RE: schema course extend: Progress!

courseMode
I think that a key problem might be current usage.

We found with XCRI-CAP that when we introduced 3 elements along the lines you’ve indicated below - attendanceMode (the type of location at which the student will undertake the instance), attendancePattern (the period in the day and/or frequency during which attendance at a venue is required)  and studyMode (a general expression of the overall amount of the student's time that is devoted to the course) – we found that it was very difficult for providers to supply this breakdown automatically.  This was typically because they might hold the information as, for example, “3 years full-time, up to 6 years part-time”, where there was a muddle over full-time/part-time *attendance* versus full-time/part-time *study*.

Although it’s not a pure solution, and I would prefer folks to be able to supply and use a breakdown of the information, I think that for practical purposes, we should opt for courseMode as defined.  It has the merit of permitting providers to enter the information in whatever human-readable format they have at present.  If we attempt to define the breakdown, I think we may stall the design and possibly take-up.

courseCode
In my view this should be purely an identifier, preferably the provider’s identifier.  I was a little wary of the example we’ve used, which was a UCAS (UK admissions) course code that is often confused with a subject classification code; but UK providers often use these as their own identifiers, particularly on the web.

I have presumed (?!) that the purpose of the courseCode is to enable the user to uniquely identify the course within a provider’s offerings, typically in order to find more information, and to clearly differentiate one course from another.  Perhaps we need to be clearer about the purpose of this item? I wouldn’t want to see a CIP code here, because a CIP code is not simply a course identifier, but has a specific subject-related meaning.

There’s no reason (I think) that a courseCode couldn’t be a URI.  For XCRI-CAP we specifically enable that approach.

Alan

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Alan Paull
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From: Jim Goodell [mailto:jgoodell2@yahoo.com]
Sent: 25 August 2016 22:16
To: Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com>; Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>
Cc: public-schema-course-extend@w3.org
Subject: Re: schema course extend: Progress!

The proposed terms look good for inclusion. I just have some concerns for usability of two of the terms.



This is not necessarily to hold up the planned inclusion in the core of the next release. It could be that they go in as is and more terms/example/guidance added later to make them more usable.

CourseInstance > courseMode (http://schema.org/courseMode) — What’s expected here isn’t clear by the definition. A controlled vocabulary or more refined examples could help. Current examples are about different things:


  *   Event scheduling, e.g. “Evenings only and weekends,”

  *   level of student effort, e.g. “Full Time,”

  *   delivery model or student experience, e.g. “MOOC,” “Online”.

This term seems to be trying to serve the purpose of multiple terms such as:


  *   Virtual Indicator — (Yes/No) (https://ceds.ed.gov/element/001160)
  *   Course Interaction Mode — (Synchronous/Asynchronous) (See: https://ceds.ed.gov/element/001311)
  *   Course Instruction Method — (Lecture/Lab/Seminar/Independent Study…) (See: https://ceds.ed.gov/element/001308 )
  *   Blended Learning Model Type (Rotation model/Flex model/A La Carte model/Enriched Virtual model) (https://ceds.ed.gov/element/001287)
  *   Course Section Time Required For Completion — (See: https://ceds.ed.gov/element/000101 )

"courseMode," if included, should be defined as one of these in the definition or examples, leaving to future terms added later to address other possible meanings of "mode".


Course > courseCode ( http://schema.org/courseCode) — This looks like it is assumed to be the provider or delivery system’s course code. This text has no standard meaning. However, a “Course Code System” in the markup could specify if the code is either local (no global meaning) or based on a recognized standard such as the NCES and CIP Codes used by U.S. postsecondary institutions. (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/browse.aspx?y=55).


An alternative: Just  add “URL” as one of the expected types so the markup can include a link to the standard code (e.g. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=55&cipid=87981)


-Jim


________________________________
From: Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com<mailto:danbri@google.com>>
To: Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk<mailto:phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>>
Cc: "public-schema-course-extend@w3.org<mailto:public-schema-course-extend@w3.org>" <public-schema-course-extend@w3.org<mailto:public-schema-course-extend@w3.org>>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 9:40 AM
Subject: Re: schema course extend: Progress!

On 19 August 2016 at 10:09, Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk<mailto:phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> this is a request to approve the proposal that the most stable parts of our
> work so far into the core of schema.org. More detail about this are at
> https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/195#issuecomment-240729669 but
> in brief:
>
> Dan Brickley asked me what Course-related terms I felt were most stable. He
> wishes to show some tangible progress and to stabilize the building blocks
> that we will need later (and so do I).
>
> We agreed that
>  * Course + properties: courseCode, coursePrerequisites, hasCourseInstance
>  * CourseInstance + properties: courseMode, instructor
> are at a stage where we can consider moving them into the schema.org core.
>
> After yesterday's discussion, I think we can now add
> educationalCredentialAwarded  to that list.
>
> So, please review
> http://pending.webschemas.org/Course

> http://pending.webschemas.org/courseCode

> http://pending.webschemas.org/coursePrerequisites

> http://pending.webschemas.org/educationalCredentialAwarded

> http://pending.webschemas.org/hasCourseInstance

> http://pending.webschemas.org/CourseInstance

> http://pending.webschemas.org/courseMode

> http://pending.webschemas.org/instructor

>
> and indicate whether you agree that these should be proposed for inclusion
> in the core of the next release of schema.org.

In my schema.org webmaster / community group chair capacity, I asked
"please share whatever progress you've made with the wider community
and propose the pieces with rough consensus for inclusion at
schema.org". I'm glad to see that happening. It will build confidence
in the process of developing these vocabularies this if people see
results starting to emerge.

As a Google representative here, I can also share a little perspective
from Google as potential users of the courses vocabulary. Firstly, we
agree that these basic 8 terms are ready to be added to the schema.org
core. We have been following this work with interest as it evolves,
and are comfortable with the general direction (including the
expectation of richer credential modeling to follow) and with these
specifics. The courseMode property is naturally of special interest to
us as it is important for any applications based on this data that
some basic distinctions between offline vs online can be made without
too much guesswork, even though there are plenty of nuances that might
be explored. We would ideally like to see controlled values agreed for
this property, as consensus emerges, but believe that the basic
meaning of the property is clear enough for courseMode to already be
of value, i.e. it can be improved in-place (as happens with many other
schema.org properties as designs evolve).

BTW thanks everyone for getting us this far. It seems we are close to
passing an important milestone in this work.

cheers,


Dan