Welcome to the W3C EOCred-schema WG

Hello, and welcome to the W3C Educational and Occupational Credentials 
in schema.org working group. This message concerns: chairing the group, 
introductions, getting started with the work, and spam.

*chairing the group.*

My name is Phil Barker, I proposed this working group, and I see someone 
has nominated me as chair. Thank you for that, I am very happy to take 
this role. This is an open group, so if at any time anyone else wants a 
different/additional chair there is a process for that. Just let your 
wishes be known to the group and we can come to a consensus or have a vote.

*introductions*

We don't all know each other, so it might be a good idea to send a short 
introduction about yourself and your interest in educational and 
occupational credentials.

After spending the last 20yrs in educational technology and standards 
based in Higher Ed, I am an now an independent consultant in technology 
for learning and information systems for education. I have worked in 
metadata for many years, I am part of the DCMI LRMI 
<http://lrmi.dublincore.net/> task group which added educational terms 
to schema.org, and I chaired W3C schema course extend 
<https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/> community group 
that added terms to describe Courses. I am on the technical advisory 
group for the Credential Engine <http://credentialengine.org/> and, as 
point of disclosure, while I don't represent the Credential Engine in 
the community group, I am receiving funding from them in order to 
facilitate linking their work to schema.org.

*getting started with the work*

I suggest that we progress this work in much the same way as the W3C 
schema course extension community**group worked. That is, to:

- gather some outline use cases in order to scope what it is that we 
want to cover (just a few words will do, we're not building a system so 
we don't need a great deal of detail).

- gather examples of sites that convey information relevant to these use 
cases. These will act as sanity checks on the type of information that 
is published on the web about educational and occupational credentials.

- distil requirements from the use cases, checking that the examples 
show that what require can be provided.

- discuss and come to a consensus on how these requirements can best be 
met with existing schema.org properties or, failing that, propose new 
properties to meet the requirements.

At the end I hope the use cases and requirements, with a record of how 
the requirements can be met, will serve as a sort of how-to 
documentation for describing Ed & Oc credentials in schema.org.

I think we can do much of this work using the W3C tools: this mail list 
and a wiki.

You can see the initial discussions we've had at the Credential Engine 
and their outcomes on Github 
<https://github.com/CredentialEngine/CTDL2schema.org/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20> 
and Google docs 
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nDHfk5WMGoxcsHi7ujjFwHecXjb_lTlE8va1At71_Zo/edit>.

I think it would be useful to supplement the online working with a 
conference call when necessary, starting with one to discuss what I have 
outlined so far in this message. I will send a poll round to find a 
suitable time soon.

*Spam*

Some of you may have seem some spam that was posted to the community 
group blog. The person who sent it has been removed from the group, and 
so cannot post again. I have asked the W3C community group support team 
whether there is anything that can be done to stop it happening again.

With best regards, Phil


LRMI http://lrmi.dublincore.net/

schema course extension https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/

Credential Engine http://credentialengine.org/

-- 

Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
PJJK Limited: technology to enhance learning; information systems for 
education.

PJJK Limited <https://www.pjjk.co.uk> is registered in Scotland as a 
private limited company, number SC569282.