The document discusses the role of metadata in e-learning content sharing, emphasizing the importance of a standards-based infrastructure for aggregating and managing metadata records. It highlights the challenges of metadata creation, validation, and multilinguality, while also mentioning various initiatives like the Ariadne Foundation and the GLobe alliance to promote resource sharing. Future scenarios envision enhanced discoverability and interactive access to educational resources through advanced technologies and social networking platforms.

1. Content Sharing
whence & whither?
Nikos Manouselis
Agro-Know Technologies & ARIADNE Foundation
nikosm@ieee.org
@ILIAS 2012, Stuttgart, 6/9/12

2. Metadata Sharing
whence & whither?
Nikos Manouselis
Agro-Know Technologies & ARIADNE Foundation
nikosm@ieee.org
@ILIAS 2012, Stuttgart, 6/9/12

3. about me
• Computer Engineer
• MSc’s on Operational Research +
Telecommunications
• PhD from Informatics Lab of an
Agricultural University
• working on e-learning content,
repositories & federations for the past
10 years

4. about me
• Computer Engineer
• MSc’s on Operational Research +
Telecommunications
• PhD from Informatics Lab of an
Agricultural University
• working on e-learning content,
repositories & federations for the past
10 years

5. who is Ariadne?

8. so Ariadne
helped
Theseus to
navigate
through a
labyrinth

9. ARIADNE Foundation
• not-for-profit association aiming to foster
Share and Reuse of Learning Resources
• working on facilitating the reuse of digital
resources that can be used to support learning
• created a standards-based technology
infrastructure for metadata aggregation
• allows publication and management of
metadata records about digital learning
resources in an open and scalable way

10. various components/services
More than a harvester:
 Validation Service
 Repository Software
 Registry Service
 Harvester
Powered by
10

11. simplified scenario
• backend: periodical aggregation of metadata
from various providers
– harvesting through OAI-PMH protocol/targets, as
well as human-facilitated ingestion/import
– different metadata schemas/specs combined
– indexing metadata element values to use for faceted
search/browse
• front-end: interfaces to search/browse through
metadata descriptions of learning resources
11

12. alliance with
• member of Global Learning Objects
Brokering Exchange (GLOBE) Alliance
• contributing towards the development of a
global learning infrastructure that can be
accessible from all
• one-stop-shop for learning resource broker
organizations, each of them managing and/or
federating one or more learning object
repositories
www.globe-info.org

14. GLOBE is powered by ARIADNE
• an instance of the metadata aggregation
infrastructure of ARIADNE is used to support
federated search in allied GLOBE repositories

15. also: Open Discovery Space
• CIP PSP funded initiative aiming to deploy a pan-
European open eLearning content infrastructure
[launched April’12; http://www.opendiscoveryspace.eu ]

16. e-learning & metadata

17. “e-Learning”

18. “e-Learning”

19. “e-Learning”

21. learning object
"any entity, digital or non-digital, that may
be used for learning, education or
training"
ΙΕΕΕ Learning Technology Standards Committee (2002)

22. learning object
"any entity, digital or non-digital, that may
be used for learning, education or
training“
+ metadata describing this use

23. metadata – not new
Author Subject
ID Title
Publisher
Date Catalog

24. educational metadata

25. NOT a learning object

26. …a learning object, in context

27. metadata reflect the context

28. e.g. resource metadata

29. e.g. activity metadata

30. e.g. course metadata

31. metadata aggregation

32. aggregating metadata records
• concerns viewing merged collections of
metadata records from different sources
• useful: when access to specific supersets or
subsets of networked collections
– records actually stored at aggregator
– or queries distributed at virtually aggregated
collections
32

33. popular approach: harvesting
• based on Open Archives Initiative
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
(OAI-PMH)
– XML-driven technology
– wrappers for legacy systems often
developed
– implementations for various metadata
standards/specs (including DC, IEEE LOM,…)
33

34. looks like this
34 Ternier et al., 2010

35. a school aggregator

36. a university aggregator

37. a vocational training aggregator

38. typical problems
a. metadata authoring/creation
b. metadata assurance/validation
c. metadata values/vocabularies
d. metadata multilinguality
e. …lots more
38

39. a. authoring/creation
• metadata creation is a painful and
costly process
– automatic generation can help
– high quality/accuracy/relevance
descriptions require human intervention
39

40. a. authoring/creation
40

41. b. assurance/validation
• good online services demand high
quality (or at least not poor quality)
description of content
– someone needs to take the final decision
before something is published
– especially relevant when content
development has been costly/labourous
41

42. b. assurance/validation
42

43. c. values/vocabularies
• mappings and crosswalks among
values and vocabularies of different
collections are crucial
– usually manually defined and maintained
– difficult to ensure that all applications
will publish and link their vocabularies
– vocabulary bank management tend to
become too complex for the purpose
that they serve 43

44. c. values/vocabularies
44

45. d. multilinguality
• for multilingual contexts, everything
needs to become (and be maintained)
multilingual
– metadata values and labels
– interface labels for various systems
• automatic translation helps but usually
produces rather rough/poor
translations
45

46. d. multilinguality
46

47. why should you then care?

