- From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 19:40:07 +0000
- To: "Developer, SleepingDog" <developer@sleepingdog.org.uk>, "public-schema-course-extend@w3.org" <public-schema-course-extend@w3.org>
Thanks Tavis. I had thought of your page as a good example of multiple course offerings but hadn't noticed that there was a mixture of full-time and part-time mode at different locations, which is what causes the problem. I suspect that some US college and university systems might be similar case to Scottish HE in offering the same course in different locations, but what I am not sure about is how admission to them is advertised on the web. Any example from the US would be welcome. Phil. On 11/02/16 19:24, Developer, SleepingDog wrote: > Hi all > > From my own tiny part of the globe, Scottish Further Education, CourseOffering/Presentation has if anything become more significant due to a round of government-sponsored College mergers. This has resulted in larger College (or groups of Colleges sharing the same curriculum/prospectus) responsible for geographical regions. Within these regions, the same course is often offered at different locations at various times during the same year, so that students can attend (more) locally. > > I don’t have a national breakdown, but out of 353 courses our College currently runs, 132 have no CourseOfferings (nothing to apply to), 114 have one, and 107 have more than one CourseOffering. > > One particular difference in these CourseOffering properties, as in the HNC Accounting example, is that some of these are full-time day courses, while others are evening classes (which appear in our site search terms). We have also offered courses on day-release, distance-learning and at weekends. These variants will be highly significant for course searchers fitting a course around their lives. > > Looking around other Colleges, you can see the same pattern: > > https://dundeeandangus.ac.uk/courses/finder/course/1062/hnc-accounting > https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/courses/hnc-accounting > http://www.westcollegescotland.ac.uk/courses/course-directory/courses/business-administration-accounting/hnc-accounting > > I am, of course, wary of generalising from these localised instances. I would note that traditional universities, in my experience, have a relatively simple course model that does not generalize well to other institutional and web-based course providers. During the XCRI project, for example, vocational college input was sought out to make the standard more robust and flexible. > > More globally, there are courses like ECDL/ICDL which have apparently the same curricula (not just qualification) but are offered by different institutions. > > Some organizations offer the same courses in different languages. The W3CDevCampus offers some courses in English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish: > http://www.w3devcampus.com/courses/ > > Many people take such online courses in a language that is not their first or native one. It would be valuable for them to see variant language offerings in any search results (although in this case it looks likely that these CourseOfferings will be on different web pages). > > My suggestion would be that CourseOffering is optional; clearly some courses do not have offerings in that sense (like the Lynda.com courses). > > As I mentioned before, I think there is great value in having a course search result which displays these CourseOfferings in a list just as the HNC Accounting example: > > https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hnc+accounting > Pages - Course Details : HNC Accounting - Fife College > www.fife.ac.uk/student/courses/course/HCACC > This course is designed for those wishing to take up a career in Accounting and Financial Administration within a range of organisations. Both HNC and HND ... > 29 Aug 2016 - 23 Jun 2017 Full Time Halbeath Campus ... > 31 Aug 2016 - 21 Jun 2017 Evenings only and ... St Brycedale Campus … > > In the W3CDevCampus example, the search result might show a HTML5 course offered (listed) at certain times in English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. This might need some kind of same-as relationship. > > After all, it is the search behaviour that we are looking to improve. > > However, we seem to be lacking some empirical statistical evidence to make any decision clearer. Have I missed something? Unfortunately, I do not have access at the moment to my College’s search engine tools, otherwise I guess something like Google’s sector search benchmarking might help. > > > Tavis Reddick > > >> On 11 Feb 2016, at 18:33, Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> >> Your comments please... >> >> >> Proposal: should we drop CourseOffering (AKA CourseSection) as a separate type from Course, and see how we fare without it. We can add it back later if we find we need it. We define Course in such a way that the properties currently discussed as relating to CourseOffering become properties of Course. >> >> Course >> "defintion: a sequence of events and/or creative works that aims to build the knowledge, competence or ability of learners, and that may be offered at a specific time and place, or through specific mode of study." >> >> Rationale: >> >> On 10/02/16 15:48, Alan Paull wrote: > > -- -- Phil Barker @philbarker LRMI, Cetis, ICBL http://people.pjjk.net/phil Heriot-Watt University Ubuntu: http://xkcd.com/456/ not so much an operating system as a learning opportunity.
Received on Thursday, 11 February 2016 19:40:58 UTC