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Lorna M Campbell

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Category Archives: lrmi

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LRMI Implementation Report: Overview, Issues and Experiences

Posted on December 22, 2014 by admin

Tlrmi_synthesisowards the end of last week Phil Barker and I completed and published our technical synthesis of the ten  Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) implementation projects funded through Creative Commons by the Bill and Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations during phase two of the LRMI project.  As part of our work on LRMI for Creative Commons we have produced cases studies on each project and undertaken a synthesis of their experiences and outputs.

This synthesis outlines the methodology undertaken, before presenting a brief introduction to each OER platform along with an overview of platform functionality, scope, and technologies deployed. All ten platforms adopted different approaches to implementing LRMI, which are examined in the context of metadata creation and curation workflows. A summary of the implementation projects’ interaction with the Learning registry is also included together with the outlook for sustainable LRMI implementation.

The synthesis report is available from the Cetis Publications site here: LRMI Implementation: Overview, Issues and Experiences.

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer, standards | Tagged creative commons, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer, open, standards | Leave a comment

Learning Resource Metadata Initiative Webinar

Posted on November 17, 2014 by admin

Later this week my colleague Phil Barker and I will be giving a webinar on the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) as part of the ASIS&T DCMI webinar series.  The webinar takes place on Wednesday 19th at 15.00 UTC and you can register here.  Registration costs $25 and a recording of the webinar will be made freely available after the event.

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is a collaborative initiative that aims to make it easier for teachers and learners to find educational materials through major search engines and specialized resource discovery services. The approach taken by LRMI is to extend the schema.org ontology so that educationally significant characteristics and relationships can be expressed. In this webinar, Phil Barker and Lorna M. Campbell of Cetis will introduce schema.org and present the background to LRMI, its aims and objectives, and who is involved in achieving them. The webinar will outline the technical aspects of the LRMI specification, describe some example implementations and demonstrate how the discoverability of learning resources may be enhanced. Phil and Lorna will present the latest developments in LRMI implementation, drawing on an analysis of its use by a range of open educational resource repositories and aggregators, and will report on the potential of LRMI to enhance education search and discovery services. Whereas the development of LRMI has been inspired by schema.org, the webinar will also include discussion of whether LRMI has applications beyond those of schema.org.

lrmi_404px

Posted in cetis, lrmi | Tagged cetis, dcmi, lrmi, metadata | Leave a comment

A new home for LRMI

Posted on October 29, 2014 by admin

I’m rather late with this post, but I was very pleased to see the announcement last week that

leadership and governance of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), an education metadata project developed to improve discoverability and delivery of learning resources, have transferred from the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)

Having been involved with the LRMI project for the last year, I’m well aware of the significant time and effort that has gone into establishing a robust and sustainable governance model to ensure that the LRMI specification is curated and maintained beyond the initiative’s funded phase.  The project team strongly believed that LRMI required a governance model that preserves the open, collaborative, user-driven nature that has characterised the development of the specification, while also providing a path to formal standardization and the credibility and fidelity that accompany it.  With its strong track record of supporting communities of practice around metadata design, innovation and best practice, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is well placed to meet all these requirements.

You can read more about the agreement to transfer LRMI to DCMI here LRMI Transfers Stewardship, and my colleague Phil Barker has written an excellent blog post about what this means for the future of LRMI here  LRMI Moving to Dublin Core.

lrmi_404px      dcmi_logo

Posted in lrmi, standards | Tagged dcmi, lrmi, metadata, standards | Leave a comment

LRMI Implementation Case Study: ISKME OER Commons

Posted on October 3, 2014 by admin

Co-authors & Project Team:   Michelle Brennan, OER Information Services Manager; Lisa Petrides, CEO ISKME.

oer_commons_square_smallerISKME’s OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure and suite of services for educators globally, including groups of curriculum specialists, administrators, content providers, teachers, librarians, and technology and resource decision-makers who seek to implement high quality and adaptable curriculum through the use, evaluation, and improvement of open educational resources (OER).

Launched in 2007, OER Commons serves as a digital library and collaboration platform for content providers and emerging open education practitioners at all levels. Engaging with over 500 OER content providers from around the world, ISKME provides the open scaffolding necessary for knowledge sharing and access to teaching and learning materials, strategies, and curricula online. The site has over 35,000 registered users, 55,000 resources, and millions of visitors from 193 countries.

