Symeon Chatzinotas, Demetrios Sampson. Advanced ... e-mail: {schatzin, sampson}@iti.gr. Abstract .... Taylor & Francis Books Ltd, 2004. Proceedings of the ...
eMAP: Design and Implementation of Educational Metadata Application Profiles Symeon Chatzinotas, Demetrios Sampson Advanced e-Services for the Knowledge Department of Technology Education and Society Research Unit, Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Informatics and Telematics Institute, & 150, Androutsou Street, Piraeus, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, GR-18534, Greece 42, Arkadias Street, Athens, GR-15234 Greece e-mail: {schatzin, sampson}@iti.gr Abstract Educational metadata can significantly enhance the effective description, search and retrieval of online learning objects and educational resources. Thus a number of international efforts have been initiated during the past few years and have defined educational metadata standards for the common description of educational resources. This paper presents the architectural components and the fundamental functionalities of a software toolkit (eMAP), which aims to assist and facilitate the process of designing and implementing an educational metadata application profile by modifying and combining one or more educational metadata standards.
1. Introduction- Application profiles As the digital content available through the World Wide Web rapidly augments, the educational resources become more and more difficult to describe and manage. For this purpose metadata are created and used in correspondence with online learning objects in order to facilitate the process of describing, indexing, searching, reusing and retrieving educational resources. As more and more applications are implemented using educational metadata, it becomes obvious that no single metadata element set will accommodate the functional requirements of all applications. An application profile is an assemblage of metadata elements selected from one or more metadata schemas. The purpose of an application profile is to adapt or combine existing schemas into a package that is tailored to the functional requirements of a particular application, while retaining interoperability with the original base schemas [1]. The fundamental techniques for the definition of application profiles include [2]: 1.Giving elements a mandatory / optional / conditional status, 2.Restricting the value space of data elements, 3.Imposing relationships and dependencies, 4.Declaring namespaces. Developers of Learning Management Systems (LMS) can have important benefits by using application profiles. First of all, the application profile is more easily
applicable than the initial educational standard(s), as it is adapted to the needs of the specific application and target user group. Furthermore application profiles facilitate the process of educational metadata authoring, because the element set and the value spaces are less abstract. And the most important is that application profiles offer these benefits without compromising the interoperability with the initial standard(s) that compose the application profile.
2. Metadata Software Tools Metadata software tools can be roughly classified into two major categories [3]: 1. Generic XML Editors: This category includes the software tools designed to support the creation and the edition of files in XML, which is the most commonly used format for metadata files in general. The user must possess a profound knowledge of the XML structure, syntax, and namespaces in order to operate a generic XML editor. As a result these tools are ineligible for the majority of educational metadata authors. Some examples of generic XML editors are XMLSpy and EditML. 2. Specific Educational Metadata Authoring Tools: This category includes the software tools which are designed to address the needs of XML-inexperienced educational metadata authors. They usually produce educational metadata compatible with a specific standard and further software development is required in order to incorporate a new one. Some examples of educational metadata authoring tools are LOMEditor, ImseVimse and Reggie. Based on the above remarks, it becomes obvious that there is a need for a software tool, which combines the advantages and overcomes the limitations of the conventional metadata software tools. This need has lead to the designing and the development of eMAP, which offers a graphical user interface for easy metadata authoring and at the same time, has the necessary suppleness in order to incorporate new educational metadata standards or application profiles.
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’04) 0-7695-2181-9/04 $20.00 © 2004 IEEE
3. eMAP: Educational Metadata Application Profiler
The Metadata Wizard transforms the parameters of the XML configuration file into a Graphical User Interface.
Figure 1 shows an eMAP use case, which presents the design process of three different application profiles, as well as their implementation for three different target metadata author groups.
Figure 4. XML Schema Wizard
4. Conclusions and Future Work
Figure 1. eMAP Use Case First of all, the Application Profile Designer has to insert one or more XML Schemas that describe the element set of an educational metadata standard (XML Binding) into the system. Then using the XML Schema Wizard he can design the application profiles’ element sets by mixing and modifying the elements of the XML Bindings. Finally the educational metadata author selects the corresponding application profile and Metadata Wizard dynamically generates the requisite Graphical User Interface, so that the author can create, edit, validate and save educational metadata files. The basic components of eMAP (Figure 2) are: the XML Schema Wizard, the XML Configuration File, the Metadata Wizard.
As a general conclusion, it can be said that no static element set of educational metadata can accommodate the specific requirements of every application and meet the various needs of all user groups. Thus it becomes obvious that dynamic element sets i.e. application profiles are the only feasible response to this problem. The eMAP software tool allows the easy designing of an application profile from one or multiple educational standards. Furthermore eMAP enables the immediate implementation of the designed application profile by providing a fully-configurable, easy to deploy authoring tool that adapts its graphical user interface according to the application profile. Finally eMAP software tool supports multiple applications profile and therefore multiple user groups, as well as easy and fast switching from one application profile to another.
5. Acknowledgements The work presented in this paper is partially supported by the Greek Ministry of Development - General Secretariat for Research and Technology, project “An Intelligent Web-based Personal Assistant to Athletic Events Visitors” contract ath51 and project “MindPort-A modular collaborative e-learning architecture for life-long learning over broadband computer” contract el03.
6. References
Figure 2. eMAP Architecture The XML Schema Wizard receives as input one or more XML Schema files and produces the desired application profile in the form of a XML configuration file. The XML Configuration File contains the basic configuration parameters of an educational metadata application profile.
[1] Duval Erik, Wayne Hodgins, Stuart Sutton, and Stuart L. Weibel. "Metadata Principles and Practicalities" D-Lib Magazine 8 (April 2002). [2] E. Duval and W. Hodgins. “A LOM research agenda” In Proceedings of the 12th International World Wide Web Conference, Budapest, Hungary, May 2003. [3] D. Sampson, P. Karampiperis, “Reusable Learning Resources: Building a Metadata Management System Supporting Interoperable Learning Object Repositories” in Rory McGreal (Editor), Online Education Using Learning Objects, Taylor & Francis Books Ltd, 2004
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’04) 0-7695-2181-9/04 $20.00 © 2004 IEEE
