=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Developing controlled Vocabularies for educational Resources Sharing: a Case Study
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-717/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-717
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/esws/GiordanoKSB11
}}
==Developing controlled Vocabularies for educational Resources Sharing: a Case Study==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-717/paper8.pdf
Developing controlled vocabularies for educational
resources sharing: a case study
Daniela Giordano1, Isaak Kavasidis1, Concetto Spampinato1,
Panagiotis Bamidis2
1
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Elettronica e Informatica, Università di Catania,
Viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy
2
Lab of Medical Informatics, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
PO Box 323, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
{dgiordan, ikavasidis, cspampin}@dieei.ing.unict.it
{bamidis}@med.auth.gr
Abstract. We present a novel controlled vocabulary for the classification of
Educational Resource Type and Media type that has been developed within the
mEducator Best Practice Network, and discuss the rationale behind its design
and its SKOS implementation. Several available controlled vocabularies were
analyzed, but none was found entirely satisfactory for the project's purposes.
Although the driving motivation of this effort was to account for and deal with
multi-type content variety that is especially characteristic of the medical field,
the result of this process and the proposed organization generalise fairly well to
broader educational/learning contexts. We discuss the proposed vocabularies
pointing out the multifaceted role they may fulfil in the linked learning era.
Keywords: Resource Type, Media Type, controlled vocabularies, SKOS,
Linked Data, metadata reuse
1 Introduction
Thesauri and taxonomies (which extend simple lists of terms by expressing also the
relationship between terms) are currently acknowledged as an essential tool in any
successful knowledge management effort [1]. In a taxonomy terms are arranged or
linked in a tree, so that narrower, more specific “children” terms fall under broader,
more generic “parent” terms; in thesaurus relationships of affinity, synonyms and
relatedness among terms can be expressed. Controlled vocabularies, more simply,
consist of a flat list of terms used for indexing or categorizing; their goal is to ensure
consistency in indexing, tagging, or categorizing and to guide the user to the desired
information. In this respect, controlled vocabularies can be used to assist the users
either in filling metadata for resource description, and conversely, can be proposed in
the user search interfaces to assist during the search process. This latter practice
somehow addresses a recent criticism of taxonomies/controlled vocabularies, i.e. that
often they are too far from the user language, and therefore are unlikely to be used
spontaneously for searching. Hence the support for effective resources retrieval is
questioned. On the other hand, “folksonomies” emerging from social tagging of
resources do provide a collection of terms closer to the end-user language.
Taxonomies and folksonomies are not mutually exclusive or incompatible, and there
is a fast growing body of literature pointing out the benefit of their integration [2], [3].
In systems that resort to user generated metadata, as content sharing solutions often
do, there is a tension between the design choice of enforcing controlled vocabularies
versus allowing free tagging and filling of the metadata fields. This tension originates
from considering that in the indexing phase, when a resource is published, and should
be described as effectively as possible, the user, who is not a professional indexer,
should be aware of the vocabularies, and know how to use them. Often this is not the
case, and even when the user is aware of the existence of a classification system, its
actual usage, especially in the case of vocabularies with a very large number of terms
(e.g., MeSH) will depend on how easily it can be browsed and understood. On the
other hand, filling with unconstrained vocabularies metadata fields, often results in
poor quality because of semantic ambiguity in the name of the fields [4].
From a Linked Data (LD) perspective [5] some of these issues can be solved or
ameliorated at a fundamental level. In fact, the LD paradigm places emphasis on the
reuse of available metadata fields even from different schemas, which inherently
favours the reuse of the most useful and meaningful fields; whereas concerning the
actual choice of controlled terms, there is the freedom to choose any system that suits
the need of the community, as long as it is treated consistently with the DL principles
and links are created with other data sets dealing with similar terminologies. An even
better practice is to create through RDF links explicit mappings, by resorting to RDF
or OWL properties between similar terms in different classification systems (e.g.,
through the use of OWL’s "same as", or "relates to" or SKOS’s "closeMatch",
"exactMatch”, etc.). One clear advantage of this approach is the enabling of automatic
metadata enrichment by resorting to the LD Cloud (e.g., [6], [7]): this practice may
result into more robust search and retrieval systems also by assisting the users with
dynamical suggestion of terms during metadata publishing or during the searches.