– www.oercommons.org

ISKME first created OER Commons in 2007 as a digital library and content hub to support OER discoverability, use, and reuse. Together with OER content providers and educators, OER Commons aggregates content collections, enriches resource metadata, and curates and organizes rich metadata to support the use and reuse of collections. Resources cover all subject areas and levels of education. OER Commons resources span a wide range of formats including html, ebooks, pdf, video, audio, games, courses, lesson plans, lectures notes, and search tools to enable users to find resources for different contexts of use.

The OER Commons platform today features Open Author, an inclusively designed authoring and remixing environment to support the creation and adaptation of media-rich OER, hosted locally on the platform. The authoring environment produces OER that are accessible using a broad range of assistive technology devices such as screen readers. Open Author resources can be downloaded as PDF or SCORM, or as a “teaching bundle”, a zip file containing PDF and media components. The OER Commons infrastructure also supports the evaluation and improvement of quality OER with embedded Common Core State Standards (CCSS) alignment tool and Achieve OER Rubric tool and EQuIP Rubric evaluation tool, developed by several states partnered with Achieve to support collaborative review of CCSS-aligned content, as well as the ability to align content to the Next Generation Science Standards.

oer_commons_search results_2

OER Commons resource page

The system uses the Django Python framework, which powers OER Commons Platform and Learning Registry application. OER Commons authored content uses Creative Commons licenses, while aggregated resource collections from around the web contain a wider array of applied licenses. OER Commons displays all licensing data in a clear and concise way, making licensing information accessible to all users, regardless of previous experience with OER content.

OER Commons uses an internal metadata profile based on modified LOM, which includes additional fields added to support different projects and initiatives e.g. CELT, A11y and LRMI. As an early adopter of the LRMI specifications, ISKME has mapped all 55,000 OER Commons resources to LRMI-compliant metadata. LRMI and A11y markup is included in the HTML of resources so it can be found by search engines and other applications operating on top of the OER Commons platform. Metadata can be exported as HTML or XML. OER Commons metadata does not use the exact terminology of LRMI, but a mapping has been created from the internal metadata schema to LRMI.  The alignmentObject is used to align to NGSS and Common Core state standards. Some Schema.org properties are also used.

The full OER Commons metadata profile is available for collection providers to download. In addition, ISKME provides a metadata sample template for providers to build and export their metadata for inclusion in OER Commons.

 

oer_commons_lrmi_sample

Sample of LRMI and Schema.org markup from OER Commons

OER Commons features a number of different metadata workflows:

  1. Content can be submitted to OER Commons by collection providers and cataloguers who work directly with the OER Commons digital librarian. Collection providers send a CSV file to a metadata technician who reviews the data, normalises it, and uploads it in bulk.
  2. Individual users can upload content and metadata via a web form. All resources and metadata are reviewed before submission.
  3. The content authoring tool also allows users to create metadata. Some metadata is computed e.g. licensing, as many people are not familiar with different variations of open licenses. The system walks them through the licensing process step by step and computes the appropriate license based on their response.
  4. Users can interact with resources once they have been catalogued and have had basic metadata added. Free text can be added by users which then becomes keywords and resources can be aligned with a range of standards including Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and other specialized standards.

Metadata is kept consistent internally by digital librarians to ensure all works well within the application to support search and discovery. OER Commons is committed to maintaining a rich metadata ecosystem with robust checks and balances to ensure high quality metadata.

Metadata that is shared with the Learning Registry is largely in the form of Dublin Core, though some LRMI and Schema.org properties are also used. All resources that have been evaluated using the Achieve OER Rubrics are shared with the Learning Registry.  These rubrics help users determine the quality of OERs and the degree to which they align with Common Core State Standards. When uploading to the Learning Registry, LRMI and Schema.org markup is taken from the internal metadata schema and mapped across to Dublin Core. Getting resources back from the Learning Registry has proven to be problematic due to the difficulty of filtering resources.

ISKME brings its OER Commons infrastructure and tools to address organizations’ curriculum needs and facilitate team workflows in customized areas of the site. Network Hubs are a key component of ISKME’s comprehensive solutions for hosting and indexing content and facilitating collaboration and collection development for a specific audience. In terms of future developments, OER Commons continues to build tools to additional alignment standards, e.g. National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, as well as modified state-specific Common Core standards.

