English version. Curriculum Exchange Format

Transcription

1 CEN WORKSHOP CWA January 2010 AGREEMENT ICS English version Curriculum Exchange Format This CEN Workshop Agreement has been drafted and approved by a Workshop of representatives of interested parties, the constitution of which is indicated in the foreword of this Workshop Agreement. The formal process followed by the Workshop in the development of this Workshop Agreement has been endorsed by the National Members of CEN but neither the National Members of CEN nor the CEN Management Centre can be held accountable for the technical content of this CEN Workshop Agreement or possible conflicts with standards or legislation. This CEN Workshop Agreement can in no way be held as being an official standard developed by CEN and its Members. This CEN Workshop Agreement is publicly available as a reference document from the CEN Members National Standard Bodies. CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. EUROPEAN COMMITTEE FOR STANDARDIZATION COMITÉ EUROPÉEN DE NORMALISATION EUROPÄISCHES KOMITEE FÜR NORMUNG Management Centre: Avenue Marnix 17, B-1000 Brussels 2010 CEN All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved worldwide for CEN national Members. Ref. No.:CWA 16078:2010 E

2 Contents Foreword Introduction Background Requirements Polyhierarchy Multilingual Optimal data transfer Partial transfer Curriculum information Compound relationships Extensibility Data Model Achieving the Requirements Polyhierarchy Multilingual Optimal data transfer Partial transfer Curriculum information Compound relationships Extensibility Bindings Implementation Guidance Uses Controlled vocabularies Navigation structures Additional curriculum information Mappings Identity Elements CEF Instance Terms Relation Sub-Record Examples Appendix 1: Example Curriculum English Version Dutch Version Encoding Appendix 2: CEF Type Appendix 3: Contributor Role Appendix 4: Competencies in the CEF Competencies and curricula Expressing competencies in IEEE LOM

3 Foreword This CWA contains guidelines on exchanging curriculum information. There is widespread use of metadata to support repositories of learning objects and related resources such as education department guidance documents and professional development materials. The users of these repositories expect to be able to search or navigate with the terms and structures provided by their local curriculum documents and using their preferred language. This CWA presents an approach to exchanging and mapping curriculum information for use in controlled vocabularies for metadata and to provide navigation structures in user interfaces. The CWA will contribute to improvement in the use of repositories and portals for learning, education and training by supporting semantic interoperability, data interchange, personalisation and federation of resources. A separate standard Curriculum Exchange Format (CEF) Data Model (EN 15943) defines the CEF data model and provides an informative binding. The decision for this work item was taken by the Learning Technologies Workshop at the 30th meeting on May10/ Work on the CWA actually started at the 33rd meeting in April The document has been developed through the collaboration of a number of contributing partners, representing a wide mix of interests, from universities to commercial companies. Experts from the following organizations have approved this document. CESI Group CETIS ELOT; TEI of Athens ENS Lyon European Schoolnet Green Research Hypatia AS ISFOL KION SPA Knowledge Integration K.U. Leuven Manchester Metropolitan University NCSR "Democritos" Oodi Consortium Open University of the Netherlands University of Duisburg Essen Schemeta UBS AG University of Jyväskylä University of Oslo University of Vienna University of Vigo WU Vienna 3

4 The final CEN/WS/LT internal review/endorsement round of this CWA started on and was successfully closed on In parallel, the CWA has been the subject of a public comment period from to The final text of this CWA was submitted to CEN for publication on This CEN Workshop Agreement is publicly available as a reference document from the National Members of CEN: AENOR, AFNOR, BSI, CSNI, CYS, DIN, DS, ELOT, EVS, HZN, IBN, IPQ, IST, LVS, LST, MSA, MSZT, NEN, NSAI, ON, PKN, SEE, SIS, SIST, SFS, SN, SNV, SUTN and UNI. Comments or suggestions from the users of the CEN Workshop Agreement are welcome and should be addressed to the CEN Management Centre. 4

5 1 Introduction 1.1 Background Learning resources can be found on the Internet or in a computer system. They are often stored in an organised way in repositories together with information about them. The information is called metadata and it helps to search, browse, filter and then retrieve additional information. Some of the keywords that are put into metadata can be based on words or phrases taken from real curricula so that learners and teachers can relate to them. Adding the identifiers of these terms or concepts to metadata and associating them with a resource, is called tagging. Curricula often have a tree like structure that presents topics and objectives in a particular way. This structure can be used to navigate or browse to the terms that are used in the metadata and so provide links to useful resources. The main benefit that will result from widespread use of the Curriculum Exchange Format (CEF) will be that learners and teachers will be able to find resources using a curriculum that they are familiar with and using their preferred language. The resources they find may come from lots of different sources and may have been originally organised by a different curriculum. Developers or publishers of web sites, tools, learning platforms and resources can all share information in an agreed way making it easier for systems to interoperate. The impact on learners and teachers will be smoother moving between different software systems and web sites and result in a more personalised experience. 1.2 Requirements Polyhierarchy It shall be possible for items to exist at more than one place in a structure. It shall be possible for items to exist in more than one CEF instance Multilingual The CEF shall support multilinguality. This shall include the ability to provide textual items in several languages simultaneously and to indicate that items are translations of other items Optimal data transfer It shall be possible to transfer data in an effective way according to a range of requirements. This will include the ability to reduce the amount of redundant information transmitted. 5

6 1.2.4 Partial transfer It shall be possible to transfer in parts of a CEF instance, including a single term. This is essential if a single CEF instance is very large Curriculum information The CEF shall include the ability to describe typical curriculum documents and properties such as learning objectives and competencies Compound relationships It shall be possible to express compound relationships between terms. For example, a competency item may have parts that include an action and a topic Extensibility The CEF shall have a mechanism for adding local extensions to the format of terms and relationships without breaking basic interoperability. 2 Data Model A separate standard Curriculum Exchange Format (CEF) Data Model (EN 15943) defines the CEF data model and provides an informative binding. There are three main sets of information in the CEF: Information about the whole CEF instance. This is provided using a profile of Dublin Core plus some extensions. Information includes date, title, description and identifier. Mandatory item: title. CEF terms. Information will include the name, identifier and type. Mandatory items: termid and termname Relationships between terms as a sub-record of a term. Mandatory items (conditional on a relation sub-record being present): relationtype and termid 3 Achieving the Requirements Polyhierarchy A term can exist at more than one place in a structure by allowing it to have more than one broader term or related term. In order for a term to exist in more than one CEF instance it needs to be uniquely identifiable outside of its source. This can be accomplished by having a globally unique identifier such as a URI or by giving a service or a source vocabulary in which the term is unique. 6