The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we present a controlled vocabulary
concerning Educational Resource type and Media type that has been developed in the
context of the mEducator project, funded within the eContentPlus Programme and
concerned with best practices in innovative technical solutions for educational content
sharing and repurposing. This vocabulary has a specific raison d’être in the context of
a very wide and open network of stakeholders broadly concerned with medical
education and also with the practical issue of repurposing educational resources that
are often overspecialised and very expensive to develop. Then we discuss
generalisation issues and, based on the experience accrued within the project we
derive some implications in the context of the Linked learning movement.
2 Background: multi-type content sharing and repurposing
The mEducator project ("Multi-type Content Sharing and Repurposing in Medical
Education, www.meducator.net) is a Best Practice Network funded by the European
Programme eContentPlus and is concerned with the evaluation of two innovative
ways to share medical educational contents across European institutions and across
the community of educators (i.e., one solution utilizing semantic web services
technology and one solution based on mashup technology). Among the project's goals
is the provision of recommendations to relevant standardization bodies (e.g. to
Medbiquitous, that currently employs the HLOM, the Healthcare extension of the
IEEE LOM, [8]) regarding suitable, additional extensions to the metadata schema to
effectively support both the sharing and the repurposing process. In this regard, an
action of the project has been concerned with the actual design and development of
these extensions. After several rounds of polling the partners about inclusion of the
available fields from the HLOM, and critical re-examination of the HLOM from the
Technical Reference Group of the mEducator Consortium, an RDF-based meducator
schema was developed [9], reusing existing metadata fields and including new
meducator fields dealing specifically with the repurposing history of a resource and
other pedagogical aspects of the resource, e.g. medical educational outcomes.
One line of investigation of mEducator that is at the basis of the work presented in
this paper concerns the identification of educational content types that are specific to
medical education and to test the descriptive adequacy of the currently available e-
learning metadata standards against these content types. For example, a Virtual
Patient (VP) is a specific medical content type that employs a problem-based learning
approach and allows the learners to follow either linear or branched paths to diagnose
the patient and suggest treatments [10]. Similarly, interactive medical images (e.g., X-
rays) where the learners can draw tracings to identify anatomical structures or
pathologies/abnormalities and obtain visual feedback are a novel resource type
especially suitable for the development and refinement of visual perception skills
[11]. Initially, the distinction between content type and resource type was blurred, and
the only agreement within the Consortium on the semantics of the field was that it
should try to capture the nature of the educational resource without any reference to
topics or disciplines. Thus, during the first iteration of testing and validation of the
proposed meducator metadata schema, the field "content type" was included, and it
was left as free text to fill (i.e., the initial decision was not to use any controlled
vocabulary). The rationale of this decision was to gather data about the variability of
the type of educational items that would be contributed by the content providers of the
Consortium, and use this information to inform subsequent decisions about the
meducator schema and the potential need to resort to controlled vocabularies.
3 Methodology
3.1 Deriving the requirements
The first version of the schema, where content type was a free text field, was used by
the Consortium Partners to describe the educational resources that each one had
agreed to contribute to the project. This was done by resorting to MetaMorphosis, a
social network based on ELGG platform [12], where the users from the participating
institutions could register and contribute their resources by filling the metadata forms.
The data from 350 forms contributed by about 100 users form the various institutions
were analysed by means of content analysis.
From the analysis of how the users filled the field it was apparent a conflation
between format (e.g. PPT presentation), educational content type (e.g., a tutorial, or a
case study) and tool/interaction type. For example, we had users who referred to
"webTraces" to indicate that their contents were images annotated with graphical
feedback, since such content had been developed within the LCMS "WebTrace"[11].