Microsites are comprehensive solutions for hosting and indexing content for a specific audience, and can be located at subdomains of oercommons.org, or be distinguished by a customizable URL at the domain level. Microsites contain all features available on the main site, but house their own collections as well as special curated collections of the full OER Commons database of resources. Microsites on OER Commons can be structured as one or more “network hubs”, in which a single microsite is the organizing umbrella for a number of sub-collections or networks. Within a microsite, resources are presented in the context of customized taxonomies and our digital librarians work hand in hand with partners and content providers to identify, categorize, and describe relevant content.

Additionally, ISKME serves as a thought leader around content and metadata interoperability, is a launch partner for the Learning Registry, serves on the LMRI Advisory Board, and leads a project for the US Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) on the creation of cloud-based learner profiles for accessibility. ISKME is part of the GLOBE consortia of repositories from around the world that seeks to build common ways to share and federate educational resources and metadata.

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer | 2 Comments

LRMI Implementation Case Study: OpenStax CNX

Posted on September 23, 2014 by admin

Project lead: Daniel Williamson, CNX

cnx_logo_small“OpenStax believes that everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach. OpenStax CNX is a dynamic non-profit digital ecosystem serving millions of users per month in the delivery of educational content to improve learning outcomes. There are tens of thousands of learning objects, called pages, that are organized into thousands of textbook-style books in a host of disciplines, all easily accessible online and downloadable to almost any device, anywhere, anytime.”

http://cnx.org/

OpenStax CNX is a repository of open education content which enables users to create, modify, share and reuse resources. The majority of OpenStax CNX resources are college level text books, however the platform has hosted a wide range of resources including  K-12 curricula from South Africa and picture books from India.

Content is stored as both modules, small “knowledge chunks”, and collections, books or courses composed of multiple modules. Content can be downloaded in PDF, EPUB and HTML formats.  Most content is created and stored as HTML5, though users can also share PDF and Word documents  too.  The latest release of CNX does not feature video streaming, however video content can be embedded from YouTube instead. All content is licensed CC BY.

cnx_search_results

OpenStax CNX search results

OpenStax CNX has recently undertaken a major rewrite to convert the system to HTML5.  Most CNX code is built in house and all is open source and available on Github: Connexions.

Previously CNX used a metadata schema, Connexions Markup Language (MDML), and stored metadata as XML.  CNX no longer uses this schema since moving to HTML5.  LRMI has not yet been implemented in the new HTML5 platform, however a mapping exists between MDML elements and LRMI properties, which represents CNX core metadata fields. In the future, CNX plan to use selected LRMI properties.

The following metadata is recorded for each resource: name, ID, language, summary, subjects,  keywords, license, authors, copyright holders, maintainers, latest version, publication date, latest revision.

cnx_metadata

Sample OpenStax CNX metadata record

Metadata is generated by resource creators and users.  There is no metadata cleaning process, metadata is accepted as it is entered.  Metadata can only be edited as part of the content, which must be republished if the metadata is to be updated. CNX archives a record of every version of metadata published.  The new CNX system encourages resource creators to use existing keywords to ensure consistency.

Links

OpenStax CNX
Connexions on Github
LRMI CNX Mapping (.xls)

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer | Leave a comment

LRMI Implementation Cases Study: Untrikiwiki

Posted on September 4, 2014 by admin

 Project team: Maximilian Klein, Untrikiwiki and Yoran Koren, WikiWorks

untrikiwiki_logo_small“The purpose of this project was to allow MediaWiki-based Open Educational Resource (OER) communities to adopt LRMI. This was done in two ways. Firstly, we built the technical infrastructure necessary for MediaWiki-based OER communities to implement LRMI. Secondly, we approached MediaWiki-based OER communities in attempt to convince them to use LRMI.”

LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report, p.1

The primary aim of the Untrikiwiki LRMI project was to build a Mediawiki extension to enable WikiMedia based open education communities to adopt LRMI and schema.org.  At the time the project was funded, September 2012, Mediawiki did not alow the arbitrary HTML markup required to embed LRMI and schema.org properties. This extension, HTML Tags, was developed by Yoran Koren, technical developer of WikiWorks. The open source HTML Tags extension is fully documented and available here Extension:HTML Tags  Further documentation on implementing LRMI using HTML Tags is available here Extension:HTML Tags/Implementing LRMI

In order to make is as simple as possible to embed LRMI properties in wiki pages, the project developed a series of MediaWiki templates to enable uses to write LRMI using wikitext markup.  These templates were also integrated into MediaWiki’s GUI, WikiEditor, so that users do not have to remember the full syntax of the template (LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report, p.4).  The MediaWiki extension does not include the ability to link out to external vocabularies.

lrmi_html_tags

HTML Tags LRMI Template
(LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report, p.4)

Although developing HTML Tags was not difficult, gaining the necessary approval to launch a new MediaWiki extension proved to be very difficult. Schema.org and LRMI were not widely used at the time so people were unwilling to gamble on a new web technology and had a tendency to see the extension as an unnecessary complication for little benefit.

