| Kattemingga Lodge Melbourne, Australia © 2000 Dublin Core Metadata Initiative |
Jon
Mason & Stuart
Sutton, Co-Chairs Original Draft: 1 March 2000 All Rights Reserved |
This Version:
<http://www.ischool.washington.edu/sasutton/dc-ed-f2f/General_Teaching.html> [1 March 2000]
Draft Recommendation for Teaching Processes/Characteristics Category: General Statement
Discussion within both the breakout session and the whole Working Group at Kattemingga on Learning & Teaching Processes/Characteristics was certainly lively and began with a classification into two broad classes – activities and methods. Of these two broad classifiers methods was clearly identified as the most contentious area for debate. However, the practical constraints of the agreed evaluation criteria resulted in the Working Group not pursuing developing a recommendation for a DC-Education metadata element or “interoperability qualifier” at this stage. While there appears to be a strong requirement from users that capturing and accommodating "educational" metadata is necessary, the lack of any universally accepted taxonomies in this area is the major issue. Also very much at issue – and a topic which attracted a fair amount of debate – is where the boundary between resources on the one hand, and the processes which might operate on them on the other, is most meaningfully drawn. Such a question was considered to be more than a philosophical question where digital objects purposed for educational activity is concerned.
At the Frankfurt meeting the actual category identified was summarised as “Learning Processes/Characteristics”. Since that time, discussion on the mailbase list and at Kattemingga was extended to be more inclusive of “teaching”, with “pedagogy” receiving most attention. Thus, members of the Working Group agreed that educational practice is more than the assembly or packaging of resources. Moreover, any "assembly and packaging of resources" – if describable – is potentially a valuable resource in itself for discovery which may provide a better understanding of learning and teaching practice. Related to this issue a further question was raised as to whether there is a privileging of “learning objects” in currently implemented schema whereby notions of “education” tend to reduce to “resource-based learning”.
The bottom line group consensus was that Learning & Teaching Processes / Characteristics is an important but complex area that includes value statements and many overlapping vocabularies based on ideology or local frameworks. A key question which arose was: is metadata the solution (as opposed to subject gateways or other methods of value-adding selection)?
The Working Group agreed that in order to make further progress on this issue a research proposal be suitably framed.
Revision History: