schema course extension: tweaking the definition of Course, AggregateCourses

Talking with some people yesterday it was pointed out to me that there 
is room for uncertainty as to whether Course as we have defined it for 
Schema Course Extend would include something like a  collection of 
courses that taken together lead to a degree. The definition we have is

> A description of an educational course which may be offered as 
> distinct instances at different times and places, or through different 
> media or modes of study. An educational course is a sequence of one or 
> more educational events and/or creative works which aims to build 
> knowledge, competence or ability of learners.
http://course.schema-course-extend.appspot.com/Course


There is nothing in this definition that rules out a two/three/four-year 
course of study or programme that leads to a degree (indeed Courses are 
CreativeWorks and so Course may be a sequence of Courses). Part of the 
ambiguity is that in the US this would not be called a course, whereas 
in the UK it would.

I propose that we unambiguously state that such aggregations of courses 
are included in the definition of Course:

Course definition:
A description of an educational course which may be offered as distinct 
instances at different times and places, or through different media or 
modes of study. An educational course is a sequence of one or more 
educational events and/or creative works which aims to build knowledge, 
competence or ability of learners. A course may include other courses.


We also have a use case where a student want to find a set of courses 
that build on each other, see http://bit.ly/sce-us8 This requires us to 
be able to identify aggregations of Courses, and to identify the two-way 
relationship between a Course aggregation and component courses. I 
propose a new subtype of Course to deal with this

CourseAggregation, subtype of Course
A group of Courses that may be taken together, e.g. a University or 
college course or program of study leading to a single qualification or 
award; an educational track, concentration or specialization.

The isPartOf/hasPart properties of CreativeWork can indicate the 
relationship between Courses and CourseAggregations. (It may be useful 
to create optionalCourse and mandatoryCourse subtypes of hasPart?)


Thoughts?

Phil

-- 
Phil Barker           @philbarker
LRMI, Cetis, ICBL     http://people.pjjk.net/phil
Heriot-Watt University

Workflow: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/workflow/

Received on Friday, 17 June 2016 09:43:44 UTC