The project approached a number of Wikimedia Foundation initiatives including English Wikibooks and the English Wikiversity, before the extension was adopted by the German Wikiversity.  Other initiatives that the project liaised with in order to raise awareness of LRMI include English Wikisource and Wikieducator.  The LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report presents a full appraisal of the project’s engagement with these communities and evaluates their successes, challenges and lessons learned.

The project outputs were also picked up by Brian W. Carver, University of California, who installed HTMl Tags and implemented LRMI on his Cyberlaw wiki.

brain_carver_lrmi

Sample of LRMI markup from Brian’s Cyberlaw Wiki

 Shortly after the end of the UntrikiWiki project in May 2013, MediaWiki started to support Schema.org markup, however arbitrary HTML markup is still not supported so HTML Tags still provides valuable funcationality.  By the end of the project, 27 different non-Wikimedia Foundation Wikis were using the MediaWiki extension and it is still being widely used, though often for HTML rather than LRMI markup. The project team concluded that

 “With our successful communities we were able to tap into pre-existing enthusiasm about metadata and Creative Commons in ways that meant communities were more likely to adopt LRMI than they would otherwise had been. LRMI’s goals match up well with the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation; both LRMI and the WMF aim to increase worldwide accessibility of knowledge.”

LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report, p. 13.

Links

Untrikiwiki
LRMI Untrikiwiki Exit Report
Conclusions from the LRMI Project
Lessons Learned From the Implementation of LRMI on Wikimedia Wikis
Extension:HTML Tags
Extension:HTML Tags/Implementing LRMI

Posted in cetis, lrmi | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, wikimedia | Leave a comment

LRMI Implementation Case Study: Curriki

Posted on September 2, 2014 by admin

Project team – Joshua Marks, Chief Technology Advisor, Robert Greenawalt, Chief Technology Officer, Paul Libbrecht, Developer.

curriki_logo“Curriki provides peer reviewed open educational resources, curricula and instructional materials to support teachers, professional educators, students, lifelong learners, and parents, primarily in the domain of K-12 education. Curriki is a nonprofit organization and the majority of the resources it provides carry Creative Commons licenses.”

http://www.curriki.org

Curriki is an OER repository containing over 32,0000+ openly licensed K-12 resources including files, URLs, wiki-pages, videos, scenarios and collections.  The system aims to be format agnostic and to support a wide range of content types; tools have been created to support different types of content.

Curriki provides content creation tools and a custom search facility based on seven metadata properties (subject, media type, educational level, language, reviews & ratings, instructional type and special filters).  Users are able to browse for resources that have been aligned with  Common Core State Standards, and Curriki has also created a Google custom search engine for Computer Science curriculum resources: Curriculum Search.

Curriki search

Curriki search

Curriki has been developed according to Java open source software community principles and has adopted java.net project workflow processes.  Curriki is designed to enable open community practices and can be thought of as “Github for educators building curricula.”  Applications are based on XCLAMS, the XWiki Collaborative Learning Asset Management System and the Curriki source code is available at GitHub: xwiki-contrib/currikiorg

Curriki has its own internal metadata schema. Metadata is generated by users and reviewed by volunteer subject matter experts who review resources using a four point rubric.  Part of this review process focuses on the quality and alignment of the metadata.  Registered users may also comment on resources. Curriki metadata is not static, it develops as resources are used.

XWiki object properties are stored in an SQL database and indexed into a SOLR index.  LRMI properties are exported from Curriki properties and a fork of Curriki also exports to LOM using OAI-PMH.  A mapping of Curriki metadata to LRMI properties is available.

Curriki resource information

Curriki resource information

Curriki metadata maps to the following LRMI properties:

  • educationalUse
  • typicalAgeRange
  • interactivityType
  • learningResourceType
  • useRightsUrl
curriki_code

Sample of Curriki LRMI markup

The project team intend to implement the “educationalAlignment” LRMI property in the future as Curriki has an internal application that could be employed for this using American (and Finnish) standards. Some additional schema.org properties are also used, see mapping for further details.

