LOM Survey: Final Report

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LOM Survey Final Report

• Dr. Norm Friesen
• Dublin, Sept. 12, 2004

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Survey History

• Paris, 03/2003 It is important that SC36/WG4
  understand the state of current practices and use
  of the LOM standard and other metadata for
  learning resources.
• Korea, 09/2003 Preliminary findings provided
  focus on application profiles random,
  manually-inspected sets
• Final report statistical analysis on actual
  element use values assigned

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Preliminary Survey findings

• A small number of the potential LOM elements are
  used (1/2-2/3) few potential iterations used
• Many of the elements used are in the Dublin Core
  Element Set
• Use of Educational elements is not necessarily
  high
• LOM structures elements for 9Classification
  are utilized very effectively and precisely.
• Problems with vCard

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Sample sets used in Study

• Sets of records varying in size from 75 to over
  3000 50 randomly selected from each (n250)
  Special thanks to all participants
• ARIADNE Project (EU)
• the LTSN (UK)
• Metalab (France)
• CELTS (China)
• CAREO (Canada)

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Analysis Issues

• Native XML database required to aggregate query
  LOM instances
• The record sets varied in terms of the precise
  datamodel and bindings upon which they were
  based.
• Abstracting data from XML representations for use
  in other manipulation technologies (e.g.
  relational databases) is "unwieldy"
• Invalid vCard constructions Existing LOM
  examples are erroneous instances could not be
  parsed using existing vCard processors.

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Analysis Method

• As in other LOM surveys, (e.g. Najjar, Ternier,
  Duval, 2003), improvised aggregation and analysis
  techniques were used
• String matches on individual lines of LOM
  records, retrieving previous or subsequent lines
  of XML.
• These aggregation query problems, and the need
  to improvise is the 1st survey finding, and
  perhaps its most important.

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Data Portability

• Data portability and reuse the raison d'être of
  the LOM!
• conventional and low cost technologies cannot
  easily be used to realize LOM data portability
  and reuse
• not at all a positive indicator for increased
  sharing and reuse between implementa-tions and
  across jurisdictions

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Two types of Findings

• What elements are used?
• What are the values assigned to these elements
  (especially important because values can
  determine the application of subordinate elements)

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Frequency of Element Use
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Frequency of Element Use

• The most frequently used elements (not container
  elements -tage)
• ClassificationPurpose,
• General.Title
• Technical.Format
• (object metadata record) Language
• Lifecycle.Contribute.Role
• Learning Resource Type

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Least Frequently Used Elements
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Most and Least Used Elements

• Most ( or gt 80)
• General Identifier, Title, Description, Keyword
• Authorship, other contributions
• Technical Educational Format/Type
• Classification (PurposeDiscipline)
• Least (lt 20 gt 0)
• Duration, Difficulty, Structure, Granularity
  Version

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Use by Category General
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Use by Category LifeCycle
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Use by Category Technical
18
Use by Category Educational
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Use by Category Classification
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Values Assigned to Elements Title

• Almost 1/3 of the records specifically examined
  showed signs of using a single title field to
  accommodate multiple title components.
• These titles included punctuation separating
  these components, and/or included incremented
  numeric values to differentiate between otherwise
  identical title values

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LifeCycle.Contribute.Role
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vCard Fields in Contribute.Entity
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Technical.Format
24
Educational.LearningResourceType
25
Classification.Purpose
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Conclusions Portability vCard

• LOM structures make data portability difficult to
  realize using conventional and low cost
  technologies.
• Any advantage that the inclusion of vCard
  presents is far outweighed by the difficulties of
  its implementation, and the under-utilization of
  vCard fields in actual LOM instances.

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Conclusions Elements and Values Selected
Frequently

• LOM IS used to describe intellectual content of
  resources
• General Identifier, Title, Description, Keyword
• LifeCycle.Contribute (role Author and
  publisher)
• Classification (PurposeDiscipline)
• LOM IS used to describe file and media
  characteristics
• Technical.Format, Technical.Size, Location
• Educational.Learning Resource Type (text,
  hypertext, notes, etc.)

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Conclusions Elements and Values Seldom Selected

• LOM use does not emphasize description of an
  educational context or level
• Educational.Semantic Density 0
• Educational.Context lt20
• EndUserRole 40
• LOM NOT used to describe resources in terms of
  software objects
• Structure, Version (i.e. Alpha, Beta), Status
  lt18
• Aggregation level lt27
• Contribute.Role"terminator" technical
  implementer/validator 0

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Conclusion Premise for Study

• Careful examination of the ways in which the LOM
  is currently being implemented is of great value
  for future standardization work, and serves an
  important basis for defining future metadata
  requirements and approaches.

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Duval Hodgins, 2004

• we believe thatmany of the current LOM
  implementation developments and efforts are
  somewhat misguided many of these efforts are
  perfecting the irrelevant, as they focus on the
  literal use of metadata, thus seeking to continue
  historical and current practices, rather than
  trying to design, experiment with and implement
  more innovative and effective ones.

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Conclusion

• far from being "misguided" and "irrelevant,"
  past and current implementations represent the
  only source of verifiable, empirically-based data
  directly related to the details of practice and
  requirements.