Agricultural Learning Repositories & Metadata Application Profiles

Agricultural Learning Repositories & Metadata Application Profiles Nikos Manouselis , Kostas Kastrantas Informatics Laboratory Div. of Informatics, Mathematics & Statistics Dept. of Science, Agricultural University of Athens GREECE

Digital Learning Repositories
Digital Repository: system for the storage, location and retrieval of digital resources
Digital Learning Repository (DLR):
nature of resources or their description reflects an interest of use in an educational context
Holden C., “From Local Challenges to a Global Community: Learning Repositories Summit”, Academic ADL Co-Lab, 2003

A set of questions
Are there DLRs with agricultural content?
Which metadata schemas do they use?
Are there agriculture-specific application profiles?
Relation to AOS?

DLRs for agriculture
Those particularly focusing on agricultural content/stakeholders

Generic ones that also contain some agricultural content

Preliminary study
Took place during 2005
Examined 59 well-known generic DLRs
identified 27 DRLs with agricultural content
In a total of ~881,000 educational resources:
… only 3,201 resources (0.36%) related to agricultural topics
Tzikopoulos et al., "Investigating Digital Learning Repositories' Coverage of Agriculture-related Topics", ITAFE 2005.

34.5% of resources not classified (generally: agriculture)

Majority uses a metadata standard (mainly IEEE LOM or LOM based , and Dublin Core )

LR metadata
Learning Technology specifications & standards have been continuously developed since early 1990s
IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard widely adopted & implemented
Competing schemas:
DC-ed (but, effort to come closer to LOM)
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 LRM (under development)

About IEEE LOM
Nine categories of elements
76 elements, all optional
Produced by IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee
adopted as an IEEE standard on 2002
Past 3 years: studied in depth by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 WG4
Interesting critique: Friesen N. (2004) “International Survey of Learning Object Metadata Implementation” (for ISO/IEC)

LR metadata in agriculture
IEEE LOM application profiles
CG LOM Core (CGIAR)
BEN: Biosci Education Network (AAAS)
BioTune (Netherlands)
… and some of our work:
BIO@GRO LOM AP (organic agriculture)
Organic.Edunet LOM AP (agroecology)
ReGov LOM AP (rural SMEs’ development)
Other approaches
FAO’s Agricultural Learning Resource AP (Ag-LR AP)
ICRICAT, IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay et al.?

Synergies with AOS
Use AGROVOC for classification purposes inside LRM schemas
Use AGROVOC as a web service
… CGIAR’s DLR already does this
Use an AGROVOC subset/specialization
E.g. AGROVOC-based Agroecology ontology
Implement separately? Include into AGROVOC?
Do special domains require other terms and/or relations?
Sanchez-Alonso S. & Sicilia M.-A., “Using an AGROVOC-based ontology for the description of learning resources on organic agriculture”, MTSR 2007.

Potentially interesting…
Harmonization of agricultural LRM
Towards a commonly accepted schema?
Commonly accepted mappings between widely used implementations? (FAO’s Ag-LR AP, CG LOM Core, …)
Connection of agricultural DLRs with federations of generic DLRs
Organic.Edunet federation:
Link to ARIADNE Foundation & GLOBE Consortium
Query propagation using the Simple Query Interface (SQI)
IMS Global Learning Consortium specification ( http://www.imsglobal.org/lode.html )

For more information:
Nikos Manouselis
Informatics Laboratory Agricultural University of Athens [email_address]
http://infolab-dev.aua.gr

Agricultural Learning Repositories & Metadata Application Profiles

by AIMS (Agricultural Information Management Standards) FAO of the UN

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