Assuring the quality of agricultural learning repositories: Issues for the learning object metadata creation process of the cgiar

Abstract

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Re- search (CGIAR) has established a digital repository to share its teaching and learning resources along with descriptive educational information based on the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard. As a critical component of any digital repository, quality metadata are critical not only to enable users to find more easily the resources they require, but also for the operation and interoperability of the repository itself. Studies show that repositories have difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, especially when this process involves many different stakeholders as is the case with the CGIAR as an international organization. To address this issue the CGIAR began investigating the Open ECBCheck as well as the ISO/IEC 19796-1 standard to establish quality protocols for its training. The paper highlights the implications and challenges posed by strengthening the metadata creation workflow for disseminating learning objects of the CGIAR. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.