Curriki accepts all forms of Creative Commons licences and other variants of open licences. The default Curriki licence is CC BY NC. Business rules are implemented to disallow incompatible licences in Curriki collections. Contributors are encouraged to make their content freely available worldwide for non-commercial use, and to grant Curriki the right to use the content commercially.  This helps to generate revenue to keep the project running.

Links

Curriki
Curriki Case Study Questionnaire
Curriki LRMI Mapping

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer, open | Leave a comment

LRMI Implementation Case Study: P2PU

Posted on August 29, 2014 by admin

Team leader: Dirk Uys

p2pu_logo“P2PU is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. Learning for the people, by the people. About almost anything.”

http://info.p2pu.org/


P2PU’s main focus is on community; by providing content creation tools, users are enabled to create open online courses. Tools include the Mechanical MOOC, which enables users to create large open online courses on a “shoestring budget”; course creation tools, which bring together groups of peer learners; and badging tools which enable learners to create and award badges. P2PU courses are primarily aimed at continuing education and all are openly licensed under the CC BY SA licence.

p2pu_courses

P2PU Courses

All the tools developed by P2PU are open source and hosted on GitHub.  The tool under discussion is  Lernanta, which started as a fork of Mozilla drumbeat’s Batucada project.

Metadata is added to courses as they are created by users.  All courses have basic LRMI metadata; title, author, description and language. Course creators also have the option to add additional metadata. The amount of metadata recorded for any given course is dependant on the course creator.  Some fields are populated automatically from internal data, e.g. it is implicit that the ‘author’ is the creator of the course.  All metadata is held in a MySQL database.  P2PU does not use any metadata other than LRMI and Schema.org.  The code for P2PU’s LRMI app which enables users to enter additional metadata is available on GitHub: lernanta / lernanta / apps / lrmi /

P2PU has implemented all LRMI properties, but most are optional.

Mandatory:

  • learningResourceType – course
  • useRightsUrl – CC BY SA

Optional:

  • educationalAlignment
  • educationalUse
  • timeRequired
  • typicalAgeRange
  • interactivityType
  • isBasedonUrl
  • educationalRole

educationalAlignment is an optional property, but it is infrequently used as there are few appropriate vocabularies to align to.  The only properties P2PU provides vocabularies for are educationalRole and interactivityType.

p2pu_lrmiExample of P2PU LRMI markup

The following schema.org properties have also been implemented:

  • name
  • url
  • image
  • description
  • about
  • dateCreated
  • author
  • inLanguage

Going forward, P2PU plan to encourage people to self publish their own courses in their own places, and are working on a Jekyll course template for running open online courses: jekyll-course-template.  The intention is that these self published courses should still carry LRMI metadata.  LRMI could also potentially be used to index these courses.  P2PU are also interested in implementing LRMI for badges, but have not taken this forward yet.

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer, open, p2pu | 1 Comment

LRMI Implementation Case Study: PhET Interactive Simulations

Posted on August 22, 2014 by admin

Project Team – Kathy Perkins, Director and Jonathan B Olson, Software Engineer

“PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. We believe that our research-based approach- incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing- enables students to make connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, deepening their understanding and appreciation of the physical world.”

http://phet.colorado.edu/

phet

PhET resource page

The PhET LRMI implementation project ran from July 2012 – July 2013.  PhET currently has 128 simulations which are used over 45 million times per year.  Since the site has 36 current website translations, unique metadata is provided on 4608 pages (each translated page has LRMI metadata in that language). The simulations are aimed primarily at K-12 and college use, but are designed to be compatible with any type of education. All simulations are licensed under the GPL, and most are also licensed CC BY.

LRMI is integrated into PhET metadata, so it is detectable by third parties that crawl or search the website. The site also provides Dublin Core, NSDL Dublin Core, IEEE LOM, IMS LODE ILOX, and a custom super-set of this metadata available via OAI-PMH and a REST API. Additionally, various custom exports have been created, usually CSV-based and customized to a particular portal.  Metadata is stored in the PhET website’s main database and metadata for third-parties is automatically generated from the database, on demand, in a variety of formats.  Since metadata is provided only for simulations, PhET does not store many of the LRMI properties internally in the DB since they are the same for every simulation. However the mapping includes translations (viewing a page on the Korean translation of the website will include Korean terms in the metadata).

