Re: Course, a new dawn?

I am concerned that in the name of simplicity, we are losing the ability to
understand the various things a Course may be:

1. The abstract notion (e.g. "HNC Accounting").
2. A specific session of the Course (e.g. HNC Accounting taught at St
Brycedale Campus Kirkcaldy starting 2016-08-29).
3. An offer to sell access to a Course. In the online world, this is
usually a specific session.

As the examples are written, I cannot tell the difference between
definitions 1) and 2), particularly because the first example gives dates.

I think we need to move back to a model where there is:

1. Course which is a subtype of CreativeWork
2. CourseOffering (or CourseSession if Offering is too close to Offer)
 which is a subtype of Event
3. Use the "offers" property on CreativeWork and Event to allow someone to
specify an Offer to sell access to a Course or CourseSession as appropriate.

- Vicki

Vicki Tardif Holland | Ontologist | vtardif@google.com


On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> Well, that got complicated & confusing.
>
> Richard and I had a chat this afternoon, he suggested we try something
> different. Briefly, it is to try a new starting point (and I hope I have
> interpreted correctly):
>
> Do not have separate types for Course and CourseOffering.
>
> Define Course as a subtype of both Creative Work and Event, which can be
> used for both the abstract description and the concrete instances.
>
> Define a coursePresentation property of Course to relate the concrete
> instances to the abstract description when necessary. (I guess and inverse
> property might useful).
>
> When describing a concrete instance of a course, declare it to be both a
> Course and an Offer. This allows the use of price, offeredBy, ApplyAction
> and so on.
>
> There is an mock-up of this at
> http://course.schema-course-extend-rjwprop.appspot.com/Course If you
> scroll right down to the bottom there are a couple of examples as Google
> testing tool output (more or less human readable) and RDFa.
>
> Any comments on this as a general approach? Does it make enough of a
> distinction between a Course and its Sections/Presentations/Offerings for
> it to be clear to people who care about such a distinction?
>
> Don't worry too much about details of the properties that are currently in
> the mock-up, that could lead more rabbit holes prematurely.
>
> Phil
>
> --
> --
> 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.
>
>
>