This conflation of several aspects into the same field, pointed to the need to clearly
differentiating "media/format" aspects from "content type", and to attempt a
differentiation between the pedagogical role of the resource and the rhetoric of
presentation/interaction.
Some semantic overlap with notion of “subject/topic” was noted in the way users
filled the form, although this was not entirely unexpected. In addition, the analysis of
the content to be shared revealed that, consistently with the aim of the mEducator
project, the type of materials to be shared amongst were broader in scope, and would
include design documents such as curricula, or elaborations over official documents
(typically, clinical guidelines) to be considered jointly (i.e. as companion resources);
other cases would include referral to general resources available on the web, where up
to date materials would be issued regularly on a given topic or discipline.
The broad typology of sharing needs from the mEducator community target users
was an additional reason to support the choice of resorting to a controlled vocabulary.
The general requirements for the controlled vocabulary were:
• Maximise reuse from existing vocabularies, also in the light to ensure machine
processability and compatibility with existing standards.
• Cater for the need of sharing materials that might not be "strictly" educational.
This implies complementing a focus on the instructional/pedagogical aspect of
the resource (e.g. a tutorial) with a focus on the informational model (e.g. a
"news", regardless of whether it is being delivered through TV, Internet, or
Newspaper). A clear separation of the informational model from the media of
delivery would facilitate repurposing across different media.
• In the characterization of the media, novel types emerging from the Web 2.0
paradigm should be considered (e.g., Wikis, blogs, and the like).
• Take into account the variety of pedagogical approaches that are in place in
the community and are reflected in community specific "content types". This
requirement might be referred to as pedagogical flexibility [13].
• Completeness, with respect to the specific "content types" in use in the
community of medical educators.
• Support efficiency in the retrieval, but also in the annotation process, i.e., the
vocabulary should be as lean as possible and understandable at a glance.
3.2 Related work
A widely shared criticism of current e-learning standards is that they fail to address
adequately the "learning" [14], and, in general, miss crucial information required for
efficient searching and automated processing [13]. From the perspective of the e-
learning community, two works are especially relevant. In [13] the LOM "learning-
resource type" field is criticised on the ground that the controlled values mix
instructional (e.g., exercise, simulation, experiment) and format information (e.g.,
diagram, figure, slide, table) that need to be separated. This is exactly the situation in
which we incurred by leaving the field free to be filled by the users. It should be noted
that the same problem occurs in the HLOM extension, where both instructional (e.g.,
tutorial, Virtual Patient, simulation) vocabulary values and format values (e.g.,
narrative text) have been added. The solution proposed in [12] is an ontology, with
root class Instructional Object. The philosophy of this work is to subsume under the
subclass "Concept" the specific domain of interest (definition, facts, laws and
processes) and to complement "Concept" with "Satellite" elements, a subclass that
captures the instructional information associated to any concept of the domain (e.g.,
real world problem, exercise, exploration, example non-example, explanation,
remark, evidence, etc). Format and media aspects are not addressed in this ontology.
On a similar note, but with a different goal, i.e., supporting automated annotation,
[15] proposes the ALOCOM ontology to capture both the content structure and the
content type of a Learning Object (LO). The need to express the Structure of the LO,
stems from having to deal effectively with the different granularity levels of a LO,
which is seen as consisting of various "content fragment" (non further decomposable
media); "content object" (an aggregation of fragments with added navigational
features), and "learning object" (an aggregation of content object on a learning
objective) The proposed classes for learning object are: lesson, course, chapter, test
and tutorial. From the content type perspective, the pedagogical roles are captured in
the "supporting" subclass of content object, and at the moment include: example,
exercise, reference, description, illustration, question, and answer. This is somehow
similar to the "satellite" subclass in [13].
There exist several other Resource Types and Media Type vocabularies. Some have
been developed within broader metadata standard specifications, e.g., Dublin Core
[16], some have been specifically developed by educational communities, such as the
RDN/LTSN (Resource Discovery Network/Learning and Teaching Support Network)
[17]; a comprehensive listing of the variety of vocabularies developed in the attempt
to capture pedagogical aspects is provided in [18], where some general requirements
that should inform their development are also provided.
Concerning the media, in addition to the MPEG-7 ontology [19] there are
specialisations in narrower domains, e.g., the RDA/ONIX framework for resource
categorization in the media publishing domain [20]; whereas another set of relevant
terminology is available through the categories "publication format" and "publication
component" widely accepted medical thesauri MeSH [21]. Another relevant work is
the SIOC ontology [22], providing terms especially relevant to characterize emergent
social media.
3. 3 Design considerations
The methodology used to craft the taxonomies or the controlled vocabularies for
mEducator was to analyze first existing vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies, to
evaluate their fit for reuse. Selection of the most appropriate terms was then
performed based on coverage of the meducator requirements, and then adding the
missing concepts emerged from the first filed testing of the mEducator schema.
Critical analysis of the available resources, however, pointed out some
shortcomings with respect to mEducator needs. A common problem was lacking
expressivity in the description of learning/teaching activities implied or supported by
the resource, other ones were too biased towards lecturing-based pedagogy or tutorial
expository modes; others were too much oriented toward media fragments (e.g., [19]).
Others would be too focused on various granularity levels in content organization
(e.g. [15]) whereas other used the more practical approach of condensing in one term
more than one aggregation level (e.g.,, "course/module/unit" in the RDN/LTSN
vocabulary [17]). This latter approach was adopted as a design criteria, since it was
deemed a good practice, alternative to pursuing generalisation into more abstract,
catch all terms, that often tend to be semantically ambiguous. The expected benefit is
lessening the cognitive load on the user without sacrificing precision of retrieval, at
least as far as concerning identification of the nature of the resource.
Analysis of the identified sources mentioned in section 3.2 resulted in the selection
of 45 concepts obtained by picking up from the sources, merging with mEducator
community specific terms, and in some cases rewording some concepts. Nearly none
of them were mutually exclusive; thus, from the user annotation perspective, the
classification grid must enable multiple selection to characterise reasonably the
resource to be shared.
In general, the term selection and refinement process was carried out taking into
consideration that in the end, the resources will be indexed by the end-users and not
by professional cataloguers, therefore attempting to obtain manageable lists (e.g., a
too long list should be categorised in a way meaningful to the end-user), with terms
readily visualised and familiar (ideally, self-explaining).
4 The mEducator Resource Type Taxonomy
Resource Type in the context of the mEducator project is defined as:
A classification of the Resource based on its informational qualities, taking into
account the nature of the information provided, how it is organized, presented or
collected (e.g., a tutorial, a textbook, a simulation) and the nature of the
interactions that are expected to take place between the users and the content
(e.g., reading, practicing, experimenting, assessing, etc.). Resource type includes
all the artifacts that traditionally have a role in the context of educational
practice, and any document, product or tool that has a role during the practice
of healthcare professions and that can be either the focus or a supporting
resource for the design of an educational experience (e.g., a laboratory test, or a
clinical practice guideline).
On purpose, aspects strictly related to media, format and implementations were not
considered, to give primacy to the nature of the information provided by the resource.
The 45 concepts were classified according to the following three broader categories:
1) Educational practice artefact
Definition: any document, product or tool designed and developed specifically
for use in any phase of the teaching/learning process, including the supporting
institutional and administrative activities, or generated as a result of the
educational activity.
Comment: this category includes all the artefacts that have a role strictly within
the context of educational practice, and as such, would be of no particular value
in the context of practicing a healthcare profession (e.g., a Game, a Study Guide,
a reading list)
2) Professional practice artefact
Definition: any document, product or tool that is used during the practice of
healthcare professions.
Comment: The emphasis is on the artefacts that have their “raison d'être” in the
professional context (e.g. a clinical record or diagnostic test) but that can be
effectively introduced in the educational activities to design realistic, authentic
learning experiences. Resources of this type might not be readily available in
digital format; therefore the capability to identify and retrieve them would
facilitate their repurposing to customize learning/teaching activities.
3) Reference Material
Definition: any collection of information that is not routinely used in
professional/or educational practice, but it is used only for reference purpose.
Comment: for this category a complete mapping to a selection of MeSH terms
was possible, and the Mesh definitions were reused.
To facilitate reuse, the vocabulary has been further organised into "Core Resource
Type " and "Medical Resource Type" vocabulary, this latter being an extension of the
Core Resource Type. Table 1 lists the terms under each category, and definitions for
each term are provided in Appendix. It must be noted that a Resource can be indexed
according to multiple terms from the same or distinct category; for example, a
“course/module/unit” might contain a “simulation”, “problem/exercise with
feedback” and “reading list”, and therefore should be indexed with these four terms.
4.1 Comments on the vocabulary values: towards generalisation
It is interesting to note that a good proportion of the items that have been identified
are quite general and would apply to any teaching/learning setting, regardless of the
specific domain, although this analysis has net been done in the light of completeness
with respect to other domains. It is easy to see that for many items collected under the
Medical resource type, equivalent ones can be found in other domains.
In the educational practice artefacts, a Virtual Patient could be seen as a type of
Simulation, and Clinical Case Study as a domain-based specialisation of Case Study;
making these specialisations explit as medical type extensions increases precision.
"Teaching file" was an interesting case of semantic differences across communities,
since medical groups such as radiologists refer to a well established practice of
creating files with Images to be discussed/diagnosed by the students, whereas other
communities (paediatrics, general educators) used the term to refer to a set of
organized resources meant for the teacher. Thus the approach was to keep the term as
used by radiologists and include it in Medical Resource Type, and introduce the
notion of Resource Pack that generalizes the second sense of "Teaching file" (see
definition in Appendix).
Table 1. The mEducator Resource Type taxonomy. In appendix 1 definitions are listed.
mEducator Resource Type Taxonomy
Educational Practice Professional Practice Reference
Artefact artefact material
Course/Module/Unit Professional Practice Atlas
Lecture (recording) Guideline
Bibliography
Lecture Slide/Presentation Scientific Journal Article
Dictionary
Lecture Notes/Handout Diagnostic algorithm
Textbook/Chapter Encyclopaedia
Table
Tutorial Handbook
Reading List Dataset
Index
Worked example Database
Legislation
Demonstration
Software
Simulation Laboratory manuals
Core
Resource Case Study Terminology
Type Practical
Problem/Exercise
Problem/exercise (with Feedback)
Game/Serious Game
Assessment Item/Instrument
Student generated content
Resource Pack
Study Guide
Syllabus/Programme/Curriculum
Educational Policy
Virtual Patient Clinical Practice Anatomical Atlas
Guideline
Teaching File Pharmacopoeias
Diagnostic/Laboratory
ClinicalCaseStudy test
Medical Diagnostic/Laboratory
test (annotated)
Resource
Type Medical/Diagnostic
algorithm
Medical Form
Clinical record
Patient Education
Handout
Concerning the "Professional Practice" collection of terms, it can be noted that,
many specific terms can have a counterpart in other, highly specialized professional
domains (e.g., law, economics, psychology, etc.) that have professional codes, ethics,
practice guidelines, data collection tools, software to support the job activity. For
example, a "Diagnostic algorithm" or a "Diagnostic/laboratory test" makes sense also
in most engineering/technical disciplines, and, as such, could be part of other domain-
specific extensions. Similar considerations apply for the Reference materials. As
mentioned before, the reason why one would index and share these types of resources,
that are somehow "raw materials" (not re-elaborated for educational purposes) is that
they can be well suited to be the building blocks of constructivist and "authentic"
learning experiences. Also, it might be argued, they can indirectly foster the process
of community building (that is most often mediated by sharing tools and tricks of the
trade) that can make a system for sharing resources successful or not.
