Vladimir Tomberg, Mart Laanpere Tallinn University, Narva mnt. 25, 10120 Tallinn, Estoniavtomberg@tlu.ee, mart.laanpere@tlu.ee

Mash-up PLE have become a fast developing trend, especially for informal learning

How to exchange course-related information between PLEs in case of formal e-course?

Course is not just a static syllabus, it also involves various dynamic processes

These processes can be described using course metadata

A course has: Learning objectives Schedule for learning activities, deadlines

(assignments, discussions) A list of registered participants with

different roles (teachers, students) Different types of learning resources

We usually can extract such information from LMS, but how can it be done with PLE?

(X)HTML is a main format for PLE

(X)HTML syntax is not designed for carrying the semantic data

Different technologies have been introduced in the past, Microformats and RDFa are two most widespread

A teacher publishes information about her course using a Web application of her choice — blog, wiki, forum or personal Web site

Information is delivered to learners via mash-up technology

The course metadata contains: course description, amount of credits,

important dates, contact information (teacher, students)

pre-requisite and target competencies,

required and suggested reading,

the criteria and form of a final assessment,

learning resources

assignments (tasks, deadlines, tools, roles)

Teacher can constantly update the course metadata, even during the course

Teacher assigns the tasks (individual, group tasks), gives feedback to submitted contributions and assesses the learning outcomes

Learners have always the fresh information on everything that happens on a course

HTML code:

<a href = "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" rel="license">cc by 2.0</a>

In browser:

cc by 2.0

Standard (X)HTML attributes 'class', 'rel' and 'rev' are used for metadata storing purpose

Not standardized, but well specified and widely known

In constant and endless development

Do not have any ontologies, formal descriptions or schemas

HTML code:

<a rel="cc:license" href="http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"> Creative Commons License </a>

In browser:

Creative Commons License

Standardized by W3C Uses 10 reserved tags, 5 of them from

XHTML2 Can be applied for RDFa only to

XHTML2, not for HTML, XHTML1 Mixing different namespaces in one

document is possible, for example 'dc:' and 'cc:' simultaneously

Difficult to predict the future potential because W3C does not support any more the futher development of XHTML 2

Microformats

RDFa

Can be applied to HTML, XHTML In current state for XHTML 2 and limited for XHTML 1

Have useful implementations for end user today

Yes, different add-ons for browsers allow that

Not very useful for end user directly today

Can be used in mash-ups Yes Yes

Implementation in indexing services

Google and Yahoo now indexing such microformats as hCard and hReview

Google, US Government Website and Slideshare use RDFa

Standardized No W3C Recommendation

Drawbacks One limited dictionary for all purposes.Because of absence of standards support from developers is more enthusiastic than industrial

Because of finishing of XHTML2 development the perspectives of RDFa are very unclear at the current moment

Microformats

RDFa

Vocabularies Only one Unlimited amount is possible

Extendable vocabularies Yes, but only through community

Yes, freely

Interoperability level High Interoperability is possible only if known vocabularies are used

Possibilities to add educational semantic values to data

Average High

Microformats RDFaCourse’s membership via hCardLearner and Teacher information via hCardMembers relations via XFNCourse events via hCalendar

Can use any semantic vocabulary that suitable for course description

Vladimir Tomberg, Mart Laanpere

Towards Lightweight LMS 2.0: A Blog-based Approach to Online Assessment,

EC-TEL 2008 Maastricht, The Netherlands

Which technology is more suitable? Depends on your needs and limitations

Microformats Simple adaptation;

Limited vocabulary for educational needs;

RDFa More flexible and semantically rich;

Unclear future because XHTML2 lost W3C’s support