Presentation on LRMI given to Linked Learning & Education workshop at WWW2015 conference in Florence, May 2015.

1. Learning Resource
Metadata on the Web
Phil Barker & Lorna Campbell

2. Lorna M Campbell
@lornamcampbell
Cetis / EDINA
Phil Barker
@philbarker
Research Fellow
Heriot-Watt University

3. LRMI PREHISTORY &
PRECURSORS
Our adventures with LOM, Semantics and Open
Education

5. In the beginning was…the LOM
1484.12.1 Standard
for Learning Object
Metadata

6. Using LOM
Facilitating Access to Information on Learning
Technology for Engineers 2001.
• Engineering.
• Library/Pedagogy/eLearning input
RDN / LTSN LOM Application Profile 2003.
• All subjects
UK Learning Object Metadata Core 2003.

7. IMS Learning Resource Meta-data
IMS Meta-data Best Practice Guide for IEEE
1484.12.1-2002 Standard for Learning Object
Metadata, 2006 .
• Bindings and best practice for IEEE LOM.

9. Semantic technologies & linked
data
Semantic Technologies in Learning and
Teaching (2008 - 2009)
A Jisc mini-project / Cetis working group
Thanassis Tiropanis et al University of
Southampton
http://www.semtech.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
The Semantic Web, Linked and Open Data. Lorna
M Campbell, Sheila McNeill (2010)
A Cetis briefing paper
http://publications.cetis.org.uk/2010/39

10. The development of semantic applications for teaching and learning for HE/FE over the next 5 years
could be supported in a number of steps:
1)Encouraging the exposure of HE/FE repositories, VLEs, databases and existing Web 2.0
lightweight knowledge models in linked data formats. Enabling the development of
learning and teaching applications that make use of linked data across HE/FE institutions; there
is significant activity on linked open data to be considered
2)Enabling the deployment of semantic-based searching and matching services to
enhance learning. Such applications could support group formation and learning resource
recommendation based on linked data. The development of ontologies to which linked data will
be matched is anticipated. The specification of patterns of semantic tools and services using
linked data could be fostered
3)Collaborative ontology building and reasoning for pedagogical ends will be more
valuable if deployed over a large volume of education related linked data where the
value of searching and matching is sufficiently demonstrated. Pedagogy-aware applications
making use reasoning to establish learning context and to support argumentation and critical
thinking over a large linked data field could be encouraged at this stage
from SemTech final report, 2009

11. DC-Ed
• 2006 - 2011.
• Dublin Core Education Application Profile Task Group.
• Focused on defining resource classes and domain
model.
• Also worked in collaboration with IEEE LTSC.
http://dublincore.org/groups/education/

12. Barker, P., & Campbell, L. M. (2010). Metadata for Learning
Materials: An Overview of Existing Standards and Current
Developments.Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning,
7(3-4), 225–243. Retrieved from
http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/publicationFiles/2010/TICLMetadata/

13. A brief flirtation…ISO MLR
• ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36
• ISO 19788 - Metadata for Learning Resources, parts 1
to 11

14. Eduprog vs edupunk
The UKLOM Lies Down… by
David Kernohan, #Eduprog
Grand High Mage.

15. Open Educational Resources
• UKOER: 3 year, £15M programme to release
HE resources under Creative Commons
licences. (2009 – 2012).
• Funding for institutional, individual and subject-
based consortia projects.
• 66 projects, >10,000 OERs.
• Cetis provided strategic technical advice and
support to funders and projects.

16. UKOER guidelines
• Use openly accessible systems to disseminate
resources:
Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, ...
Jorum UK HE repository
• Minimal metadata requirements
Title, Author, Subject, Date, Licence ...
• Facilitate aggregation of resource information,
e.g. via RSS / ATOM feeds.
• Make sure resource has a good textual
description and is findable on Google.

17. LEARNING RESOURCE
METADATA INITIATIVE
What on earth could justify another attempt at
educational metadata?

18. Motivation
Promote the sharing of educational resources by
helping people find content that meets their
specific needs.
Recognising that people will try to find web resources
through Google.

19. Motivation
Meet Pam, let’s say she wants to
teach a lesson about the
Declaration of Arbroath (1320)
Photo by Vgrigas
Tyninghame copy of the Declaration of Arbroath
By various Scottish barons

20. Photo by Vgrigas
Motivation
She might search Google:

21. Motivation
There are many educational
parameters Pam might use
to narrow the search results
to those which are more
appropriate, but Google
doesn’t support them. She
is forced into a fragmented
world of specialist search
services based on (often
siloed) metadata.
Photo by Vgrigas

25. Author J. Cetis?
Screen shot from Google Scholar. NB, J CETIS = JISC CETIS, the author’s affiliation

26. Schema.org
a joint effort, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, to improve
the web by creating a structured data markup
schema supported by major search engines.
Schema.org FAQ, http://schema.org/docs/faq.html

27. What the human sees

28. What the computer sees
<h1>Learning Resource Metadata Initiative:
using schema.org to describe open educational
resources</h1>
<p>by Phil Barker, Cetis, School of
Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt
University <br />
Lorna M Campbell, Cetis, Institute for
Educational Cybernetics, University of Bolton.
April 2014</p>

29. What the computer needs

30. What schema.org provides
An agreed hierarchy of entity types.
An agreed vocabulary for naming the
characteristics of resources and
the relationships between them.
Which can be added to HTML (as
microdata, RDFa or JSON-LD) to
help computers understand what
the strings or text mean.