5 The mEducator Media Type Taxonomy
The property “Media type” of the mEducator learning resource refers to the media
type of the resource, or the media types embedded in it, if this is a complex one. It is
possible to have multiple values for this field, e.g., an image sequence accompanied
by an audio clip, or a blog post embedding a video clip. Media type may refer also to
the packaging standards that are used to interoperate the resource across different
learning platforms (e.g., SCORM package, MVP-Medbiquitous Virtual Patient) but
leaves out details such as file digital format and size.
In order to facilitate identification of “fragments” for repurposing, and of classic e-
learning “packages” for interoperability, Media Type has been organized in four
categories: Primary Media, MultiMedia, Web/Social Media and Media Package. The
Web/Social Media category reuses terms from the SIOC ontology [22].
Table 2 lists the terms selected for each category, whereas Table 3 provides the
definitions for Primary Media and Multi Media
Table 2. The mEducator Media Type taxonomy.
mEducator Media Type Taxonomy
Primary Media MultiMedia Web/Social Media Media Package
Text Interactive Multimedia Site SCORM
Image Immersive Environment Forum IMS
Sketch/Graphical Blog DICOM
Annotation
Post MVP (VirtualPatient)
Animation
Podcast
Audio
Webinar
Video
Wiki
3D Model
Table 3. mEducator Resource Type Taxonomy: definitions for Primary Media and MultiMedia
Definitions for mEducator Media Type Taxonomy
Primary Media Sub-headings
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Example: an e-book without
Text
interactive features or multimedia elements.
Comment: same as http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text
A static visual representation other than text
Image
Same as: http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage
An image or text augmented by layer information. May combine attaching text labels
Sketch/Graphical
to graphical elements is a natural visual notation that appears in many kinds of hand
Annotation drawn diagrams, such as those appearing in user manuals, to indicate part-whole
relationships.
Narrower than Image.
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in
Animation
succession. Include visual output from a simulation.
Note: specializes http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage
A resource primarily intended to be heard.
Audio/Sound
Same as http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Sound
A camera-based recording of visual and audible components. Audio might not be
Video
included.
Note: specialises http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage
A three-dimensional digital representation of an object.
3D Model
MultiMedia - Subheadings
A resource that aggregates any combination of text, audio, still images, animation,
Interactive
video, and requires interaction from the user to be understood, executed, or
Multimedia experienced. Examples include AJAX Web pages, Applets, e-books with multimedia
Resource elements.
An artificial, interactive, computer-created scene or "world" within which a user can
Immersive
immerse themselves. May resort to gestural controls, motion tracking, and computer
Environment/Virtual vision respond to the user's actions and movements. Examples include Second Life,
Reality or a virtual reality simulation of surgical procedures.
Narrower than Interactive Resource
6 Implementation
IMS Vocabulary Definition Exchange (VDEX) [23] is a standard currently being used
for the interoperability of eLearning vocabularies; however, since mEducator places
emphasis on compatibility with Semantic Web application, and one of the solutions
that is going to be tested is based on Semantic Web Services and Linked Data, SKOS
[24] was chosen to represent mEducator vocabularies/taxonomies, also in accordance
with the JISC recommendations on terminology services and technologies [25].
SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) is the W3C specification for
representing thesauri, classifications, subject headings, taxonomies, and
folksonomies, and fully supports multilingualism.
The vocabularies namespaces are:
• http://purl.org/meducator/resourceType/
• http://purl.org/meducator/mediaType/
whereas the RDF files are available at:
• http://www.meducator.net/mdc/resourceType.rdf
• http://www.meducator.net/mdc/mediaType.rdf
respectively.
The schema used for attaching Resource and Media types to the educational
resources, is the mEducator schema that can be found at www.purl.org/meducator/ns.
In Figure 1 an excerpt of an instance of a resource that uses the implemented
vocabularies is shown.
Resource “Biomolecular Structure Function analysis practicals” type is
“Practical”, “Simulation”, “Software”, “Resource Pack”
Resource “Biomolecular Structure Function analysis practicals” media is
“animation”,”3D model”:
Fig. 1. An example of the instance section characterizing the learning resource "Biomolecular
Structure Function analysis practicals". mdc is the alias of the mEducator schema.
