Re: EOCred: Identify the level of a credential

As Stuart knows, I have spent too much of my life explaining the 
AlignmentObject not to jump at the chance of a simpler option. So I will 
proceed to explore option B

Phil


On 08/02/18 02:59, Fritz Ray wrote:
> Grudgingly agreed. AlignmentObject generally fails to work well as a 
> third party alignment (due to the awkward nature in which one has to 
> define it as a third party) and while it allows for new forms of 
> alignments such as 'enables', it really conflicts with first-order 
> alignments... which are also awkward to define as a third party. 
> Nothing appears to be lost.
>
> As for saying something about the alignment itself, that doesn't 
> really seem necessary unless the alignment requires additional 
> description or justification (as it may in a third party alignment, 
> say, marking two degrees as equivalent as part of a report or work 
> product).
>
> AlignmentObject also doesn't cover conditions or other possible 
> descriptors of the relationship, but neither do first-order 
> alignments. I feel like this is all known stuff, and not stuff that 
> we're trying to work on right now.
>
> If AlignmentObject had a sourceName, sourceDescription and sourceUrl, 
> this would be a whole different conversation. :-)
>
> On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 3:23 PM, Stuart Sutton <stuartasutton@gmail.com 
> <mailto:stuartasutton@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I'd suggest forgetting about your solution "A" and focusing on "B"
>     with range including DefinedTerm.
>
>     It seems to me that, as characterized, we are actually talking
>     about the educational/occupational level of the audience for whom
>     the credential is intended or useful.
>
>     I'm for an educationalLevel property even though there will be
>     some categories of EducationalOccupationalCredential where the
>     level adds little to what's gained from the credentialCategory
>     (e.g., an EducationalOccupationalCredential of the category
>     "Bachelor Degree" with the level "bachelors" isn't very
>     enlightening; but, for many other categories --badge,
>     microcredential, certificate etc.) it could be very useful.
>
>     While the values for such a property would ideally come from
>     controlled vocabularies (enumerations), for all of the reasons you
>     note, Phil, I'd be very disappointed to see us pick up
>     AlignmentObject. The first two bullets in your "bit" on
>     AlignmentObject frames the reasons for it's existence per its
>     development history in LRMI. BUT, since we are proposing a
>     property of the sort educationLevel (audienceLevel? :-), we can
>     scratch off bullet 1. Without bullet 1, AlignmentObject is nothing
>     more than into a poor reflection of the pending DefinedTerm--a
>     type more likely to garner broader use.
>
>     Going out on a limb, possible ranges for a level property could be
>     Text, URL, or DefinedTerm.
>
>     Your third bullet regarding being able to say something about the
>     alignment itself through property addition could be just as
>     applicable to DefinedTerm as it is to AlignmentObject. No?
>
>
>     Stuart
>
>
>     On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 4:27 AM, Phil Barker
>     <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk <mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>         The next use case I would like to discuss is around
>         identifying the level of an educational / occupational
>         credential currently stated as: it should be possible to
>         search or review results of a search by specific credential
>         level, e.g. post-graduate, High school, entry, intermediate,
>         advanced.
>
>         To do this we need to be able to relate an educational /
>         occupational credential to a description or representation of
>         an educational level. I see two options for this:
>
>         A. we do the same as is currently done for learning resources
>         and courses and use the educationalAlignement
>         <http://schema.org/educationalAlignment>property to point to
>         an AlignmentObject <http://schema.org/AlignmentObject> which
>         in turn points to and/or describes an educational level.
>
>         B. we add a new property educationalLevel which could point to
>         either an AlignmentObject or directly to a DefinedTerm for the
>         educational level.
>
>         I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on which they would prefer.
>
>
>         =A bit of background to the AlignmentObject.=
>
>         - the educationalAlignment / AligmentObject pairing is useful
>         when you don't want to pre-define and thus limit types of
>         alignments involved by having a few properties for specific
>         alignments (that's at the root of why LRMI introduced it, here
>         we have a specific alignment type we know we want.)
>
>         - the AlignmentObject is useful when the thing to which you
>         are aligning is not properly defined a a firstclass schema.org
>         <http://schema.org> object; it allows you to refer to it by
>         description
>
>         - the AlignmentObject is useful when you want to say things
>         about the alignment itself (e.g. describe who asserts the
>         alignment is true and how they came to this judgement) though
>         this ability is under developed and to my knowledge not used
>
>         - research <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3054160>[*]
>         into LRMI schema.org <http://schema.org> markup in the wild
>         suggests that the AlignmentObject (and relatively more complex
>         / abstract approaches in general) are used less frequently
>         than simpler property - value [literal] relationships.
>
>         - the Open Badges spec uses an alignment property to point
>         from a badge class to an AlignmentObject representing
>         objectives or educational standards (which is slightly
>         different to this use case, though we several use cases for
>         aligning to competencies)
>
>
>         Please let me know your thoughts.
>
>         Phil
>
>
>         * open access copy of that paper at
>         https://blogs.pjjk.net/phil/confpaper/analysing-improving-embedded-markup-learning-resources-web/
>         <https://blogs.pjjk.net/phil/confpaper/analysing-improving-embedded-markup-learning-resources-web/>
>
>
>         -- 
>
>         Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>.
>         http://people.pjjk.net/phil
>         PJJK Limited <https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance
>         learning; information systems for education.
>         CETIS LLP: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in
>         education technology.
>
>         PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited
>         company, number SC569282.
>         CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership,
>         registered in England number OC399090
>
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Stuart A. Sutton, Metadata Consultant
>     Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>        Information School
>     Email: stuartasutton@gmail.com <mailto:stuartasutton@gmail.com>
>     Skype: sasutton
>
>
>

-- 

Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
PJJK Limited <https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning; 
information systems for education.
CETIS LLP: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.

PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, 
number SC569282.
CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in 
England number OC399090