Application Profiles for Learning
Erik Duval, Neil Smith, Marc Van Coillie
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Knowledge Integration, Ltd., Eifel
erik.duval@cs.kuleuven.be, neil.smith@k-int.com, marc.van.coillie@eife-l.org
Abstract
Application profiles enable “mixing and matching”
metadata elements, in order to meet specific
requirements for a particular context. As an example,
some communities may want to make certain elements
mandatory or restrict the value space of a particular
element.
However, there is much confusion and only limited
experience and expertise in the development and
deployment of application profiles. That is why the
CEN/ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop has
decided to develop guidelines on the use of application
profiles for (e-)learning. This paper highlights the
main results of this work, and was co-authored by the
three experts that drafted the CEN document [4].
1. Introduction
The goal of standardization is to produce a broadly
acceptable specification which does not impose
unnecessary restrictions that may mitigate against its
wider uptake and use. The nature of standards dictates
that they must cover every conceivable circumstance.
On the other hand, implementers of a standard focus
on the needs of their particular constituency and
therefore choose subsets of possible options and
interpretations, which, whilst conforming to the
underlying standards, may limit potential for
interoperability in future.
The normal way of addressing the need for
interoperability is to define a profile of a standard. For
example, the Library community in the 1990s saw
wide interest in new standards such as Z39.50/
ISO23950 (Information Retrieval). Users and vendors
interested in implementing these standards set up
Implementers’ Groups (ZIG) to work on
interoperability issues. These groups developed
profiles of the relevant standard and many of the
profiles developed in the 1990s (e.g. the Bath Profile
of Z39.50) are still in use today.
In this paper, we aim to provide guidance to
communities of interest who have identified a need to
interoperate. We use the term ‘Application Profile’ in a
very broad sense to refer to any profile based on a
standard or specification related to eLearning. In our
work, we have focused primarily on Learning Objects
and their associated metadata but we have also
included examples of application profiles relating to
learner information. An Application Profile is typically
developed for a particular application with a particular
constituency. Such a community may be large (for
instance: the European Academic context) or small (for
instance: a small enterprise in a particular domain).
Within the eLearning community we do not
currently have mechanisms in place for formally
approving ISPs or registering IRPs. However, the
CEN/ISSS WorkShop on Learning Technologies is
sponsoring work to put in place a registry of
(Application) Profiles relating to eLearning . This
could in future form the basis of some form of
recognition system as defined in ISO TR 10000. What
is apparent, though, from experience within the
eLearning community to date, is that interoperability is
normally best served by stating the requirements in an
open and accessible manner.
An Application profile seeks to address the
interoperability requirements between systems by:
x retaining conformance with a base
standard or specification; and
x defining any new requirements in an open
manner.
In section 2, we provide some further background
on the role of application profiles. Section 3 is the core
of this paper: it describes in some detail how
application profiles can be developed in a
methodological way. In our experience, the lack of
such a methodology leads to a loss of efficiency and
effectiveness in many organizations that are
developing application profiles to meet their specific
needs.
2. Background
As outlined above, metadata application profiles
take one or more base standards or specifications as
their starting point. The profile then imposes additional
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
0-7695-2632-2/06 $20.00 © 2006 IEEE