Comparing Different Metadata Application Profiles for Agricultural Learning Repositories

Abstract

Abstract. Agricultural learning repositories can provide new opportunities for sharing, accessing, using and reusing learning resources online. Metadata plays a crucial role in such systems: apart from simply indexing resources, metadata makes it easier to discover a learning resource in a repository, as well as to decide about ways to use it for teaching or learning purposes. In the context of agricultural education and training, a variety of appropriate metadata standards may be selected, adapted and implemented for a learning repository. In this paper we introduce the concept of metadata for agricultural learning resources, and compare two particular cases: one application profile based on the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) and the other based on the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM). The paper attempts to identify similarities and differences between the two case studies and to outline issues that have to be resolved in order to harmonize such efforts.

Adapting a quality assurance framework for creating educational metadata in an agricultural learning repository

“…Current research about agricultural learning repositories (e.g. Manouselis et al , 2008; Manouselis et al , 2010; Manouselis, Rudgard, Keizer and Salokhe, 2009; Manouselis, Salokhe and Keizer, 2009) shows the great impact of sharing and reusing learning resources within a global infrastructure of learning repositories about agricultural and rural development topics on helping to improve the development and welfare of agricultural and rural populations especially in developing countries. The implementation of relevant international standards and specifications such as IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) (IEEE Computer Society, 2002) ensures that these systems are fully interoperable and their learning resources are truly reusable (Najjar et al , 2003), making progress towards a future “learning object economy” (Downes, 2001).…”

An online information system to support blended training of rural SMEs on e‐government

“…Its focus is on maintaining interoperability with other related repositories, and this is why metadata standards like eGMS and IEEE LOM have been adopted and specialized. This facilitates the federation of this repository with other repositories with content of an agricultural and rural interest, such as that of the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO; Blended training of rural SMEs on e-government see www.fao.org) of the United Nations (Manouselis et al, 2008a;. Nevertheless, further functionalities and services could be provided to users in order to extend the resource-based network of this web-based environment (Hill, 2007) For example, Web 2.0 features and social annotation of resources could be introduced (Vargas-Vera and Lytras, 2009).…”

“…Blended training of rural SMEs on e-government see www.fao.org) of the United Nations (Manouselis et al, 2008a;. Nevertheless, further functionalities and services could be provided to users in order to extend the resource-based network of this web-based environment (Hill, 2007) For example, Web 2.0 features and social annotation of resources could be introduced (Vargas-Vera and Lytras, 2009).…”

Towards an Ontology for the Description of Learning Resources on Disaster Risk Reduction

“…An example of this movement in the agricultural sector is the work of the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF) with support from the FAO. 10 This initiative intends to harmonize metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories in order to improve the availability and accessibility of agricultural OERs (Manouselis et al 2008). Recently, the UNU has established an OpenCourseWare website to share the learning materials from its educational programmes and capacity building activities with a wider public (Barrett et al 2009).…”