Re: Course, a new dawn?

Are we [in simple terms] heading towards a proposal for:

   1. Course subtype of CreativeWork - plus a few new course relevant
   properties
   2. CourseInstance subtype of Event - plus a few new course relevant
   properties
   3. The use of Offer to relate these to an offering organization with
   related costs, availability, eligibility, etc..

If this is the case, it would fit well with the established patterns within
Schema, providing examples to emulate and result in a proposal most likely
to gain understanding, and hopefully acceptance, from the wider Schema
community.

~Richard.

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

On 27 February 2016 at 13:16, Jim Goodell <jgoodell2@yahoo.com> wrote:

> 1) I'm comfortable that Course (the abstract) is a CreativeWork.
> 2) I'm comfortable with CourseInstance for the instance (a.k.a.
> Section/Offering) in this context.
>
> (CourseInstance could then use existing schema Offer and Event properties
> to handle those aspects without confusion.)
> Jim
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>
> *To:* public-schema-course-extend@w3.org
> *Sent:* Friday, February 26, 2016 6:02 AM
> *Subject:* Re: Course, a new dawn?
>
>
>
> Thank you all for your replies. I will create an alternative based on
> Vicki's ideas for comparison (but not today).
>
> A could of points to clarify / question
>
> 1) I am still seeing conflicting ideas about whether Course (the
> abstract) should be a type of Creative Work. Vicki suggests this, Dan
> seems not so comfortable with it.  I know that in the bibliographic
> world people are quite comfortable with CreativeWorks being represented
> at an abstract level not just being something like a document.
>
> 2) The name of a concrete offering/presentation of the Course is
> troublesome. Every suggestion I have seen seems to lead to
> misunderstandings. Session is another one: when I teach a course we have
> sessions on Mondays and Thursdays... but that is not what is meant by
> Vicki. Offering is confusing with Offer. Section and Presentation can
> also lead to problems.  Often when we are describing what we mean we
> talk about the abstract course and a specific instance of it, so I am
> going to suggest we go with Course and CourseInstance.
>
> Phil
>
> On 25/02/16 19:30, Developer, SleepingDog wrote:
> > I agree with (+1) Vicki and Dan that there is a requirement to model
> abstract courses that are not events; which in turn may have zero, one or
> more event-based offerings (possibly simultaneously, overlapping,
> sequentially) with properties whose distinctiveness will be important for
> learners.
> >
> > In markup terms, I expect this to be typically realized by a course
> details page which contains a set of (often descriptive) abstract course
> elements which apply to all offerings, and an optional set of offerings
> which have properties specific to them.
> >
> > I am not familiar enough with schema.org best practice to say how this
> should be achieved, and nor do I want to rule out a pattern that represents
> courses as abstraction-only or as creative works (like a learning object),
> or a one-off course which occurs as one event. But I can say that all of
> the three student record systems I have worked on extracting course
> information with, and all of the course modelling standards I have
> encountered have had a (parent) abstract course and a (child) concrete
> offering structure.
> >
> > Tavis Reddick
> >
> >> On 25 Feb 2016, at 18:33, Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 25 February 2016 at 18:23, Vicki Tardif Holland <vtardif@google.com>
> wrote:
> >>> 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.
> >>> - Vicki
> >> +1 …Courses do indeed have
> >> aspects (especially their syllabus) which are closer to documents, and
> >> aspects which are closer to events, but we lose too much by flattening
> >> everything into a single Course type that subclasses both.…
> >> --Dan
>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> --
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>