31. What schema.org looks like
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle">
<h1 itemprop="name">Learning Resource Metadata Initiative:
using schema.org to describe open educational resources</h1>
<p itemprop="author" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemprop="name">Phil Barker</span>,
<span itemprop="affiliation">Cetis, School of Mathematical
and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University</span></p>
<p itemprop="author" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemprop="name">Lorna M Campbell</span>,
<span itemprop="affiliation">Cetis, Institute for
Educational Cybernetics, University of Bolton</span></p>
</div>

32. LRMI: Learning resource metadata
initiative
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
2011 - 2014
Co-led by Creative Commons and AEP (preK-12
learning group division of the Association of
American Publishers)
Working group including educators, publishers,
metadata specialists
Aim:
make it easier to publish, discover, and deliver
quality educational resources on the web

33. LRMI
schema.org didn’t have a way of naming the educational parameters
that could have helped Pam narrow her search, so LRMI added
them.
• Educational alignment (more later)
• Educational role (of target audience)
• Educational use
• Interactivity type
• Is based on (url)
• Learning resource type
• Time required
• Typical age range
• Use rights URL
http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification

34. LRMI
schema.org didn’t have a way of naming the educational parameters
that could have helped Pam narrow her search, so LRMI added
them.
• Educational alignment (more later)
• Educational use
• Interactivity type
• Is based on url
• Learning resource type
• Time required
• Typical age range
• Use rights URL
• Educational role (of target audience)
http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification
*except use rights URL

35. Educational alignment
An alignment to an established educational
framework, e.g.
• Shared curriculum or syllabus
• Shared framework of competency requirements
• Set of educational levels
• Modules making up a program of study
Allows encoding of statements like
• “this resource teaches X”
• “this resource assess X”
• “this resource requires knowledge of Y”
• “this resource has reading level N”
• “this resource is used in module F29DO”

36. Educational alignment
An alignment to an established educational
framework

37. Educational alignment
LRMI elements identify something in an educational
framework, they do not describe the framework.

38. CURRENT STATE OF LRMI &
FUTURE PLANS
and can the linked learning community help?

39. Implementations
Initial implementation by:
• Connexions
• Curriki
• Gooru learning
• ISME
• Jorum
• Merlot
• Peer2Peer Uni
• Open Tapestry
• Learning Registry
• Awesome stories
• BBC Bytesize
• Brain POP
• Digital Chalkboard (e.g.)
• CTE Online
• Learn by cam
• Learnzillion
• MIT OCW
• Nova Southeastern Uni
• OER Commons
• Open University, OpenLearn

41. Google custom search engine
https://www.google.co.uk/cse/

42. Google custom search engine

43. Google custom search

44. Implementations
Points to note:
• they exist.
• not every implementation exposes LRMI
metadata, some use it internally.
• schema.org is a lightweight, loose ontology,
implementation is looser.
• no agreement on value spaces, either terms or
meanings
•(e.g. educational level, 1st Grade, Primary
1).
see also Martin Hepp from Ontologies to Web Ontologies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE7vQyEk7UY

45. LRMI Status
Gates funding is over, so now what?
LRMI is now a Task Group with the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative.
http://wiki.dublincore.org/index.php/AB-Comm/ed/LRMI/TG
LRMI terms are a community specification of DCMI.
http://dublincore.org/dcx/lrmi-terms/
(aligned with schema.org terms)

46. What next?
• Extending LRMI: Events? Courses?
•new schema.org extension mechanism
• Use beyond schema.org scenario
•stand-alone JSON-LD
•eTextBooks
• Recommended value vocabularies
• Linked data representation of educational
frameworks (alignment)

47. Questions?
• Does this help with the endeavour to expose
lightweight linked data?
•can you get the data out of web pages?
• How do we encourage linked data
representation of educational frameworks?
• How much goes into schema.org (or similar) or
should we just reuse existing ontologies?
• Can you cope with the the quality of data that
can be provided at web-scale?

48. Licence
This presentation “LRMI: Learning resource metadata on the web”
by Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>, Heriot-Watt University
and Lorna M Campbell <lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com>,
of Cetis http://www.cetis.ac.uk is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/