hied-course-brainstorming
Brainstorming on Course format
Contributors
- Jose Cuevas
See Also
What is happening?
- Course information is available in disparate formats which makes it hard to compare information, extract information and find information.
- Students Information Systems lack proper data exchange schemes and standards.
- No data syndication of course information among campuses.
Why would it help?
- A community format allows the use and sharing of course data commonly publish on the web.
- Provides semantics to academic information.
- Provides means to mechanically operate on web content for data that otherwise is published on PDF, printed, published with proprietary EDI or XML interfaces or worst jailed in a Student Information System.
Course entity analysis
There are various attempts to produce an schema or data model for Course information.
In 2005 MACE and the Course Working Group published the first schema for eduCourse. eduCourse was largely centered to an LDAP Schema and the eduPerson efforts. The primary motivation of the Course WG was the access to on-line e-learning materials. (IMHO!)
The UK oriented eXchange of Course-Related Information is geared for course advertising. The XCRI was built thinking about automation of course catalogs and RSS aggregation of course data which are more aligned with the notion of Microformats.
While XCRI and eduCourse are great advances they fall short of providing a standard that is widely supported agreed upon or used. In the absence of a single agreed-upon international standard we should attempt to provide a basic and flexible schema. We should attempt to look at the common denominators from all of these efforts and review the use-cases to identify priorities and needs.
Barriers
1. Exchange or semantics for course data requires to standardize many properties and enumerations. Its going to be a while before the international community settles on a standard.
There seems to be a clear pattern on what the common elements are among the available standards. The sheer number of course catalog's published online by university helps identify the common need and use.
The Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council has an approved standard for EDI and XML Transcripts which already offers a basic data model for Courses in the academic history. The standards of the PESC are supported by many of the mayor HiEd ERP vendors. (interesting)
The british eXchange of Course-Related Information, is an approved standard which is gaining good visibility among UK schools, even within the PESC.
Normalizing available standards
1. Comparison of fields supported among standards
1.1. Title PSEC: 'CourseTitle', one language supported.
XCRI: title, multiple languages using the 'xml:lang' attribute.
eduCourse: N/A