Introduction to Educational Metadata

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Introduction to Educational Metadata CanCore

• Norm Friesen
• CAREO Project
• University of Alberta
• norm.friesen_at_ualberta.ca

Sue Fisher Electronic Text Centre University of
New Brunswick sfisher_at_unb.ca
Anthony Roberts TeleEducation NB Province of New
Brunswick toni_at_telecampus.edu
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Why Web searches dont work

• Multimedia content excluded
• Quality of resources
• No way to search for educational aspects
• Age-appropriate
• User teacher, student, parent
• Learning Style/medium
• Matches in character combinations in documents is
  too simple

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What is metadata?

• 0101001010101010101

• ?

Title Sniffy the Rat Date 2001 Age
12-17 Context Secondary Type Simulation Price
free Description Students explore rat
dissection, looking at the main organs and
anatomical features.
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An early example of metadata
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Were all librarians/information specialists now

• Web brought publishing to everyone
• In the process, it changed publishing
• The Web will do the same with library indexing
• Full-text and database searches
• Complex search strategies
• Boolean logic
• Truncation
• Proximity
• Fuzzy logic
• Pearl-growing
• Keywords for documents

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What's new about what we're doing?

• Educational purpose
• Granularity
• Digital vs. physical
• Basic, not advanced description
• Cross-collection indexing
• Educational genres, aggregations

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Why CanCore?
Complexity decreases
IMS Metadata Information Model 80 elements,
little interpretation
CanCore implementation
Specificity and Interoperability increases
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CanCore and IMS
Based on IMS/IEEE metadata specification

• CanCore
• 36 elements
• Thoroughly explicated
• Ambiguities eliminated or clarified
• Intended specifically for implementation

• IMS
• 80 elements
• Few explanations or recommendations
• Ambiguities
• Un-implementable

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CanCore and SCORM

• SCORM and CanCore share all metadata elements
  related to the description of "Raw Media" (non
  SCO) content

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Educational Resources vs. General Digital
Resources

• Title ??
• Author ??
• Description ??
• Format ??
• Date ??
• Learning Context
• Developmental Age
• Type of learning resource
• User role

• Title
• Author
• Description
• Format
• Date

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Indexing Best Practices

• THINK ABOUT THE USER!
• Access
• Different types of user
• Choose one scenario, but dont do things to limit
  it to the one e.g. general vs. specific
  classification levels
• Better to be consistent than to be right

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Indexing Best Practices, cont

• Separate and bring together
• Separate within the collection
• Across collections
• No one field alone will be used to find the
  resource
• Do a small amount, then reflect and discuss
• Talk to CanCore

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www.cancore.org
Anthony Roberts TeleEducation NB Province of New
Brunswick toni_at_telecampus.edu
Sue Fisher Electronic Text Centre University of
New Brunswick sfisher_at_unb.ca

• Norm Friesen
• CAREO Project
• University of Alberta
• norm.friesen_at_ualberta.ca

www.cancore.org