7 Discussion
Resource Type and Media Type have been designed to work jointly to profile the
resources. Another option could have been to include in the medical resource type
extensions some other specific cases where the Resource Type implies the Media, as
is the case for VPs (to a certain extent), or for traceable medical images (that imply
both images and graphical annotation). This might lead to some redundancy, but the
trade-off could be achieving more immediate recognition of a concept from the users.
This is possibility will be re-evaluated after completing the testing of the vocabulary
in its current form with the end-users.
Resource Type and Media Type are not the only (mandatory) controlled
vocabularies that were adopted in the mEducator schema. A richer profiling of the
learning resource is achieved, with respect to controlled vocabularies by properties
regarding the IPR licensing schema (property reuse and values from Dublin Core),
educational level of the intended audience and learning outcomes taxonomy. This
latter one was developed anew and given its specificity for the medical domain its
description is outside the scope of the paper. However, it should be noted that this
learning outcomes taxonomy plays an important role, similar to the characterization
of the content with respect to the domain (e.g., fact, procedure, law, etc.) included in
the ontologies in [13] and [15].
The development of the proposed vocabularies can be considered from two angles:
1) an exploration of what constitutes a content type from an educational perspective,
and 2) an attempt to a characterization that is meaningful for the community of
medical educators and that is useful in terms of assisting the retrieving of content with
some repurposing goal in mind. To this aim it should be remarked that the level of
granularity that has been adopted has been very much affected by the notion of
repurposing that is key to mEducator. In fact, repurposing is a middle ground between
the notion of reusing a learning object in its entirety, and reusing some of its media
fragments or content fragments [15], this latter requiring a much more fine-grained
approach to annotation. On the other hand, repurposing presupposes that a fairly
complex and elaborated resource keeps its general connotation (e.g., a virtual patient),
but is repurposed to take into account different contexts, e.g., different cultures,
different languages, different measurement systems, or to cover yet an additional
learning outcome. In this sense it seems reasonable to annotate at a level that does not
explicitly take into account content structure, and yet may allow specifying the nature
of the components included in the resource.
Concerning the practical ways to support the adoption and the correct use of
controlled vocabularies (to reap their benefits), issues more directly related to the
users must to be taken into account. One lessons from the development of the
vocabulary activity was that any classification system, no matter how much "self-
explaining" its categories and terms are, becomes increasingly meaningful to the user
engaged in the indexing process as long as he or she gains a full view of the facets
used in the classification. Interestingly, this leads us into the realm of user-interface
design, where the recommendation is to show contextually all the top and first level
categories from which the user can select their indexes. This requirement is even
more important when the coexistence of the folksonomic approach is allowed (i.e., a
user who does not recognize a suitable controlled term to describe the resource can
enter a new term), as is the case in our project. For example, if the user thinks that
resource content type is a WIKI s/he should be immediately aware that that option has
been contemplated in the Media Type section.
8 Concluding remarks
We are currently involved in two lines of activity. The first one is concerned with
evaluating and validating the proposed vocabularies, as implemented in the two
mEducator solutions to share medical content. The proposed vocabulary will be then
presented to Medbiquitous (www.medbiq.org), the international consortium dedicated
to develop information technology standards for healthcare education and competence
assessment, as part of the goals of mEducator.
The second line of action regards the formalisation of the mappings of the chosen
terms towards DC, HLOM, MeSH and other sources used in developing the
vocabulary. This will be done taking into account also the output of a recent JISC
project on the Vocabulary Mapping Framework [17], where a mapping of
vocabularies from source standards is provided, with the aim to support the building
of transformations between any of them. It is expected is that through this activity and
through the RDF linking of related vocabularies, a valuable resource to assist in the
tailoring of vocabularies for specific communities will be made available.
