LEAP activity

Belongs to LEAP 2.0 > classes

Working definition
Refers to any activity, experience, occupation, that takes any time and involves the portfolio holder in any way: future, present or past, continuous, interrupted or recurrent; it can comprise a group of lesser activities.

Explanation
This needs no explanation: examples are given here.

Examples

 * A course as taken by an individual
 * A course module (would belong to one or more courses)
 * A lecture (might be part of a course or course module)
 * A period of employment
 * A specific task undertaken as part of employment
 * A project
 * A public event such as a conference
 * A holiday
 * A period devoted to some sport, hobby or pastime
 * A series of such periods
 * A conference
 * A meeting

Alternative terms, with nuances of meaning

 * Activity - this tends to suggest pastimes, hobbies, recreations, but of course here it is intended to be inclusive
 * Experience - tends to include things that may not be recognised by anyone else
 * Event - more organized or public, like shows and conferences, typically with many people and possibly organizations
 * Meeting - also organized, but private or select, involving several people
 * Action - more of an uninterrupted single instance of something
 * Activity record - tends to imply in the past
 * Planned action - implies the future, or something planned that didn't happen

What it is not

 * An achievement: a completed achievement has one associated date/time: that at which the goal was achieved. Activities logically have at least two: start and finish.
 * A qualification (or similar): a qualification can be the end result of an activity that is usually a course of study. Thus a qualification can better be thought of as an achievement rather than an activity.

Predicates
See the notes on LEAP triples for an explanation of what forms of triples there are, and how they are represented here. See the notes on LEAP triples for an explanation of what forms of triples there are, and how they are represented here.
 * Particular "Inherited" predicates are given to clarify their likely meaning for this class.
 * "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
Particular predicates from item:
 * (content ... use description instead)
 * contribution by = text note of who was notably involved in the activity
 * contribution by &rarr; LEAP item noting who was involved in the activity
 * contribution by &rarr; any LEAP agent who was notably involved in the activity
 * follows &rarr; another LEAP activity, generally at the same level
 * precedes &rarr; another LEAP activity, generally at the same level
 * referred to by &rarr; another LEAP item, particularly a LEAP entry
 * related &rarr; e.g. a course section prospectus page, holiday destination info, conference web site...
 * supported by &rarr; e.g. any LEAP ability used in the activity
 * supports &rarr; e.g. LEAP achievements which this activity led to; LEAP goals which this activity is meant to contribute to

Direct

 * activetime = time spent actually engaged in the activity. If an activity is broken down into sub-activities, the activetime at the whole level should equal the sum of the activetimes at the level below.
 * certified by &rarr; certifying LEAP agent
 * coverage = a note on where and when the activity happened or is due to happen (but prefer temporal and spatial)
 * date ref = a date or time relevant to the activity (but prefer start, end and target)
 * description = a description of the activity; preferred over content
 * end = date or time at which the activity ended or is due to end
 * end earliest = earliest date or time at which the activity is planned to end or could have ended
 * end latest = latest date or time at which the activity is planned to end or could have ended
 * first &rarr; first sub-activity, if any
 * has collaborator &rarr; LEAP person who was jointly responsible for doing the activity
 * has evidence &rarr; other LEAP item; any URI
 * has outcome &rarr; any item, including a note of an outcome
 * has part &rarr; sub-LEAP activity
 * has pattern &rarr; LEAP pattern e.g. of the abilities demonstrated in this activity
 * in employ of &rarr; LEAP agent, may overlap with, but not quite the same as managed by or sponsored by
 * intent = the reason for this activity
 * (is evidence of &rarr; LEAP ability, loosely applied; prefer has pattern)
 * is part of, &rarr; super-LEAP activity
 * managed by &rarr; manager LEAP agent
 * presented by &rarr; a LEAP entry, LEAP resource or LEAP selection, where the activity is the main topic
 * progress = {planned | progressing | completed} or { possible | planned | progressing | paused | completed | abandoned}
 * spatial = where the activity has taken or will take place
 * sponsored by &rarr; sponsor LEAP agent
 * start = date or time at which the activity started or is due to start
 * start earliest = earliest date or time at which the activity is planned to start or could have started
 * start latest = latest date or time at which the activity is planned to start or could have started
 * target = date or time at which the activity was or is due to end (relatively fixed)
 * temporal = plain text note about dates and times relevant to the activity (but prefer date ref)

Inverse

 * is outcome of &larr; any item, including a note of an outcome
 * is pattern of &larr; LEAP pattern

Subclasses

 * LEAP meeting

Other subclasses may be defined in the light of vocabularies such as in IMS LIP. For example, an activity being educational has certain implications, different from the implications of being an employment activity.

MIAP CDD

 * Course

IMS EP
See the eP spec as a whole or the specific section in the information model.

"The Activity class consists of the education/training, work, and service (military, community, voluntary, etc.) record and products (excluding formal awards). This information may include the descriptions of the courses undertaken and the records of the corresponding assessment."

How: unspecified in information model (bind as you wish); in binding specified as structured data

FOAF
FOAF has currentProject and pastProject. Gorey details of the RDF Schema at http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/#term_currentProject. The comment there suggests usage is not stable.

HR-XML
HR-XML has Employment History as a shared construct. It has a lot of detail, rather against the idea of simple specs, but at least the Position History does include Description, StartDate and EndDate.

The Position History is included in Employment History, within an EmployerOrg. If we want to be able to represent a period of employment with a particular employer, which might be spread over several locations, a reference to an employer organisation is needed. This can be provided as a linked relationship. See discussion on this point.

Existing places information held
See LEAP2A activity

Blog post (any blog tool)
A blog entry describing in narrative form an activity. Available as atom:entry or rss:item.

Calendaring and scheduling systems
These include iCal, Outlook, Exchange Server. An event including start and end dates and description; available via IETF iCalendar spec.

Open Source Portfolio
If the Open Source Portfolio (OSP) resources in Sakai are configured with form items such as "Education History" and "Employment History", they can have attributes that are like activity as set out here.

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)

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

Status
IMS LIP etc. all had "status" as an attribute of activity. Should we have it or not? One has now been put in, as simply as logically possible. Please say as soon as you can, on the list, if you disagree with this proposal.

This requires agreement on vocabulary, which may be specific to the workflows of particular processes or systems. One option would be to leave this in generic categorization for grouping purposes. If workflow support is needed for activities (e.g. authoring and approval processes) this is a different problem space.

See quite a lot of discussion under the discussion tab, and on the CETIS-PORTFOLIO-DEV list.

Geographical or organisational location
The usage to represent periods of employment brings up the question of whether geographical location should be basic to the spec, or if geographical or organisational location are alternatives. However this raises other questions - see discussion.