Re: [Proposal] schema:OnlineCourse

>
> 3. I think it would be better to model an instance of a Course as a
> collection of EducationalEvents and CreativeWorks.
>
> Not sure I understand.

Not speaking here for Phil, leaning on my own trials and tribulations
trying to mark up both online and brick-and-mortar courses, I do see what I
he means in both cases.

EducationEvent

Each instance is definitely an event because (at least for non-online
courses) it is time-bound.  As Vicki says in her description
of CourseSession [1] "The session may meet repeatedly or be a single
event."  And indeed, most of the properties for CourseSession are to be
found in Event.

And a Course (and a CourseSession and a OnlineCourse) are fully creative
works:  they are the result of concerted creative effort, and a artifact is
produced, even it is a temporally-bound artifact.  This is nowhere more
evident than for a OnlineCourse, which itself has one or more types of
associatedMedia (image, video and audio resources, as well as associated
media).

If OnlineCourse isn't to be a type of CreativeWork, then I'd say these
required properties are missing from the proposal (and mostly apply to
course, too):

author (Courses don't create themselves - and a course author may not be
its presenter)
copyrightHolder (Courses are often copyrighted)
copyrightYear
publisher (Any online course must have a publisher because it is published
on the web)
review  (Even if a course session if reviewable, it's arguably more
important to be able to review an entire course)
dateModified
datePublished (Very applicable to online courses, which are published at a
certain point of time.  They are often modified as well.)

Re:
sessionMaterial
Awkward when limited to CourseSession.  For example it is not only not
uncommon but the norm for a textbook for a brick-and-mortar college or
university course to be used for the entire course, not just for a
session.  But I'll leave it at that because I know there's been discussion
of Course vs CourseSession that may bear on this.

Re:
offers
A property under OnlineCourse but not Course or CourseSession.  Just an
oversight, I think, as we see offers as a property for the example
CourseSession.  Again w/o going into Course vs. CourseSession in-depth,
obviously a "course" in the colloquial sense can have an offer associated
with it ("Course in Spanish Cooking at Hobbes Community Centre - 5 nights,
$250.00" - or perhaps that's a CourseSession?)

Re:
"Traditional University Course" example ("Artificial Intelligence")
has property "timeRequirement"; as per the schema above for Course, and the
existing property, should be "timeRequired"

[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12YWjLzZC8FiTiOwSAETRIEozeqZdn6O8a4fgqK4t5Ss/edit#heading=h.ptcem88xkwvp


