentials, mentioned in the Blockchain Challenges for Australia report from the Australian Computer Society (ACS, p.22, 2019). There may be many more micro-credentials defined made up of components, with different institutions involved, than conventional qualifications. This could require the automated handling of these, for example to check if a student has the prerequisites for further study, or they are qualified to do a job. 

One I am working on now is the tools needed for assessment. I want to have students maintain an electronic logbook which records when they make an entry with a tamper-proof timestamp.

Professor Rory McGreal, who taught me open educational resources (OER) at Athabasca University, has proposed the use of blockchain for their dissemination. It would be useful to be able to automatically assemble a set of resources using search parameters.

The Australian government maintains a database of 1,300 recognized vocational qualifications, the 16,000 units of competency they are assembled from and who provides them. 

An item of metadata which might be more controversial is the quality of a unit of education. Universities obsessively monitor their rankings, on the assumption this influences enrollment.  

What is learning?

Mike Sosteric

Greetings from a meeting of the meeting for the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. At this meeting we went back to fundamentals, starting with what is a "Learning Object". This then raises the question "What is learning?" and should we be discussing education, rather than learning.: if the student doesn't learn anything, is it still learning? At this level of abstraction it is difficult to avoid vague and somewhat circular definitions.

The Wikipedia entry for learning objects starts with the current definition from the standard: "any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training".[6] That is a vote of confidence in the standard, which is heartening, but doesn't help improve it. Other definitions given tend to be longer and more technology specific. 

Also I did a quick literature search. A paper which featured prominently was Sosteric and Hesemeier (2002) in IRRODL (my favorite educational journal, as it provides HTML as well as PDF versions. They also start with the IEEE, asserting '... a definition that includes “everything” is not a definition at all ...'. They also question if "digital" is useful. In my view qualifying leanring with "digital" is little more than window dressing.

Sosteric and Hesemeier (2002) describe as "counterproductive" the use of terminology from computing science. This is my own field, and it can be annoying when a computing term is taken and used, not quite correctly, in other disciplines. However, the authors have a more fundamental objection to learning objects, as it implies that learning can be chopped up into reusable, interchangeable "chunks". However, I suggest, to some extent, this is what learning designers and educational systems, do. An extreme example is the Australian vocational education system, where 1,300  qualifications are made up from 16,000 of "Units of competency", all listed in a database.

References

Sosteric, M., & Hesemeier, S. (2002). When is a Learning Object not an Object: A first step towards a theory of learning objects. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v3i2.106

Courses Made of Courses?

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata (P2881) being held online (at 6:30am Sydney time). The discussion today was on defining possibly defining learning materials using RDF entities in W3C's SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). One point I brought up was that learning and qualifications are being defined in more detail. Australian universities are now offering micro-credentials of only a few weeks duration, the components of which are also used in certificates and degrees. The vocational sector uses an even more fine graded form of learning tracking. At this point I got to quote Terry Pratchett's"Its Turtles all the way down". ;-)

Someone gave the example of a pencil: is it learning resource? Then what is learning? This may sound very esoteric, but the standard will be used to define how learning materials are defined and so how students, staff and administrators find the materials.

ps: My favorite line today was "For the next ten minutes lets assume lawyers don't exist". ;-)

Metadata for Learning

Greetings from a meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata  (P2881) being held online (at 6:30am Canberra time). The discussion today was on the Semantic Web and Resource Description Framework (RDF). This is a very technical area, but is important to the practical concerns of keeping track of e-learning content. The problem is that there are many forms of learning and learners which we want to accommodate. There are existing standards, such as Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) which do some of this.

What is Learning?

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Meeting (P2881) being held online. This is my third meeting. The group is still working its way through what the new version of the standard needs to do, which other standards about learning don't already do. This can be very frustrating, defining the definition of definitions, and asking questions such as "What is learning?", "Is a competency a learning Object?". But also some more practical questions: "How much are existing metadata standards actually used?". These are important questions, as he world's students have been forced to use e-learning this year due to COVID-19 and there is a need to bring some order to the resulting chaos.

However, the mechanics of the meeting process still cause me some difficulties. With summer time, the meeting has moved from 4:30am to 6:30am in Canberra, which is an improvement. But I am still not at my best with metaphysical questions at this time in the morning. ;-)

The meeting is using WebEx, which I have not used for years and again had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface. This is far slower and less responsive than Zoom. It is like using video conferencing from ten years ago.

Learning Objects and Metadata

Greetings from the second meeting of the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. We are starting with the basics with what a Learning Object is: something more formally defined than materials normally used for teaching and intended to be reused by many. The metadata describes the objects and allows them to be easily found and managed. While this can be applied to any type of learning, it is particularly relevant at present with large scale use of e-learning due to COVID-19. This provides a way for educators, institutions and systems to share the millions of new learning materials being developed, to provide better, more cost effective education. 

The current standard uses a rigid  data model. The problem is how to make something more flexible, but still allows widespread easy use. This is a difficult balance with global standards.

Other work in this area includes the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), based on Dublin Core, which come from the library community.

ps: The meeting this time is at a slightly better time, 5:30 am, rather than 4:30 am in Canberra, but it is still early. There are 34 participants (up from 24 participants at the inaugural meeting). Most are from the USA, but a few of us are from around the world. The meeting is using WebEX again. I have been able to get the audio to work reliably and had to dial in for sound, with computer for video. As with other video conferencing systems, the computer client provides a code to use when dial in for audio, to link the voice call with your online identity. 

IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Update

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Kickoff Meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. The standard, was released in 2002 and is due for a refresh. One possibility is to generalize to learning "resources" rather than objects, with more details of what the learning is for, rather than technical files which make it up. It is a good time to consider this with e-learning suddenly being used on a large scale due to  COVID-19. As with any standard, one of the tasks is to work out why we are doing this: what is the problem we are trying to solve? An example would be micro-credentials, where there would be many more small components to learning to keep track of.

The meeting time is not exactly convenient for me (4:30am in Canberra), but there are there are 24 participants around the world, so it can't be good for everyone. This is a formal groups with membership, an agenda and voting (I am an individual IEEE). I haven't taken part in a formal meeting for years and the chair is showing considerable patience going through the process online. This may seem cumbersome but is necessary for standards meetings as passions can run and there was conflict with the previous group (I was on the balloting group in 2002, but did not attend previously).

The meeting is using WebEX, which I have not used for years and had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface in Firefox, but might use the Android client next time.