48. promoting course descriptions
• push course information to various
syndication/aggregation sites to allow
users discover them
– OCW search engine (
http://www.ocwsearch.com)
– Moodle Hub concept (hub.moodle.org)
48

49. promoting course descriptions
• push course information to various
syndication/aggregation sites to allow
users discover them
– OCW search engine (
http://www.ocwsearch.com)
– Moodle Hub concept (hub.moodle.org)
49

50. promoting course descriptions
• push course information to various
syndication/aggregation sites to allow
users discover them
– OCW search engine (
http://www.ocwsearch.com)
– Moodle Hub concept (hub.moodle.org)
50

51. including relevant content
• allow course creator/author to find relevant
material and resources to enrich course
– Europeana ingestion widget (
http://wiki.agroknow.gr/agroknow/index.php/Hack4Europe_20
)
• suggest to learners additional courses and
material relevant to what they access
– Eummena’s Moodle Widget (
http://www.eummena.org/index.php/labs)
51

52. including relevant content
• allow course creator/author to find relevant
material and resources to enrich course
– Europeana ingestion widget (
http://wiki.agroknow.gr/agroknow/index.php/Hack4Europe_20
)
• suggest to learners additional courses and
material relevant to what they access
– Eummena’s Moodle Widget (
http://www.eummena.org/index.php/labs)
52

53. including relevant content
• allow course creator/author to find relevant
material and resources to enrich course
– Europeana ingestion widget (
http://wiki.agroknow.gr/agroknow/index.php/Hack4Europe_20
)
• suggest to learners additional courses and
material relevant to what they access
– Eummena’s Moodle Widget
(http://www.eummena.org/index.php/labs)
53

54. developing more end-user services
• Web portals to support user communities
(e.g. thematic, geographical, social, cultural)
– MACE portal (http://portal.mace-project.eu)
– Photodentro Greek school collections portal
(http://photodentro.edu.gr)
– VOA3R social platform for researchers
(http://voa3r.cc.uah.es)
54

55. developing more end-user services
• Web portals to support user communities
(e.g. thematic, geographical, social, cultural)
– MACE portal (http://portal.mace-project.eu)
– Photodentro Greek school collections portal
(http://photodentro.edu.gr)
– VOA3R social platform for researchers
(http://voa3r.cc.uah.es)
55

56. developing more end-user services
• Web portals to support user communities
(e.g. thematic, geographical, social, cultural)
– MACE portal (http://portal.mace-project.eu)
– Photodentro Greek school collections portal
(http://photodentro.edu.gr)
– VOA3R social platform for researchers
(http://voa3r.cc.uah.es)
56

57. developing more end-user services
• Web portals to support user communities
(e.g. thematic, geographical, social, cultural)
– MACE portal (http://portal.mace-project.eu)
– Photodentro Greek school collections portal
(http://photodentro.edu.gr)
– VOA3R social platform for researchers
(http://voa3r.cc.uah.es)
57

58. future scenarios

59. findability of course descriptions
• interoperable course metadata
published and aggregated, accessible
through multiple information
portals/channels
– curricula described in terms of learning
outcomes
– findable through requesting targeted
competences

60. findability of course descriptions

61. findability of course descriptions

62. interactive access
• multi-touch, interactive installations
enhancing the educational
experience
– related to both technology and content
industries
– deployment both at any educational
context (formal/informal)

63. enchancing interactive interfaces
http://vimeo.com/1738770

64. social networking
• Connecting peers & visualising social
networks, connecting people with content
resources, recommending people/content
– Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), ResearchGate
(http://www.researchgate.net), Academia.edu
(http://academia.edu), ArnetMiner
(http://arnetminer.org), …
– Social research components in popular CMSs
(JomSocial, Drupal’s Buddylist, Elgg…)
– Social research components in institutional CMSs
(VIVO, …)

65. getting crowdsourced data
http://dev.mendeley.com/

66. extending social CMS components
http://voa3r.cc.uah.es

67. wrap up

68. METADATA
AGGREGATOR

69. challenges
• semantic evolution (Linked Open
Data)
• data/content growth rates
• usage logging & learning analytics
• …more

70. interested to experiment?

71. thank you!
nikosm@ieee.org
http://ariadne-eu.org
http://wiki.agroknow.gr