Dear colleagues, On Monday 25/10, Mrs Amee Evans Godwin, from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, gave a Keynote, addressing some of the main questions of the e-Conference. More information on the Keynote and ISKME activities, can be found in the Resources section, HERE To replay the Keynote, please click HERE and choose the "Replay" option in the popup page. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis

[quote="jorgemaia"] [quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 2 Managing a portal with thousands of resources and users: Are communities "attracted" to quality, like bees to honey? [/quote] Thousands of resources could be very usefull to attract users, and a different variety of users. But they will only be there and will be faitfull to the portal if there is enought quality in the information delivered. We will be able to see if it's quality information based on is comming back to get further information - trust on the portal. So our main job is deliver quality to the portal! [/quote] In my opinion, that's an on to the point comment, if you don't mind me saying so, but what are, one or two ways, with which we could bring quality to the portal? Will this be attempted through users involvement, or will it be a process, built in to the system?

Dear colleagues, On Monday 25/10, Mrs Amee Evans Godwin, from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, gave a Keynote, addressing some of the main questions of the e-Conference. More information on the Keynote and ISKME activities, can be found in the Resources section, HERE To replay the Keynote, please click HERE and choose the "Replay" option in the popup page. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis

Sitting in the 4th International Conference on Metadata & Semantics Research in Alcala de Henares, Spain. Listening to the Keynote by Dr. Christian Stracke on: The Benefits and Future of Standards: Metadata and beyond Wanted to share some thoughts presented here: "Quality is important in all types of learning, offline & online" Three (3) Quality dimensions were presented: 1. Potential (quality as perceived in the future - how should the final outcome look like) 2. Process (quality of internal processes of an organization) 3. Results (quality of products - resources, etc.) "Apart from the above, really important is your situation and context in which we work with quality. In this sense, there is no specific definition of quality" In this sense "quality standards have to be flexible, supportive & have to be adapted" For more details, we hope to have the presentation uploaded in the resources section, soon. I also hope I transmitted Dr. Stracke's words and have not altered their core meaning.

Dear colleagues, Thank you for the first round of answers to our general topic posed here! Adressing your interest on this, allow me to provide some additional questions on this topic, that aim to provide different directions for our discussions. To facilitate the discussion, we would like to ask you to start replying by indicating the question number addressed (i.e. Q1), so that our colleagues that read you answers can easily identify the question you refer to. It's not obligatory to answer all of these, so feel free to choose the ones you want to answer. It would be nice, to answer with separate "posts" on each question. In this way, we will be able to follow up on your questions more easily. 1. Which metadata standard are you using in your institutional/project repository? 2. How many and which metadata elements do you require for a resource to be uploaded in the repository? 3. How do you measure quality of the metadata within your repository? Do you have any mechanisms (automated or not) in place, to ensure the completeness, correctness, etc. of metadata? 4. As a content creator, do you find it easy to provide metadata for the resources you create? What are your experiences so far? 5. Would you prefer a repository with hundreds of thousands of resources with the minimum metadata attached to them (title, description and keywords) or a repository with significantly less resources, described with a comprehensive set of metadata elements (covering educational aspects, format requirements, classification aspects, etc.)? Justify you choice. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis

Dear colleagues, On Monday 25/10, Mrs Amee Evans Godwin, from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, gave a Keynote, addressing some of the main questions of the e-Conference. More information on the Keynote and ISKME activities, can be found in the Resources section, HERE To replay the Keynote, please click HERE and choose the "Replay" option in the popup page. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis

Dear e-Conference participants, Initiating the discussion on Topic 1, we would like to provide you with a set of questions that focus on various aspects of the proposed topic. As you will see, some of the questions are more generic, whereas others focus on specific stakeholder groups (i.e. content/course creators, users of the content, etc.). The idea here is to start elaborating on these topics, clarifying and delving into the characteristics of a quality learning resource. To facilitate the discussion, we would like to ask you to start replying by indicating the question number addressed (i.e. Q1), so that our colleagues that read you answers can easily identify the question you refer to. 1. What is a learning resource for you? Which is the definition that describes your perception of learning resources? 2. Do you have a pre-defined process of creating learning resources? Do you apply any specific criteria that must be followed? 3. Do you have ways of assessing the quality of the learning resources you are using or have created yourselves? 4. Do you find it easy to retrieve content online that will help you create new learning resources? 5. Do you share your resources online? Do you attach any Intellectual Property Rights to them? With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis - Moderator - Topic 1

Dear colleagues, On Monday 25/10, Mrs Amee Evans Godwin, from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, gave a Keynote, addressing some of the main questions of the e-Conference. More information on the Keynote and ISKME activities, can be found in the Resources section, HERE To replay the Keynote, please click HERE and choose the "Replay" option in the popup page. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis

[quote="ameha"] Hi Nikos, let me answer the questions you posed, 1. I am using a metadata to construct and I am tagging them using the acceptable lom standard. 2. Providing metadata to your resources is useful if you want to search them and if you want to make them searchable in a federated repository structure. The incentive...a good will that someone on the other side of the world is making ones resource available and for the sake of giving a better learning environments for students or any other clients of the subject matter 3. The quality of a metadata, I believe, is not completeness in its adherence to the standard of metadata used but the correctness and using the minimum, at least, acceptable tags from the standard. The language is also important but the process is time consuming 4. It will make your works and your organizations' reputation in providing learning materials to a bigger level. You will get more comments and directions other that the recognition you get for your resources [/quote] Dear Ameha, Reading your opinion on the questions asked, it feels like you are already familiar with the concepts of metadata and you are also capable of working with them. I only have one question, leaving the ground to Jackie and other colleagues to follow up on your answers. Do your colleagues, or people you work with, in other institutions, share your thoughts on the necessity of metadata? In general, what is your perception of people's attitude towards using metadata to annotate resources?

Initiating the discussion on Topic 2, we would like to provide you with a set of questions that focus on various aspects of the proposed topic. As you will see, some of the questions are more generic, whereas others focus on specific stakeholder groups (i.e. content/course creators, users of the content, etc.). The idea here is to start elaborating on these topics, clarifying and delving into the characteristics of a quality learning resource. To facilitate the discussion, we would like to ask you to start replying by indicating the question number addressed (i.e. Q1), so that our colleagues that read you answers can easily identify the question you refer to. 1. Have you described in the past, your learning resources using metadata (description, title, keywords, tags, etc)? Which are the metadata elements that you mainly use? 2. Do you feel that providing metadata for resources is useful? What are the incentives that drive you, to provide the metadata? 3. What constitutes high quality metadata for a resource? Is it completeness for all metadata elements? Is it the clarity and correctness of the language used? Other aspects? 4. What are the benefits you see in providing metadata for learning resources in practice? With kind regards, On behalf of Topic 2 Moderators, Jackie Wickham & Stephanie Taylor Nikos Palavitsinis