Learning Registry Overview

August 2, 2012

Extending the Benefits of Technologies Developed for Academic Education to Career

and Technical Education and Workforce Development

 

The following information is intended to provide background information on the current technologies that are in development to support academic education, in

particular implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and the potential for expansion to career and technical education (CTE) and workforce

development areas. 

The examples provided related to CTE and workforce development were developed solely for this presentation and are not endorsed by any state or

national organizations.  

The Learning Registry The Learning Registry is an online platform that allows the educational community to publish and consume resources.

It is a new approach to capturing, sharing, and analyzing resource data to broaden the usefulness of digital content to benefit educators and students.

It is designed to facilitate data exchange behind the scenes for an open community of resource creators, educators, and consumers to collaborate and share useful resources, as well as information about how those resources are used.

Educators Community Industry

Subject Matter

Experts

Users

Capture Share Analyze

Learning Registry http://www.learningregistry.org

The Value Add of the Learning Registry

Popular search engines are not necessarily the best resource to use to find Open Educational Resources (OER) since:

• Search results do not necessarily include reviews, usage information, and tagging to standards.

• Many resources are not posted by trusted sources.

What is the Learning Registry added value?

The learning registry is designed to be an open, collaborative effort by resource creators, publishers, and educators, resulting in a higher percentage of quality resources for educators and students.

Using the Learning Registry Key Benefits How it Works

Expanded access to trustworthy descriptive data on educational resources.

The Learning Registry provides an easy-to-adopt and easy-to operate mechanism for disseminating and consuming resource information.

Pooling contextualized knowledge about learning resources.

The Learning Registry enables sharing and aggregating resource usage data across disparate systems and platforms.

• Although the registry is designed to support the exchange of any kind of social metadata or paradata the development community is currently focused on exchanges of standards alignment data.

Providing tools and services to make use of "big data" about resources.

• One valuable service just released is sharing data about standards that match across states.

• Services are being developed for:• Establishing identity between systems such as LinkedIn.• Enabling node operators to automatically categorize

incoming data based on the level of trust in the publisher.• Publishers can use a common framework for publishing

assertions about their resources, including updates, same-as, replaces, deletion, etc. Services are being developed to make these changes transparent to users.

Benefits to CTE and Workforce

DevelopmentContributing to and using the Learning Registry can benefit secondary and postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) and workforce development programs.

However, to fully realize the benefits, employability and technical learning standards need to be open and interoperable to allow for consistent tagging, and open education resources need to be identified and aligned to these standards.

3. Illinois Pathways http://www.illinoisworknet.com/ilpathways

Using LR withIllinois Pathways

1. Setup an Learning Registry Node on the Illinois Shared Learning Environment.• A node is already setup on an SIU CWD server.

2. Provide a searching interface on Illinois Pathways.3. Create tools for tagging and publishing resources, aligning standards,

commenting, sharing, foldering, and more.

Examples – SearchingScenario 1 – Open search for Career Cluster resources available to anyone from the Illinois Pathways website.

Scenario 2 – Building off the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC) searching tool, include Career Cluster resources searching within password protected interface for education and workforce programs.

Examples – Searching

Examples – Show Usage and

Related InformationFor each resource provide:

• Abstract• Comments• Conditions of Use• Evaluation Information• Grade Levels• Languages• Link to Resource

• Ratings• Resource Type• Source• Learning Standards • Subjects• Tags• Usage Information

Examples – Search Results

Uses narrowing to and optional keywords to refine results.

Examples - Results Detail

Examples – Conditions of Use

Each resource has one of four conditions of use labels.

No Strings Attached No restrictions on your remixing, redistributing, or making derivative works. Give credit to the author, as required. Remix and Share Your remixing, redistributing, or making derivatives works comes with some restrictions, including how it is shared. Share Only Your redistributing comes with some restrictions. Do not remix or make derivative works. Read the Fine Print Everything else.

OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/

Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org

Examples - Tagging

Para

Meta

This data includes, but is not limited to:

Title Description Use Rights End-User Role

Time Standard Resource Type Grade Level

Tagging is the act of creating and publishing a resource description for resources.

The resource description is created by identifying associated metadata or paradata. This data, which is searchable by keywords, identifies standards and related resources. For learning resources to be discovered, they must be tagged.

Provide an interface for users to tag resources to Career Cluster subjects. The interface controls the metadata collected and stored, and corresponds to the search narrowing options.

Tagging

Metadata takes the form of tags, markers, or fields that help identify all manner of descriptive, administrative, and technical information about a given object.

A metadata record consists of a standardized set of properties, or tags, that provide a necessary structure for describing a resource or collection of resources.

Descriptive

Administrative

Technical

Location Date Author Learning Standard

Paradata is a specialized type of metadata which describes how a resource is or has been used. Paradata helps communicate when you want to talk about how people have used a book or other resource. Paradata includes statements about a resource consisting of three parts: an actor, a verb, and an object.

Paradata

Actor – refers to the person or group who does something with the resource.Verb – describes the action of actor.Object – refers to the resource being acted upon. The important part of an object is the URL where you can find out about the object.

Actor Verb Object

Paradata

OER Commons

These screen shots show how OER Commons provides users a way to tag resources.

OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/

Examples – Aligning to Standards

Provide an interface for aligning Career Cluster resources to academic, employability, and technical learning standards. Aligning to States’ Academic and Common Core Standards is already being addressed.

The standards for Career Clusters need to be setup online and interoperable with Learning Registry.

Para

Meta

Examples – Other Tools

Provide additional tools and support integration such as:

• Aligning to multiple standards • Building SLC learning maps• Rating and commenting on resources• Recording usage information• Saving to folders or in a library• Sharing with social media• Using an evaluation rubric• Creating course builder tools

Next Steps1. Complete initial mapping rules of Learning Registry content to Illinois

Pathways cluster.2. Setup an Learning Registry Node on the Illinois Shared Learning

Environment.3. Provide a keyword, narrowing and advanced searching interface on

Illinois Pathways.4. Create tools for tagging and publishing resources, aligning standards,

commenting, sharing, foddering, and more.5. Work with partners to engage educators to get feedback and to tag and

publish resources, and align to standards.6. Determine SLC integration.

Contacts

Oana Amaria, Workforce Development Specialist oamaria@illinoisworknet.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/oanaamaria

Jeanne Kitchens, Associate Director

jkitchens@illinoisworknet.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannekitchens

Mike Parsons, Technical Lead mparsons@illinoisworknet.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelaparsons