Talk:Learning object metadata

This discussion is focused on the possibility of using Learning object metadata for streamlining the communications between the MediaWiki developers (thus MediaWiki software considerations) and Wikiversity, Wikipedia, Wictionary, and other sisterproject participants that may have an interest in the creation and use of Learning objects within the Wikimedia sphere.

data for machines and data for people

I make no claim towards understanding of all the jargon at w:Learning object metadata. That Wikipedia article seems to emphasize the use of learning object metadata as a way to provide a machine-readable database of information about learning objects. One of the central goals of Wikiversity is to provide human-readable information about learning objects. It is not clear to me that we can expect Wikiversity participants to have much real interest in complex machine-readable databases. The idea that guidelines for learning object metadata might "constitute a 250-page document" seems a serious barrier for wiki participants. Can someone draft a short statement about how a learning object metadata might be fit into the wiki user environment? --JWSurf 21:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I dunno, you're the first that has expressed interest. The WP articles need work. I'm doing quite a lot of reading on LOs which I may add to w:Learning object and w:Learning object metadata articles and maybe a summary here. I'm just looking into it and trying to see if anyone else thinks a MediaWiki version has merit. Here's one paper that may share your concerns - Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects (Pithamber R. Polsani - Learning Technology Center, University of Arizona)

The machine-readable parts make the Human User Interface work. Here's an implementation - Content Commons (Connexions) • Quinobi 02:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the Wikis have evolved a jump on the design and specificaiton approach to meta data. Using this definition by L'Allier found in Polsani's article cited above: [A Learning Object] is defined as the smallest independent structural experience that contains an objective, a learning activity and an assessment." Wikiversity is definitely headed in this direction already. I agree with JW that it is unrealistic to expect wiki users to read and fillout huge document templates for the ease of people wishing to program reuse of the information by computers. However, effective use of templates and categorization tags such as "{ }" defined to help complete the local metadata requirements might bear fruit when we have thousands of people wandering through. It looks to me like Wikiversity could easily meet the above definition with objective and categorization tags, an ordered list of related topics, and a quiz of some type for each link provided in the list of learning chunk links. If reasonable clear definitions for the predefined macros are developed then serious Wikiversity users could add a lot of metadata to articles that others can ignore to help meet the learning object requirements. If Wikiversity gets some material to 50% then it might attract a lot of interest in this area if no one else is getting traction. User:lazyquasar 17:05, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree with lazyquasar in that Wikis and much (gulp!) Web 2.0 software is decreasing the usefulness of complex metadata schemas like LOM. Implementing this in mediawiki for use in Wikiversity doesn't seem to be the right way to go about it; if people want to create learning objects out of wikipedia/wikiversity/wikibooks content and close it off inside a repository happily clothed in some kind of LOM/IMS LRM then let them do so on their own systems. The problem is that every organisation has it's own profile that it wants to apply to this kind of metadata, and that filling this stuff in requires that you either are or want to be a librarian. There are perhaps better ways to achieve some of the benefits for places like Wikiversity, ie. tagging, RDF, or possibly microformats. (Wikitravel used to include the option to add RDF and do RDF searches but I can't find much on it anymore, perhaps they've dropped it.) v:User:BrentSimpson, 7th December 2006

json and pypy to the rescue

I don't understand all the jargon either, but I see some patterns emerging for a bot framework that can autofill a huge load of the metadata and leave a simple preloaded selection panel for the HUMAN agency -- wikiversity. Let's wait... --Quinobi 21:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)