Re: [Proposal] schema:OnlineCourse

> Why is a Course a CreativeWork?

I think it's pretty self-evident why if one thinks of an *online* course,
but I think the same principles carry over to courses in general, including
brick-and-mortar courses.

With this in mind an online course is every bit as much a creative endeavor
as a book, movie, email message, exercise plan, item list or any of the
many more specific subtypes we see under CreativeWork.

And because an online course is a creative endeavor authored by one or more
people and published online, there' s than "some"
properties "in common" with CreativeWork properties, and I think it would
be excessively difficult to adequately describe an online course without
them.

Let me use a real-life example from an organization I used to work for:
http://www.edumine.com/courses/online-courses/an-introduction-to-mining-and-mineral-processing/

about - Highly relevant; these are all Things this course is about (as
enumerated by the course's keywords: Mineral Exploration, Mining, Mineral
Processing, Waste Disposal, Mining Economics

aggregateRating - You bet - courses are rated all the time.  This course
has 4.4 out of 5.

audience - Obviously highly relevant to an educational Thing, and in fact
here the more specific type EducationalAudience would be used.  The value
is explicit on the page: "Technical | New to Mining".

audio, associatedMedia, video - Not used here, but obviously highly
relevant to courses - in fact many courses consist solely of videos!

author - Dr. Scott Dunbar.

copyrightHolder - EduMine Inc.

dateModified - 6 June 2014 (other date fields like datePublished are also
relevant)

hasPart / isPartOf - Highly relevant to multi-part courses.

interactionCount - This course has 3 UserTweets, 16 UserLikes, 2
UserPlusOnes

inLanguage - Of course, in English here - and other courses on the site are
in Spanish and Portuguese.  Those that are translations could also use the
isBasedOnUrl property.

keywords - See about.

license - Not explicitly stated here, but highly relevant.  Creative
Commons has a whole page where they talk about the licensing of MOOCs

offers - You bet:  this course costs $201.00 CAD.

publisher:  EduMine, Inc.

As you'll see, many of these properties are marked up:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http://www.edumine.com/courses/online-courses/an-introduction-to-mining-and-mineral-processing/
... but have tapped WebPage only because the appropriate Thing -
OnlineCourse - didn't exist.  These properties describe the course, not the
web page - it'd be like what IMDb would be forced to do if there was no
Movie type, or GoodReads if there was no Book type.

By the way, this course is also useful IMO because of the
properties/concepts that are applicable to a course but *not *otherwise
available under CreativeWork - though, as I previously noted, some of these
are applicable to Event.  Here are some property/value pairs one could
extract here:

- Certification:  EduMine
- Qualifies for the CMS [Certificate in Mining Studies]:  Yes
- Duration:  8 hours
- Completion [time you have to complete the course]:  20 days [might be
mappable to the CreativeWork property timeRequired]
- CEUs [Continuing Education Units: 0.8 PDHs, 1 CPDs [i.e. "credits"]
- Course requirements [could also be "prerequisite"]:   High school science


On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 9:20 AM, Vicki Tardif Holland <vtardif@google.com>
wrote:

>
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Aaron Bradley <aaranged@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I think it also make senses to explore a "course" as a sub-type not only
>> of CreativeWork but of Event as well.  For example, your proposed
>> "startDate" and "endDate" properties are already present there, and
>> "instructor" is analogous to Event's "performer" property (which I've
>> always maintained was too specific a name for "those that may present at an
>> event").
>
>
> I am still trying to wrap my mind around the model. Why is a Course a
> CreativeWork? I see that there are some properties in common like
> "inLanguage" and "provider", but it seems cleaner to extend the domains for
> these properties rather than trying to force a subclass that does not fit.
>
> A couple other quick comments:
>
> 1. Is it worth adding a "prerequisiteCourse" property to list the
> prerequisites for the given course?
> 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?
>
> - Vicki
>
>
>
> Vicki Tardif Holland | Ontologist | vtardif@google.com
>
>