> DC-2010 DC-Ed Meeting Notes

DC-Education Community Meeting: DC-2010

Meeting Chair: Diane Hillmann, Metadata Management Associates

Recorder: Stuart Sutton, University of Washington

Meeting Presentation: DCEd-DC2010_Meeting.pdf

The DC-Education Community had a face-to-face meeting at DC-2010 in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, 20 October. The turn out for the conference was modest and the turnout to the DC-Ed meeting even more so (5 in total). As a result, the meeting was informal with everyone present being able to participate. The agenda items discussed are set out below with major headings. The presentation used to guide the discussion is available above.

DC-Education Application Profile

The 2010 work on the DC-Ed application profile was discussed with a focus on the domain model development work done between December and the Pittsburgh meeting. There was a brief review of the current draft model identified as Ver.3c at Model. As background, the Ver.3b draft model was also discussed in order to frame the rationale for the transition between the two drafts through the collapsing of the Ver.3b model's Conceptual Educational Activity and Educational Activity Instance into a single entity in Ver.3c named Educational Activity.

The fact that work has yet to begin on domains and ranges for the extant properties (DCMI and LOM) in terms of the Ver.3c draft was discussed. Some time was spent discussing potential difficulties with determining the domain of existing property given their semantics and conflation of the two disparate Ver.3b entities into a single entity in Ver.3c. we may possible need to declare additional properties for the Ver.3c Educational Activity entity.

Joint DCMI/IEEE LTSC Taskforce

The work of the Joint Task force was discussed--more specifically progress of the last 18 months (or the seeming lack thereof) was discussed. The 10 year history beginning with the DC-Education face-to-face meeting at Kattemingga Lodge outside Melbourne, Australia in 2000 to the present efforts with the Joint Taskforce were reviewed.

A great deal of effort has gone into the work defined in IEEE PARS P1484.12.4 and P1484.12.5. The result can be found in [WWW]IEEE P1484.12.4™--D1Draft Recommended Practice for Expressing IEEE Learning Object Metadata Instances Using the Dublin Core Abstract Model (2008).

The following tasks remain:

  1. Namespace from IEEE Ensuring that the namespace is right from the beginning

  2. Agreement on what to do with the Educational category

  3. DCAM 2.0 If we make DCAM 2.0 based directly on RDF, it might have an influence on how we need to formulate the content of the Recommended Practice, even though the formal content probably stays more or less the same

The next major task in this joint work is to: (a) get the activity "unstuck" and moving toward completion, or (b) decide to abandon the work. Currently, given the activity level of the Taskforce, the DCMI Directorate has set the status of the activity at "pending deactivation."

There are many reasons for wanting to bring the work of the Taskforce to fruition. The DC-Education community deferred the declaration of a few properties identified in 1999 to elements under development in the LOM in the name of "interoperability". The technical environment in which DCMI finds itself has changed considerably since 1999--in particularly RDF, linked data and the Semantic Web. The possibility of the DC-Education Community ending its wait and declaring the needed properties was discussed. In such a case, DC-Education would move forward with defining its own properties with relationships to terms in the LOM being declared when, and if, LOM terms are defined as properties and assigned URI. This possibility will be on the "front burner" starting in January as we examine how to advance or conclude the Joint Taskforce activity and begin discussions of property domains and ranges.

ISO Metadata for Learning Resources

Another long standing standardization effort (8 years) in the area of education was discussed--ISO MLR. Liddy Nevile, DCMI Liaison to the ISO activity reported on progress. In the discussions, Liddy expressed the desire to have greater input into the liaison process through DC-Education members willing to step forward and work with her as the process grinds slowly forward. Stuart Sutton said that he would be willing to commit to such an effort. In January, we'll go to the DC-Education list to inquire as to others who might be interested in working with Liddy.

2011 Community Work Agenda

The work agenda (with dates) for 2011 was briefly discussed as set out below:

  1. Determine path forward with the joint LOM work (January-February):

  2. Complete domain/range discussion regarding the existing DCMI properties and (proposed) IEEE LOM properties (contingent on the above caveats); and any new properties resulting from the domain model.

  3. Resolve namespace issues for any new properties

  4. Finalize domain model

  5. Complete documentation