From a research perspective, we plan to investigate how the network of mappings
that becomes realised by connecting vocabularies can complement the information
that can be extracted by mining the free text fields of the meducator schema, as
proposed in [27], to further facilitate the resource retrieval process.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the project mEducator (Multi-type Content Sharing and
Repurposing in Medical Education), funded by the eContentplus Programme, a
multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more
accessible, usable and exploitable (Grant ECP 2008 EDU 418006)."
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Appendix: Definitions for Educational practice artifacts
Definitions for Educational Practice Artifacts
A sequence of activities designed to advance student skills, knowledge, and
Course/Module/Unit attitudes in a particular discipline and to help students meet requirements as
prescribed in a curriculum.
Example: a course delivered through a LCMS (e.g., Moodle)
The video or audio recording, or the transcript of the exposition of a given subject
Lecture (Recording) delivered before an audience, for instructional purposes.
Example: a speaker presentation at a conference
Materials that are projected to support the delivery of lectures or presentations in a
Lecture module or a course.
Slide/Presentation
Example: an annotated PPT presentation, an image, picture or diagram.
Notes containing topical information prepared as study/reference material for
Lecture lecture(s) or a course.
Notes/Handout
Example: a document distributed to the participants in a seminar
Book or chapter of a book explicitly meant for the study of a specific subject,
Textbook/Chapter characterised by the systematic presentation of knowledge about the subject.
A resource that provides guided, practical information about a subject
Tutorial
Example: on-line primer to a software for statistical analysis
A list of recommended or required sources which provide additional information on
Reading List the subject being studied
A written problem or exercise designed to illustrate step-by-step how to perform a
Worked Example task or how to solve a problem.
A video or audio recording, or a transcript, demonstrating a skill or a procedure in
Demonstration practice.
A representation of a process, activity or situation. Designed to support problem-
Simulation based learning or exploratory learning, or the comprehension of the dynamics of a
bio-physical or other complex process.
Example: a simulated patient interview, a software simulating a spring oscillation at
the varying of the spring parameters and the force applied to the spring.
An interactive computer simulation that allow the learner to take the role of a health
Virtual Patient care professional and develop clinical skills such as making diagnoses and
therapeutic decisions.
The presentation of a clinical case through diagnostic imaging modalities. The
Teaching images contained in the file are typically supplemented with the following
file/Clinical Case information; case title, history/presentation, findings, diagnosis, discussion.
Study
A detailed account or a process or activity, prepared to assist the student in
Case Study (Non determining what factors led to its success or failure.
Clinical)
Example: a detailed analysis of an institutional change/innovation, a description of a
critical incident.
An activity to develop the practical skills of a subject, or an examination of such
Practical practical skills.
Example: an activity to be carried out in the laboratory.
A task, or other effort to be performed by the student to develop, maintain, or
Problem/exercise increase skill or cognitive abilities. May include Projects and Fieldwork
(no feedback)
A task, or other effort to be performed by the student to develop, maintain, or
Problem/exercise increase skill, including problem-solving, and for which feedback is readily available
(with feedback) to the student.
A structured activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment, used to teach about a
Game/Serious subject or to develop specific skills while playing.
Game
An item, activity, system or instrument designed to measure student learning. May
Assessment include question/answers pairs or practical skill demonstration.
Item/Instrument
Example: Self-assessment questions, Multiple choices, Objective Structured Clinical
Examination (OSCE)
Any content generated by a student of a group of students as a result of coursework.
Student generated Can be used to exemplify good and bad practices, or shared for reference.
content Examples: entries in a Wiki, final coursework, a discussion thread in a Forum
A complete package for a course, module or unit including learning resources of
Resource Pack several types and supporting documentations (e.g., teacher/learning instructions).
Sometimes referred to as “teaching file” in educational contexts other than medicine.
A written guide created to provide direction, and point out critical information to the
Study Guide students. It may include techniques for problem solving and hints to manage the
study process (e.g. topic sequencing and timing, learning and testing strategies)
A document describing the contents of units, courses, and courses of study. May
Syllabus/Programm include information about access requirements, delivery, activities and assessment
e/Curriculum modalities.
A document containing statements about how an educational system should
Educational Policy operate.