8th December 2003, Hull

The following report is from the 8th December 2003 Metadata and Digital Repository SIG Meeting, held at the University of Hull. Report by Phil Barker.

A list of attendees is given at the end of this report and a summary of the evaluation returns is also available.

Introduction
Phil Barker gave an introduction to the day and to the aims and activities of CETIS.

For more details, see Phil's slides [62KB].

eLearning at Hull
Chris Jesshope presented a technical and pedagogical overview of the University of Hull's eLearning strategy, including a discussion of problems which had been overcome and directions which future work might take.

Lipeng Wen, a PhD student with Chris, then gave a presentation based on his work to develop a schema driven methodology to store and manage related vocabulary terms using LOM/Dublin Core metadata.

For more details, see Chris's slides [690KB] and Lipeng's slides [102KB].

Jorum+ One Year On
The Jorum+ project is funded by Jisc to scope out the requirements of a learning object repository for UK HE and FE. Steve Rogers gave details of the results of a user requirement gathering exercise which has been undertaken over the last year, and a summary of the functionality required of such a repository in the Jisc Information Environment.

For more details, see Steve's slides [126KB].

Long Term Retention of Learning Objects
Ed Barker gave a presentation detailing the metadata and repository issues which are emerging from a Jisc funded study he is engaged on into the retention of learning objects. One of the aims of the study is ensure that resources which have available for reuse remain available even regardless of whether the project which created them continues. Ed presented his ideas on how digital repository interoperability might facilitate this, and also discussed some of the barriers to this happening.

For more details, see Ed's slides [46KB].

Standards and Specification Update
Lorna Campbell provided us with an update on new developments in relevant specifications and standards, including IMS Resources List Interoperability, IMS Metadata, IEEE LOM XML binding (the draft binding will hopefully be available soon), IEEE Digital Rights Expression, BS8419 (code of practice for interoperability between metadata systems for learning, education and training), the UK LOM Core and Identifiers for Learning Objects.

Finder: the Learning and Teaching Portal
Mike Clark gave an introduction to the LTSN and Jisc collaborative portal project to harvest information about learning and teaching resources for Further and Higher Education and make them available through a single portal. Portal services will include agency mappings, funding opportunities, community fora, and resource discovery of both learning materials and advice for teachers; all will be described using the UK LOM Core.

For more details, see Mike's slides [156KB].

UK LOM Core in intraLibrary 2.0
Peter Douglas of Intrallect Limited gave a preview version 2.0 of intraLibrary, their learning object repository. New features for this version of intraLibrary include full support of the IEEE LOM, support for application profiles of the LOM (including the UK LOM Core, and the facility to display multiple browse trees based on different classification schemes.

For more details, see Peter's slides [75KB].

User needs and metadata quality
Ben Ryan of the High Level Skills for Industry project gave an entertaining talk about the metadata issues which the HLSI project has identified. While there are technical challenges, it was the human factors involved in ensuring the creation of quality metadata which had caused the most problems. Ben showed how assumptions about how resource creators would work and choices in the technology support for metadata creation could affect the quality of metadata.

For more details, see Ben's slides [146KB].

Attendees
The following people registered for the meeting.

Many thanks to all who attended, especially to those who gave presentations and to those at Hull who helped with the organisation.