An output of the Portfolio interoperability projects (PIOP), supported by CETIS and funded by JISC
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The history of changes to the spec is listed at LEAP2A spec changes.
Things being actively discussed are at LEAP2A developments. See there for the latest news.
The definitive first stable version of the spec is now held at 2009-03/LEAP2A specification. Things that are not tied to versions are left here on this page.
The Examples page holds elementary examples. More are on individual project pages.
Information in LEAP2A is grouped into items, each represented as an Atom entry. Each item has a LEAP2A type or class, and the type affects which literal attributes, relationships or categories that may be associated with the item.
LEAP2A items are joined with other items, and with literal values, as properties, LEAP2A predicates, or "metadata".
LEAP2A categories apply to some types of item, but have no major effect on the syntax, or what relationships are expected.
The page on LEAP2A and you gives guidance on mapping to, exporting and packaging in, and importing from LEAP2A.
LEAP2 governance is being worked on during the lifetime of the PIOP 3 projects.
This specification is intended to cover the representation of several kinds of information, centred around individuals, who collect, create and use their own information. Much of this information is typically of the kind that can be used for individuals' learning, but rather than being learning materials authored by an educator, the information covered by this specification is authored by the individuals themselves, about themselves. The individual, whether pupil, student, apprentice, employee or none of these, may be thought of as a learner for our purposes. If a learner reflects, on the information collected, or on other things, the expression of that reflection will be one kind of information that will take a natural place among the other kinds of information dealt with here.
The learner may also make selections from this information for presentation to other people, serving as evidence of the learner's learning, abilities, achievements, etc. The information is therefore considered for our purposes to be portfolio information, the learner may be thought of as the portfolio holder, and each presentation as a portfolio. Portfolio holders may not own all the information presented, but they will typically control access to it by others. Digital artefacts created or authored by the learner are one important category of information that can be used in electronic portfolios, and that therefore is covered by this specification.
It is not the purpose of this specification to cover information gathered by others about an individual, over which that individual has no access or control.
One of the ways in which learners express their reflections, and may record other information, is through blogs (weblogs). The Atom Syndication Format is a ubiquitous specification covering blogs, and it is designed to be extensible, so it has been chosen as the basis of this present specification. Atom by itself does not provide a rich enough vocabulary to distinguish all the significantly different kinds of portfolio information. This specification selects from Atom and extends it, to be able to represent the needed distinctions.
This specification is intended to be permissive rather than exclusive. It specifies what may be "expected" in a transfer of portfolio information as specified. Very few elements are mandatory, except where specified as mandatory within Atom. Other elements may be present, and should not cause processing errors, but may not be interpreted correctly, or at all.
LEAP2A is the specification, based on Atom, developed and agreed by the partner developers. LEAP 2.0 is a wider, forward-looking framework, assembled by Simon Grant using ideas from many others, and kept up to date to reflect all developments in LEAP2A. LEAP 2.0 is more clearly directly based on Semantic Web concepts, and does not have the validity of having been agreed or implemented by anyone. LEAP 2.0 therefore acts as a conceptual testing ground, where ideas can be put in place ready for possible agreement and adoption within LEAP2A. LEAP2A is agreed and relatively stable, currently being steadily extended, but LEAP 2.0 constructs that are not part of LEAP2A may be changed or abandoned at any time, when new insight or agreement emerges.
LEAP2R, under construction, is intended to detail the RDF basis for representing the same information as LEAP2A, but in different formats, including RDFa (xhtml+rdfa), plain RDF/XML, a triples format like Turtle, or for inclusion using GRDDL concepts into any other XML format. Having defined LEAP2R it will be impossible to constrain its use.
Some possible future developments are listed at LEAP2A future.
Please send and feedback, comments, or questions, to Simon Grant.
