Re: Modelling Course and CourseOffering

A CreativeWork subtype or not?
In my mind the reasoning for using CreativeWork as the super-type for
Course are two fold.

   1. The making of the course itself, designing, documenting, assembling
   materials & references, etc., etc., is a creative act with creator(s) etc.

   As Joshua indicates, what the course is about my well not be a creative
   thing, but that does not detract from the creative nature of any course.
   An analogy in the current Schema.org structure being Episode
   <http://schema.org/Episode> - TV & Radio episodes often do not have
   creative things as their subjects, yet are definitely CreativeWorks.

   2. Pragmatism - I think we will find that if we take Intangible as the
   super type for Course, we will need to add many properties to course that
   already have CreativeWork in their domain.  Wanting to be concise will lead
   us not to include [in an intangible based course] some properties that only
   *might* be useful.  Whereas sub-typing CreativeWork we can inherit the
   usage patterns, and previous justifications for, the many properties that
   come with CreativeWork.

   As an exercise it would be worth stepping through the properties of
   CreativeWork <http://schema.org/CreativeWork> and list the one which
   would *not* be applicable to some course type or other.  If you include
   potential online courses, that list will be fairly short.

~Richard

Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @rjw

On 10 February 2016 at 16:07, J Marks <jkmarks@gmail.com> wrote:

> Phil et al,
>
> Great dialog so far! Allow me to offer a couple of notes on the open
> questions:
>
> Phil wrote:
>
> > Open for discussion:
> > - should Course be a subtype of Intangible or CreativeWork?
>
> This can be argued either way with validity depending on your scope of
> definition of a course. I would recommend Intangible to take the more
> inclusive perspective of a course and course offering. I consider courses
> that are mainly experiential such as Intermediary Wine Tasting or Advanced
> Meditation Practice/Lab, etc. There are a whole class of courses (pardon
> the pun) that are about doing rather then show and tell. Furthermore those
> that are more about show and tell often aggregate a collection of different
> creative works and then apply a collaborative discussion, evaluation or
> critique process as group on those works. That feels rather intangible to
> me.
>
> > - is there a need for a separate type for the instantiation?
>
> Is there a strong reason to separate this? Seems cleaner to not if we
> don;t have a strong reason to, and I don't have one to offer.
>
>   --if there is need, can we agree to call it a CourseOffering?
>
> That seems like a ok name if we need it, but US K-12 noremallt talks abotu
> a course and a course section (With an instructor, schedule, syllabus,
> set of learning expectations (aka competencies) and requirements, etc.).
> But why not simply list all the "Course Sections" with the course and their
> related section specific information? Maybe that is what the sub-type is
> needed for?
>
> FWIW,
>
> Joshua Marks
>
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 5:02 AM, Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>> I asked for comments on the use cases, scope description and definition
>> of an educational course [1]. There have been some suggested new use cases
>> and clarification of the scope with respect to aggregations of courses. I
>> have updated the pages on the wiki accordingly. Nudge me if I have
>> forgotten anything or not captured your meaning. If you have any other
>> comment please add them to that thread, but the general shape seems
>> uncontroversial so I would like to start a couple of new discussion threads
>> for how to meet requirements arising from the use cases.
>>
>> The first of these is around the modelling of courses and course
>> offerings. This is tricky. There have been discussions in a couple of
>> places at least: on Vicki's Google doc proposal [2] and Wes's pull request
>> [3].
>>
>> Consensus seems limited at the moment to
>> - we need a schema.org type: Course
>> - there are abstract and concrete aspects of courses, i.e. the (abstract
>> ) thing that is offered year after year and instantiations of it that run
>> between set dates and at set locations (on- or offline)
>>
>> Open for discussion:
>> - should Course be a subtype of Intangible or CreativeWork
>> - is there a need for a separate type for the instantiation?
>>   --if there is need, can we agree to call it a CourseOffering?
>>
>>
>> I propose that we continue the discussion here, but in order to make
>> progress pending an outcome to that discussion (and in the hope of
>> informing the discussion with real world examples) we try the following:
>> - work with a model that has two new types Course and CourseOffering
>> - we do not assume any parent for these types yet, but we do try to meet
>> requirements by drawing in properties from other types already in
>> schema.org rather than create new ones. For example, if we want to know
>> what a course is about we use the existing 'about' property form
>> CreativeWork, if we want to know when a CourseOffering runs we use might
>> find something in Event.
>>
>> At the end of the process we will know what schema type a Course and
>> CourseOffering most looks like, which would be one factor in deciding what
>> it should be a subtype of. We will also know whether they look
>> substantially different.
>>
>>
>> Do you think that will work?
>>
>> Phil
>>
>> 1.
>> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-schema-course-extend/2016Feb/att-0001/00-part
>> 2.
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12YWjLzZC8FiTiOwSAETRIEozeqZdn6O8a4fgqK4t5Ss/edit
>> 3. https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/pull/972#issuecomment-173560886
>> & following comments
>>
>> --
>> Phil Barker           @philbarker
>> LRMI, Cetis, ICBL     http://people.pjjk.net/phil
>> Heriot-Watt University
>>
>> Workflow: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/workflow/
>>
>>
>>
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