2005-07-27 Liverpool
The Learning Matrix project aims to deliver a set of services to partner institutions to enable pre-HE and other students to discover, register on, and access resources for bite-size learning offerings. Lead from Liverpool John Moore's University and building on work achieved in the SHELL project and others, the project aims to deliver three strands:
- A Course Information Service
- Lifelong Learner Records
- Personal Development Planning (PDP) Services
| Proforma Field | Schema Element |
| Whose course is it? | |
| Institution: | Specification/owningBody |
| College Faculty/Division: | Specification/owningBody |
| Department: | Specification/owningBody |
| Contact: | Specification/contact/name |
| Contact email: | Specification/contact/email |
| What course is it? | |
| Title: | Specification/title |
| Institution Course Identifier: | Specification/identifier |
| What kind of course is it? | |
| Level: | Specification/educationLevel |
| Keywords: | Specification/subject |
| JACS Code: | Specification/subject[@xsi:type="hesa:jacs"] |
| What is it about? | |
| Aims: | Specification/aim |
| Outcomes: | Specification/outcome[@type="learning" || @type="skill"] |
| Opportunities: | Specification/opportunity[@type="furtherStudy" || @type="career"] |
| Topics covered: | Specification/topic |
| Teaching: | Specification/pedagogy |
| Assessment: | Specification/assessment |
| Resources required: | Specification/resource[@type="required"] |
| Resources provided: | Specification/resource[@type="provided"] |
| Prerequisites: | Specification/prerequisite |
| Adjustments for disability: | Specification/adjustment |
| Offering Details | |
| Start date: | Offering/start |
| End date: | Offering/end |
| Registration date: | Offering/registrationDeadline |
| Learning hours: | Offering/effort[@xsi:type="contactHours"] |
| Minimum no. places: | Offering/enrolMin |
| Maximum no. places: | Offering/enrolMax |
| Offering contact: | Offering/contact/name |
| Offering contact email: | Offering/contact/email |
| Student support contact: | Offering/support/contact/name |
| Teaching times/places: | Offering/teachingTime || Offering/teachingPlace |
Points noted in discussion:
Modelling the ownership relationship between the subgroup within the partner institution offering the course and the course itself generated considerable discussion. It was apparent that the Learning Matrix would eventually have partner institutions offering multiple courses. Some facilities available to students were specific to an institution, others were specific to the part of the institution providing the course (the faculty/division/department - terminology varied widely amongst partners), and other facilities were specific to the course. Ideally, a learner would be alerted to the appropriate composite of these when viewing course offerings. These owning organisation entities might well have multiple identifiers, one for each coding scheme that recognised or reported upon their existence. This discussion led us to the conclusion that Curriculum Specifications would need to make reference to Organisational Entities (as Norway's CDM does), against which multiple identifiers, descriptions of facilities, and links to further information (maps, photos, etc) could be stored.
As Learning Matrix was hoping to offer bite-size short courses to students, typically from non-traditional backgrounds, in a blended learning mode, it was important that potential students understood where, when and how the course would operate. It was felt that the teachingTime and teachingPlace elements of the Offering would hold important information in this regard. Convenience of engagement and fit with existing workload and lifestyle appeared to be strong determinants of the attractiveness of a short course. Ideally a timetable of contact sessions and some narrative about the intervening workload would be provided, but it was agreed that the modelling of this kind of data would also needed to facilitate location-based searches (eg by postcode). The importance was also noted of giving a clear idea of effort required, both face-to-face contact and study outside.
The nature of the proposed learning packages on offer through the Learning Matrix was such that many would not have a formal education level. UKOLN's work on vocabularies for educationLevel was noted, and the prospect of formally recording level = none and making some statement about the intended audience was considered a possible solution. Discussion of constrained vocabularies was also raised by the JACS subject field. During the meeting this was considered one possible way of identifying the course subject area against a nationally recognised coding scheme. Other possibilites might include LearnDirect's classification, eg:
(<dc:subject xsi:type="rdnterms:Learndirect">English literature, FC.4</dc:subject>)