On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Guha <guha@google.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Guha <guha@google.com> wrote:
>>
>> See comments inline
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 3:19 AM, Barker, Phil A <Phil.Barker@hw.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Vicki, thanks for the heads up, I would have missed this otherwise.
>>>
>>> I have added some comments to the Google Doc, the most significant are:
>>>
>>> 1. Courses can comprise Courses. This is especially important at
>>> Universities that recruit into and award certificates for programmes
>>> (Courses) that are built from modules (Courses).
>>>
>>
>> I think a programme is different from a course.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> 2. I don't think there is much to be gained from having a separate class
>>> on OnlineCourse rather than a property of a Course to flag whether it is
>>> online or not. I  think the properties you have for OnlineCourse also apply
>>> to regular courses. Most regular courses have an online component.
>>>
>>> Something like an edX course is very different from a high school course
>> where the student shows up in class. The former has a number of properties
>> that don't make sense for the latter. So, it needs to be a class.
>>
>>
>>> 3. I think it would be better to model an instance of a Course as a
>>> collection of EducationalEvents and CreativeWorks.
>>>
>>> Not sure I understand.
>>
>>
>>> 4. Language is difficult. The different usage between UK and US English
>>> is one thing, but more importantly commonly used terms often relate to
>>> specific education systems or pedagogies. So phrases like "instructors
>>> deliver lessons to students" implies a particular pedagogy. Also this means
>>> that common terms become ambiguous and open to misinterpretation in
>>> international use, e.g. class, course, programme, module. This is important
>>> in schema.org where definitions tend to be minimalist.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps.
>>>
>>> As a general question, do you have some usecases in mind and target
>>> example websites? It's difficult to assess whether these properties are
>>> sufficient and realistic without those.
>>>
>>> Yes. There is request to be able to describe the offerings of edX, et.
>> al. with schema.org properties
>>
>>
>>> Phil
>>>
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Vicki Tardif Holland [vtardif@google.com]
>>> *Sent:* 15 December 2014 18:40
>>> *To:* Wes Turner
>>> *Cc:* GUANGYUAN PIAO; Thad Guidry; Aaron Bradley; Public Vocabs
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Proposal] schema:OnlineCourse
>>>
>>>   (I commented on GitHub, but I am not sure if everyone is over there,
>>> so I am duplicating the message here.)
>>>
>>>  I have read through all of the comments and background links and
>>> attempted to pull the various ideas into a cohesive whole. My thoughts are
>>> still rather preliminary, but can be found at
>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12YWjLzZC8FiTiOwSAETRIEozeqZdn6O8a4fgqK4t5Ss/edit?usp=sharing
>>>
>>>  It would be nice to be able to support in-person classes (academic or
>>> not) and MOOCs.
>>>
>>>  Please comment here or on GitHub.
>>>
>>>  - Vicki
>>>
>>>
>>>   Vicki Tardif Holland | Ontologist | vtardif@google.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Wes Turner <wes.turner@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've created a GitHub issue ticket for this Proposal:
>>>>
>>>>  https://github.com/rvguha/schemaorg/issues/195
>>>>
>>>>  cc'ing a comment here, because DRY:
>>>>
>>>>   What is missing or could be added?
>>>>> From
>>>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2014Feb/0127.html :
>>>>>
>>>>>> Properties:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    - derivedFrom/previousIncantation property could also be helpful.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    - prerequisitve/buildsUpon/suggestedPrerequisite properties would
>>>>>>    be great.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Types for these properties would need to be <Course>.
>>>>
>>>>  ... This would then form a graph of Courses and/or OnlineCourses.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  It may be most helpful to transition discussion to a task-focused
>>>> GitHub issue.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Wes Turner <wes.turner@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In creating said ticket [openbadges/openbadges-specifiation/9], I'm
>>>>> having trouble linking to the entirety of a mailing list thread (who know).
>>>>>
>>>>>  Is there / should there be an issue for OnlineCourse here:
>>>>> https://github.com/rvguha/schemaorg/issues ?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Wes Turner <wes.turner@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I've opened a ticket with the OpenBadges specification project:
>>>>>> https://github.com/openbadges/openbadges-specification/issues/9
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  > How could/should we reference badges offered by a
>>>>>> schema.org/OnlineCourse ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > We could point to just URIs, but then we'd need to lookup badge
>>>>>> titles.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > Would it be feasible to create schema.org/Badge ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 9:52 PM, Wes Turner <wes.turner@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 3:11 PM, GUANGYUAN PIAO <parklize@gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>  1. Is it worth adding a "prerequisiteCourse" property to list the
>>>>>>>> prerequisites for the given course?
>>>>>>>>      - IMO, "prerequisiteCourse" or "requirements" for the Course
>>>>>>>> could provide rich snippets for users to know if it
>>>>>>>> is appropriate for him/her.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  Where can I add topical links to wikipedia (dbpedia [1])? e.g.
>>>>>>> This course is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data and
>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [1] http://lod-cloud.net/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>   2. Can we change "isCertificateAvailable" from a boolean to
>>>>>>>> something with a little more data? Maybe the type of certificate granted or
>>>>>>>> the institution granting the certificate?
>>>>>>>>      - +1, and then it will need Certificate type and additional
>>>>>>>> properties to think about.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  http://openbadges.org/ are gaining momentum. [2]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  Would "credential" be a more generic predicate?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Open_Badges
>>>>>>> [3] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges
>>>>>>> [4] https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges#mozilla-open-badges
>>>>>>> [5]
>>>>>>> https://github.com/openbadges/openbadges-specification/blob/master/Assertion/latest.md
>>>>>>> (JSON Web Signatures)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  --
>>>>>>> Wes Turner
>>>>>>> https://westurner.github.io/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  --
>>>>>> Wes Turner
>>>>>> https://westurner.github.io/
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  --
>>>>> Wes Turner
>>>>> https://westurner.github.io/
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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