Latest revision as of 03:32, 12 July 2009

Microformats in Education: Course Catalog

Starting a collection of research, examples, and a rationale for a microformat for course catalogs in Higher Education. - Jesse Rodgers

Todo

Get more examples from outside of Canada: Australia, United States, UK, other EU, and hopefully some Asian and south American schools.
Post some schema information from internal course management systems (work with what already exists)
First idea is posted (this should be easy)

Some Microformat use in Education

Here is a list of edu sites that use microformats:

Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in our faculty directory choose an individual and they will have an hCard and vcard. For info contact Matt Herzberger
University of Waterloo Events - new events system that uses hCal and iCal
Pierce College staff/faculty directory uses hCard.
Clinical Science Program at Univ. Colorado Health Sciences Center uses iCal.
Scottish Schools Online uses hCard.

Where could there be a need for microformats in education?

Course Catalog

A course catalog (sometimes known as a course calendar) is a collection of courses and when they are available as well as fee schedules and course dependencies.

Examples

University of Waterloo Course Calendar - current system is set for an upgrade but as you can see the code is very inconsistent.
- Course information is displayed with:
  - course title
  - course requirements
  - eligibility requirements
  - any notes that are relevant to that course such as any special circumstances
  - (Anthropology Example) - no class or id names present
University of Guelph undergrad calendar - there is an attempt to assign relevant class names to table elements.

                   tr class="title"
                   a name="ANTH4300" ANTH*4300 Anthropological Issues F (3-0) [0.50]
                   tr class="description"
                   tr class="prereqs"

Wilfried Laurier undergrad calendar
- Anthropology example - no class or id names present
University of Toronto - Scarborough Campus
University of Western Ontario

Frameworks in Development

XCRI - eXchanging Course-Related Information

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) has suggested that the XCRI project might be a good project to look with regards to an existing standard. The aim of the project is:

To define a vocabulary and appropriate technology bindings (e.g. XML, RDF) for describing course-related information that encompasses course marketing, course quality assurance, enrolment and reporting requirements.

A practical use of this standard is shown in a blog post entitled Mashups from the future: TripPlanner & XCRI by Scott Wilson. Actual XCRI software is available, including an aggregator

XCRI conducted a detailed survey of 161 course catalogs as source materials for their specification, which is described on the XCRI wiki.

Working Draft

This is a suggestion for a standardized format for displaying course catalog/ program information for educational institutions.

   div class="programDescription"
      h2  class="title"              Biology 
      div class="academicLevel"      Undergraduate Major
      div class="introCopy"          Descriptive copy about the program
      div class="features"           Distinctive features about the program
      div class="career"             Career opportunities for graduates
      div class="courses"            List of course information
      div class="programDirector"    Program Director

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 =Microformats in Education: Course Catalog=
-Starting a collection of research, examples, and a rationale for a microformat for course catalogs in Higher Education. - [http://webdevblog.uwaterloo.ca Jesse Rodgers]
+Starting a collection of research, examples, and a rationale for a microformat for course catalogs in Higher Education. - [http://whoyoucallingajesse.com Jesse Rodgers]
 ==Todo==
@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 * [http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/ephone Pierce College staff/faculty directory] uses hCard.
 * [https://www2.uchsc.edu/clinicalscience/calendar/clsc_calendar.asp Clinical Science Program at Univ. Colorado Health Sciences Center] uses iCal.
+* [http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/scottishschoolsonline/index.asp?iPage=15&strSubmit=True&strSearchText=&bSubmit=1&cLetter=&authority=&strTypes=&strAdditionalServices=&strFundingType=&searchstring= Scottish Schools Online] uses hCard.
 ==Where could there be a need for microformats in education?==
@@ Line 45: / Line 46: @@
 * [http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/courses/calendar/ University of Toronto - Scarborough Campus]
 * [http://www.westerncalendar.uwo.ca/western/web/2006(new)/index.html University of Western Ontario]
+==== Frameworks in Development ====
+===== XCRI - eXchanging Course-Related Information =====
+[http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/ Brian Kelly] (UK Web Focus) has suggested that the [http://www.xcri.org XCRI project] might be a good project to look with regards to an existing standard. The aim of the project is:
+''To define a vocabulary and appropriate technology bindings (e.g. XML, RDF) for describing course-related information that encompasses course marketing, course quality assurance, enrolment and reporting requirements.''
+A practical use of this standard is shown in a blog post entitled [http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20061117160154 Mashups from the future: TripPlanner & XCRI] by Scott Wilson. Actual XCRI software is available, including an [http://www.xcri.org/aggregator aggregator]
+XCRI conducted a [http://www.elframework.org/projects/xcri/xcri_research_v0c.doc detailed survey of 161 course catalogs] as source materials for their specification, which is described on the [http://www.xcri.org/wiki XCRI wiki].
 ==== Working Draft ====

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