PhET has implented the following LRMI properties and types:

  • educationalAlignment: yes, includes multiple standards alignments
  • educationalUse: yes, “classroom”, “homework” and “solution” for simulations
  • interactivityType: yes, “active”
  • learningResourceType: yes, “simulation”
  • useRightsUrl: yes, can include multiple URLs (many simulations are dual-licensed)

PhET has not implemented:

  • timeRequired: no (for inquiry-based simulations, there is no “standard” time required)
  • typicalAgeRange: not yet, had previous uncertainty about format
  • isBasedonUrl: no, simulations are original works

Currently “educationalAlignment” aligns to the Math Common Core, but the project team is currently working with teachers to create an NGSS alignment, which can be added.

PhET also implements the Schema.org “SoftwareApplication” type which enables them to provide available language information, denote PhET as the publishing and authoring organization, provide thumbnail and screenshot image URLs, denote it as applicationCategory:Educational, provide the “run now” and “download” URLs (url and downloadUrl), the download filesize, version/softwareVersion, description (in the language provided), a list of keywords, and dates created / modified.

phet_code

PhET markup sample

During the funded phase of their LRMI implementation project, PhET initially shared their metadata with the Learning Registry, but as the Learning Registry has changed their protocols so frequently the project team has not been able to keep up with their change requests. PhET is currently not listed as Learning Registry contributors, but the team hopes that they will be able start sharing their metadata again once the protocols have settled down.

PhET has no current plans to develop their LRMI implementation further, unless there is additional demand from other organizations.  The project team is unsure of how to measure the direct benefits of LRMI implementation but they are pleased that their simulations include LRMI metadata. Other third-party projects have also been pleased that PhET make LRMI metadata available and have pulled that data into their own applications.

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer | Leave a comment

LRMI Implementation Case Study: MERLOT

Posted on August 15, 2014 by admin

Team leader: Barbra Bied Sperling, Manager of Technical Development.

“MERLOT is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community. The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder web pages, together with associated comments, and personal collections, all intended to enhance the teaching and learning experience.”

http://www.merlot.org/

MERLOT is a metadata repository containing records for 46,000 open educational resources covering a wide range of subjects and all levels of education. Users are able to comment on and aggregate resources to create personal collections. MERLOT resources are peer reviewed by members and each resource record includes a “Quality Tile”, which presents information on peer reviews, user ratings, comments and collections the resource has been added to.

merlot_page

Example of a MERLOT resource page

MERLOT also provides access to a wide range of additional facilities including APIs to integrate with learning management systems and other applications, mobile search apps for iOS, Android and Blackberry, a content builder for creating hosted online learning materials and various community building tools such as discipline communities, community discussions, and social networking facilities.

MERLOT uses Spring Framework as well as a number of Apache Commons java libraries and is served from CentOS (Linux) using Apache and Tomcat. Eclipse IDE, Vim and Notepad++ are used for editing, and Mozilla Firefox for testing. MERLOT applications are not open source.

MERLOT has developed a proprietary metadata schema, which covers a range of common fields including title, URL, description, material type, primary audience, language, keywords, subject category / disciplines, author information, technical format, technical requirements, mobile platforms, license, cost and accessibility.  Fields are stored in Oracle database tables. Metadata is created by users when a resource is added to MERLOT, and it is rarely modified beyond this point, other than to verify that all links still work.  MERLOT does not share metadata with the Learning Registry, and  MERLOT metadata records are not Creative Commons licensed.

A mapping (.xls) has been created between the proprietary MERLOT metadata schema and LRMI to enable the appropriate microtags to be added to resource description pages within MERLOT.

Merlot uses the following LRMI properties:

  • educationAlignment
  • useRightsUrl

Plus additional Schema.org properties:

  • creativeWork,
  • headline,
  • rating,
  • aggregateRating,
  • offer

The alignmentType of educationAlignment is educationalSubject, which maps to a proprietary vocabulary.

merlot_code

Sample of MERLOT LRMI markup

Since implementing LRMI MERLOT has not observed any measurable impact, although it is possible that the presence of LRMI and schema.org metadata on MERLOT’s resource description pages increases the discoverability of resources.

Links

MERLOT
MERLOT / LRMI mapping (.xls)

Posted in cetis, lrmi, oer | Tagged cetis, lrmi, lrmi implementation, metadata, oer | 1 Comment

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