LEAP selection

Belongs to LEAP 2.0 > classes

Working definition
A set of related portfolio items or external resources, typically selected by the portfolio holder for a particular purpose and for display to a particular audience.

Explanation
A LEAP selection is a typically purposeful collection of LEAP items.

There are many ways in which information about a selection can be configured. At one level, one may compare with the OAI-ORE concept of "aggregation", which may be informative. For LEAP 2.0, we are trying to keep things relatively simple and straightforward.

While a collection or aggregation can simply be a set of things, a selection has an implied purpose and audience. Indeed, an electronic portfolio for presentation can obviously be represented as a selection. A selection certainly contains references to the selected things that comprise it, but there are several ways of adding the extra material.
 * One may have a plain description of the selection - e.g. "this is my set of snaps from my holiday in Africa on 2003"
 * One may have an entry, web page, or other resource describing the selection.

Then a presentation may have layout. One simple and obvious way of giving the essential layout is to represent it as XHTML content. This could work for a CV, for instance, by the content being the CV layout, and there being links to the individual items (or presentations of them) which are mentioned in the CV, for further detail. Such links could be embedded in the XHTML, as well as being represented by relationship triples.

On the other hand, there may be an introduction to the set, rather than layout of the whole set. This would allow the possibility that some of the things selected can themselves link on to other things, which may not have been in referred to in the introductory view. A set of web pages would be a good example of this kind of arrangement.

In this case, all that is necessary is to indicate which is the "first" page of the selection, and to let the reader browse around at will.

If permissions attach to a selection, it is expected that at least the same permissions transfer through to the selected items.

This all gives a powerful set of tools for representing many kinds of selection. There is little ambiguity, because each predicate has its own meaning: not all predicates are needed in any one case.

Alternative terms, with nuances of meaning

 * Aggregation
 * Collection
 * Presentation
 * Selection

Predicates
See the notes on LEAP triples for an explanation of what forms of triples there are, and how they are represented here.
 * "Direct" predicates are those where this class is in the domain of the predicate (but its superclass is not).
 * "Inverse" predicates, if given for reference, are those where the class is in the range, but not the domain, of the predicate.
 * "=" means the predicate expects a literal object: the type of literal may be specified here.
 * "&rarr;" means the predicate expects an object URL referring to an instance of the given class(es).
 * "&larr;" is used for inverse predicates, and means that triples may exist with instances of the given class(es) as subject and this class as object.

Inherited
from item (Or should we have a separate layout predicate?)
 * content = layout of the selection; alternative to description

Direct

 * description = a description of the collection; alternative to content
 * excludes &rarr; a LEAP item specifically excluded from the selection
 * first &rarr; a LEAP item which is first, or most important, in the selection, e.g. one which presents the rest
 * has collaborator
 * has part &rarr; only another LEAP selection which is strictly part of the larger selection;
 * has pattern &rarr; a LEAP pattern instantiated in this selection
 * includes &rarr; a LEAP item included in this selection
 * intent = the reasons for putting together this selection
 * is part of &rarr; only another LEAP selection which strictly contains this selection;
 * presents &rarr; a LEAP item representing the main subject of the selection

Subclasses

 * LEAP cv
 * LEAP plan

Other specs that use similar things
OAI-ORE

The IMS ePortfolio View class is a useful indicator, though there a view is regarded simply as a portfolio containing a subset of the possible portfolio parts, without the ability to define logical groupings of items.

Existing places information held
See LEAP2A selection

Any more? Add them like this
(and if you can, add a link to more information about how information can be obtained from it, and in what format)

Intensional definition of selections
It may well be useful to allow selections based on criteria rather than on explicitly defining which items are included.

This would need a selection expression in some recognised language. It would make sense if the language was SPARQL. It might also be useful to provide for excluding specific items from those gathered by the selection expression.

Other
A note can go here of any more issues that are not represented above, which can then be discussed on the list or under the discussion tab.