The document discusses efforts to harmonize metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories. It describes the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force initiative which aims to connect stakeholders and promote sharing of learning resources. The Task Force has undertaken various activities including building a community, creating an inventory of repositories, publishing best practice recommendations, and demonstrating federated searching across repositories. An evaluation of existing application profiles resulted in guidelines to help standardize metadata and ensure interoperability.

1. Towards a harmonization of metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories Nikos Manouselis, Gauri Salokhe, Johannes Keizer and Stephen Rudgard

2. Introduction metadata interoperability has been judged as an essential issue in education and training context exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information and its reuse among a large number of different systems and repositories. currently used standards include: IEEE Learning Object Metadata (IEEE LOM), Dublin Core and ISO Metadata for Learning Resources

3. Context of Agriculture learning technology (LT) specifications and standards have not been yet widely adopted few implementations exist – primarily IEE LOM, DC or combination of the two efforts have been distributed and dispersed, leaving space to approaches with significant differences between them

4. Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF) initiative launched to connect and mobilize international stakeholders involved in agricultural learning repositories to create a network of organizations which will promote the development of a global infrastructure that will facilitate sharing and reusing of learning resources

5. Activities of the Task Force Building a community inventory of agricultural learning repositories Organize an e-conference Produce an initial set of best practice recommendations, concerning implementing interoperable metadata in agricultural learning repositories; Deploying a pilot demonstrator of federating learning repositories on a global scale.

6. Community building Website – http://aglr.aua.gr/ Discussion Forum - http://www.dgroups.org/groups/fao/Ag-LR-TF/ 20 partners (CGIAR, GFAR, Intut, COL, etc.) > 130 registered participants to the list from over 26 countries

7. Inventory of repositories

8. e-Conference AgLR 2008, April 24 – June 15, 2008 http://aglr.aua.gr/econf.php dialogue around agricultural learning resources explored the needs and requirements of stakeholders involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories. held as an electronically facilitated discussion Follow up event : Workshop on Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development ( AgroLT), September 19, 2008 http://infolab-dev.aua.gr/agrolt/2008/

9. Best practices and recommendations survey of metadata schemas carried out in cooperation with the European Standardization Committee CEN/ISSS (WS-LT) http://www.cen.eu/isss/workshop/lt/ Report on “ Guidelines and recommendations for building metadata application profiles for agricultural learning resources ”. The report provides: overview of the way metadata application profiles are implemented detailed summary and comparative analysis of approaches followed guidelines and recommendations to existing or new developers of agricultural repositories

10. Demo application In collaboration with Organic.Edunet and ARIADNE Foundation Demonstrate the exchange of learning resources related to organic agriculture using Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/silo2006/NewFederatedQuery.do

11. Evaluation of Application Profiles closer collaboration was established between WS-LT and AgLR-TF joint team to analyze and provide recommendations analysis, based on CWA15555 conformance aspects: documentation scope & purpose selection of elements allowed vs. non-allowed modifications of base schema (conformance) mapping of elements to base schema(s) CWA 15555 (2006). Guidelines and support for building application profiles in e-learning http://www.cen-isss-wslt.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/3050/CWA15555.pdf

12. Process review & analysis of existing APs ( March’08 ) mappings to relevant standards/schemas ( April’08 ) comparative study ( May’08 ) initial report with list of suggestions/recommendations to AP developers (June ‘08)

13. Evaluated APs Rural-eGov IEEE LOM AP ( ReGovLOM ) FAO Agricultural Learning Resources AP ( FAO Ag-LR ) CGIAR LOM Core AP ( CG LOM Core ) BIOAGRO LOM AP Biosci Education Network ( BEN ) AP Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program ( SANREM CRSP ) AP TrAgLor LOM AP Intute: Health and Life Sciences AP ( Intute AP) EcoLearnIT LOM AP

14. Mappings

15. General observations (1/3) Most common generic elements Title ; Language ; Description ; Keyword (free text or restricted); and Coverage (geographical/spatial or temporal). life cycle of the resource Role of the entities that have contributed to the resource; Information about these entities; Date of contribution/production/publication.

16. General observations (2/3) Technical characteristics format ; l ocation (such as URL) Size ; Some technical requirements for its viewing/execution. educational characteristics t ype of the learning resource ; Intended end user role ; E ducational context/level .

17. General observations (3/3) copyrights Cost ; Copyrights and restrictions in use . formal classification type of classification; classification system used (very often AGROVOC or some other agricultural knowledge organization scheme); Terms used from the selected classification system.

18. suggestions to developers (1/2) Always provide supportive documentation describing the AP Document reference to the technical implementation of the AP and provide any relevant technical bindings Document supportive use cases that help clarify its scope, purpose and users Use the latest and most stable version of the base schema available When using ad-hoc or extended value spaces make them available in a public namespace

19. suggestions to developers (2/2) Instead of substituting the ‘Langstring’ datatype with the simpler ‘Characterstring’, it is suggested that simplicity is sought though appropriate interface design The non-allowed modification rules of CWA 15555 should be respected to ensure no problems when trying to export/exchange metadata The elements most often occurring as mandatory in the existing APs should be considered for use also in other APs

20. Conclusion Well established community of partners Cross-searching/sharing of data now possible through the mappings guidelines to support and feedback to organizations that are designing, implementing and operating agricultural learning repositories

21. References CWA 15555 (2006). Guidelines and support for building application profiles in e-learning [Online]. Available at: http://www.cen-isss-wslt.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/3050/ CWA15555.pdf (verified 20 June 2008). European Committee for Standardization (CEN). DC (2004). Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Reference Description. Dublin Core Org. IEEE LOM (2002). Draft Standard for Learning Object Metadata, IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee, IEEE 1484.12.1-2002. ISO/IEC MLR (2005). Working Draft for ISO/IEC 19788-2 – Metadata for Learning Resources – Part 2: Data Elements, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36. Manouselis, N., Kastradas, K., Salokhe, G., Najjar, J., Stracke, C.M. and Duval, E. (2008). Results from a Study of the Implementation of Metadata Application Profiles in Agricultural Learning Repositories. in Proceedings of the Workshop on Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgroLT 2008), 4 th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Bio and Earth Sciences (HAICTA 2008), Athens, Greece, September 19, 2008. Najjar, J., Ternier, S. and Duval, E. (2004). Interoperability of Learning Object Repositories: Complications and Guidelines [Online]. Available at: http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~najjar/papers/IadiswwwJournal.pdf (verified 20 June 2008). IADIS International Journal of WWW/Internet. Stuempel, H., Salokhe, G., Aubert, A., Keizer, J., Nadeau, A., Katz, S. and Rudgard, S. (2007). Metadata Application Profile for Agricultural Learning Resources. in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR' 07), Corfu, Greece, October 2007.

22. Thank you! Gauri Salokhe ( [email_address] )