TOPIC 1

[quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote] Obviously quantity first. As we are trying to introduce elearning in agriculture the dilemma on either quality or quantity is far away. we are now trying to evolve a system to make agri faculty comfortable to use this medium and contribute. In a way we are a step behind and hence trying to learn from others experiences rama Rao, NAARM, India

[quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote] I must agree with RAMA, quality is always first that quantity. We live in a world of information abundance, and the major role for our organization is to select what is of good quality and what is not, so users will be closer to the best. That doesn´t mean it will happen, knowing some of the limitations of our stakeholders. Quality criteria for a Ag learning resource will be something to define and promote better. All the best, Federico Sancho IICA in Costa Rica

[quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote] I will have to agree with the rest participants of this conversation. I would go for the quality, hands down. Since we refer to educational material I am positive that quality is the first priority, and quantity is of secondary significance. I can see no use of populating a repository with resources poorly described with metadata. Of course, quality is a subjective term but if some basic guidelines are followed or if a quality assurance mechanism is deployed then we can be positive about the quality aspect of our educational resources.

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

[quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote] I think that on the early development of the resource the quality should be preferred. Then you can immediately increase the number of materials, but after experts learn to work with. Then the speed and quantity will grow themselves.

Q1. Which metadata standard are you using in your institutional/project repository? For OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) we created our own metadata format and then created cross-walks to export our data in a range of metadata formats: Dublin Core LOM OER Recommender Lisa McLaughlin OER Commons Manager USA

Q2. How many and which metadata elements do you require for a resource to be uploaded in the repository? On OER Commons we currently require the following 12 elements: Title URL Subject Learning Resource Type Media Format Educational Context (Grade Level) Abstract Keywords Institution Conditions of Use URL Conditions of Use Description Conditions of Use Buckets (our own groupings of open license types, exps: Share Only, Remix and Share) Lisa McLaughlin OER Commons Manager USA

Q3. 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? At OER Commons, our minimum standard requires that material on our site contains the 12 elements outlined in Q2. We eyeball all data imports from harvesting to determine how comprehensive their metadata is. We also prioritize the import of collections known to be highly reputable. We use a python check script to ensure that automated harvests contain all the required elements but we also do a fair amount of manual curation. When a collection is of high quality or contains OER that is not easy to find elsewhere, we take the time to manually curate the items and add the missing data elements where and when we can find them. Users on our site are able to review items, which provides another quality control mechanism. When an item is poorly reviewed, we go over it to determine whether or not it should remain in the collection. Lisa McLaughlin OER Commons Manager [email protected]

[quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote] It really depends on your end goal. At OER Commons we have a fairly large collection, currently around 30,000 items. We have a multi-faceted approach to dealing with this dilemma. One way we ensure quality is by developing and highlighting micro-sites that showcase content we believe is exceptional around a theme (such as our current micro-green initiative which will contain a significant collection of agricultural OER). At our size, however, we think its important to shift to a recommender system model for ensuring quality in our larger collection. Our users can currently rate and review items but we are working on developing models for driving micro-contributions from users who care deeply about particular content areas. Once enough user-contributed content evaluation data is in place, we will shift to a user interface that enables the content with the highest rankings to rise to the top. Ultimately, repositories require significant user-contributions to differentiate them from the wide range of collections out there. Lisa McLaughlin OER Commons Manager USA [email protected]

Q1) A IEEE LOM application profile. Q2) 2 different levels of conformance exist. At the very basic one, only a few metadata fields but this is not recommended, so in the "regular" form, users should provide about 20-25 metadata elements of information. Q3) Expert reviews through a metadata quality workflow Q5) I couldn't tell just like that. But if completely necessary to choose, I would prefer to have just a few wel described and relevant to the topic of my interest. For huge repositories with no metadata I already have google :) Best regards, Salvador

The quality / quantity conundrum -- it really is a trade-off. In the end, it depends on what you need and what your goal is. Large, exhaustive collections will favor quantity, especially if dependent on others to provide resources. Personally, I favor a quality collection and am reminded of a recent experience in checking references cited in a print publication only to find that they were wrong-- I discarded the publication as a reputable resource! Rosana Frattini FAO [quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] TOPIC 1 Populating a repository with resources and metadata: The quality versus quantity dilemma [/quote]

[quote="nikospalavitsinis"] 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? It is too early for us to answer this question. But I can state that there will be no automated mechanism to check 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? No. But our experience is limited. 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. It seems to me that I would prefer the first option. I would rely at first on the authors who I already know. With kind regards, Nikos Palavitsinis [/quote]

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? At the Agricultural Research Institute we use WebAgris and follow the AGRIS AP metadata. So we enter all the metadata requested by the program. There is no way for us to measure the quality of the metadata.

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.

Hi, Organic minded people have a principle of producing sufficient quantities of high quality food. I think the same principle should be followed in populating resources. Best Ragnar

Dear collegues, According to the standards (ISO 9000:2000), Quality include the ability of a set of inherent characteristics of a product, system or process to fulfill requirements of customers and other interested parties. So, from my point of view, the quality criteria could include different aspects: information quality; technical quality; relevance; and participants' interpretation of quality. The first of these, information quality, is the nearest equivalent to the way in which quality is viewed in terms of organic agriculture information. It includes the attributes of accurancy (clear and easy to understunding); authority (regarding the credibility and believability of a source of information); and novelty. The second component, technical quality, is included as a criterion for some organic agriculture information assessment tools and relates to factors such as ease of navigating a web site and the use and deployment of graphics and colors. Best Regards, Maria Toader University of Agronomic Sciencies and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest [quote="nikospalavitsinis"] 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. [/quote]

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="Ragnar"] Hi, Organic minded people have a principle of producing sufficient quantities of high quality food. I think the same principle should be followed in populating resources. Best Ragnar [/quote] Hi Ragnar, I really like your way of thinking, and I absolutely agree with what you said! I also agree with the flexibility of the quality standards, that Nikos mentioned. It's really nice to have a predefined set of rules for defining the quality of educational resources, but one should always have some additional options in order to adapt to each specific case.