Vetadata Metadata Application Profile,
schema and user guide review
Final report
E-standards for Training
June 2014
flexiblelearning.net.au
Vetadata Metadata Application Profile, schema and user guide review
Final report
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New Generation Technologies
incorporating E-standards for Training
National VET E-learning Strategy
Vetadata Metadata Application Profile, schema and user guide review
Final report
Table of Contents
1 Purpose .............................................................................................................. 1
2 Outputs .............................................................................................................. 1
2.1 Approach ................................................................................................................ 1
2.2 Notable amendments to the Vetadata standard ................................................. 2
2.3 Identification of further work required ................................................................. 2
3 Future directions for Vetadata.......................................................................... 3
3.1 Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) .................................................... 4
3.2 Metadata for Learning Resources (MLR)............................................................. 4
3.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 5
4 Recommendations ............................................................................................ 6
5 Further reading .................................................................................................. 6
More Information .................................................................................................. 7
New Generation Technologies
incorporating E-standards for Training
National VET E-learning Strategy
Vetadata Metadata Application Profile, schema and user guide review
Final report
1 Purpose
Vetadata is the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector’s national
Metadata Application Profile (MAP). The National VET E-learning Strategy’s New
Generation Technologies business activity commissioned this review of the Vetadata
documentation to ensure the specification retains its currency for the sector. In
response, the following Vetadata documentation and resources have been reviewed
and updated:

VET Metadata Application Profile

Vetadata User Guide

Vetadata examples

Vetadata XML schema bindings.
All documentation has been reviewed by a Vetadata reference group and is ready for
publication once it has been endorsed by the E-standards Expert Group.
2 Outputs
As per the consultant’s brief for this work, the project has produced the following
outputs:




An updated Vetadata (Metadata) Application Profile document
A set of schema files that correspond with the new MAP and allow for
validation of metadata files
An updated version of the “Applying Vetadata to Learning Resources” user
guide
Examples of populated Vetadata files to accompany the user guide and be
published on the E-standards website.
2.1 Approach
The Vetadata documentation was reviewed in collaboration with a Vetadata
reference group:

Irvin Flack (TAFE NSW)

Felicity Hanrahan (eWorks, Victoria)

David Appleby (Westone, WA)

Megan Vanderzwan (Department of Education, Training and Employment
QLD)

Peter Higgs (Tasmania)
This group of metadata experts was nominated by E-standards Expert Group
members. Further consultations were undertaken with staff responsible for the
national collection of Toolbox learning objects and the VET Commons project.
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2.2 Notable amendments to the Vetadata standard
Removal of the myfuture vocabulary
The myfuture vocabulary is no longer supported or maintained and was replaced by
the ANZSIC (Australia and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification)
vocabulary1. ANZSIC is maintained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and is
used by key national VET organisations.
Removal of redundant references
A number of redundant references was removed, particularly to the defunct LORN
repository network as well as some references to Toolbox learning objects that were
no longer relevant.
Modification of the mandatory elements
Previously the documentation recommended a minimum set of elements, plus a
larger set for LORN learning objects. The minimum set has been retained, and a
revised set of recommended elements has now been recommended for learning
objects that are to be shared nationally.
Amendment to Learning Resource Type element
The documentation was revised to recommend users enter the relevant Vetadata
Educational Use vocabulary term/s first, followed by the associated IEEE LOM term.
This change is should make it easier for users to complete this metadata element.
2.3 Identification of further work required
The project identified two other pieces of potential future work to consider:

Mapping with the Schools sector’s ANZ-LOM specification

Investigating the requirements of the Australian Skills Quality Authority
(ASQA) and implications for Vetadata
ANZ-LOM mapping
A mapping between Vetadata and the Schools sector’s ANZ-LOM can be used to
facilitate the sharing and exchange of resources between the two sectors. A mapping
was previously undertaken between Vetadata and ANZ-LOM but as both
specifications have evolved, an updated mapping is required to facilitate
interoperability between the two specifications. If a mapping is undertaken, it would
also be important to notify potential users of its existence.
ASQA Requirements and Vetadata
Vetadata currently allows a resource to be classified as either “assessment guides
and tools” or an “assessment item”. Aside from specifying more detail in the resource
description, Vetadata does not currently provide a structured approach to describing
resources as assessment items:
1
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/mf/1292.0/
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Vetadata
Educational
Use term
Definition
Usage
assessment
guides and
tools
Resources used to assist or
instruct trainers / delivery agents /
assessors in assessing a
learner’s competency. Can also
be used for Recognition of
Current Competency.
Use for: Assessor Resource;
Assessor Guide; Assessment
Guideline; Evaluation Criteria
assessment
item
Actual assessment instruments
used to evaluate or assess
competency. eg assignment
description, essay topic,
questions, project, questionnaire,
quiz, short answers etc.
Use for: Self Assessment
Checklist; Assessment
Instrument;
Use: Assessment Guides and
Tools for
teacher/trainer/delivery agent
guides, guidelines, manuals
etc.
Further work is required to understand what the potential impact of the recently
formed ASQA body may have on the information that the sector should be recording
about assessment items. The Vetadata specification may need to be modified to
accommodate these new requirements.
3 Future directions for Vetadata
The Vetadata standard has been successfully implemented across the sector and
has been an important contributor in enabling the sharing and discovery of learning
resources.
The review of Vetadata at this time was relatively minor, with no significant changes
proposed to the structure of the Vetadata standard itself. This is appropriate at this
time, as metadata standards for learning resources have remained fairly static since
the publication of the IEEE LOM in 2002.
There are 3 commonly used metadata standards (and their derivatives) in education:
IEEE LOM, IMS and Dublin Core metadata. The IMS metadata profile was intended
to be superseded by IEEE LOM, but due to the enduring popularity of SCORM 1.2, it
remains in wide use. Each of these approaches provides for a hierarchical approach
to describing learning resources, which may be thought restrictive by current web
users.
The Vetadata standard is based on IEEE LOM, and also supports IMS metadata for
SCORM 1.2 learning objects. The relative complexity of these standards can
sometimes cause confusion for non-expert users when creating metadata for
learning resources.
Two recent international efforts in the learning resource metadata space may result
in significant changes to the way learning resources are described in future. The first
is the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), which proposes a new approach
to describing resources. The second is an exercise in rationalisation between two
existing metadata approaches (IEEE LOM and Dublin Core).
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3.1 Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI)
The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI)2 is a project led by Creative
Commons (CC) and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) to establish a
common vocabulary for describing learning resources. The Association of
Educational Publishers is an association of publishers, which includes McGraw-Hill
Education, Scholastic and Pearson. Very broadly, the aim of the LRMI is to make it
easier to publish and find learning content.
The LRMI approach is based on the schema.org initiative, a collaboration between
Google, Bing and Yahoo! that was launched in 2011. Schema.org is a specification
for adding information to web content that can be read and understood by search
engines (and potentially other systems too including for example learning object
repositories). LRMI is the first ”industry specific” implementation of the schema.org
specification.
Although not yet widely implemented, the most common approach to creating
schema.org metadata is to encode HTML pages as microdata. Microdata adds
attributes to the HTML elements of web content, which can be used by software and
services to understand the meaning of the content. A simple example is as follows:
My name is <span itemprop="name">John Smith</span>
The itemprop=”name” attribute indicates that this text is a person’s name. Generally
microdata is used to describe the human readable information on a web page in a
way that can be understood by software and systems.
The approach would result in a significant shift in the way learning resources are
described. Before it could be widely used, it would require the development of new
software tools to enable teachers, trainers and others to mark up learning resources
in this way.
The LRMI approach has a number of potential benefits:

Learning content could be easier to find by search engines

More fine-grained searching would be potentially possible – including
searching inside learning objects for example

Subject to access to appropriate software tools and support, metadata
creation could be simplified for creators of learning resources

The education community could utilize tools and resources created through
the broader schema.org community.
3.2 Metadata for Learning Resources (MLR)
Metadata for Learning Resources (MLR) is a draft ISO standard designed to
harmonise the IEEE LOM and Dublin Core metadata standards. It is an ISO standard
2
http://www.lrmi.net/
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(ISO/IEC 19788) with the framework being published in 20113 as a draft. A mapping
has been created from the IEEE LOM to MLR (19788-3, Annex C1), and it is
expected that MLR will replace the IEEE LOM standard, with no further development
expected on the IEEE LOM.
The publication of this standard addresses the previous lack of interoperability
between the IEEE LOM and Dublin Core.
Like LRMI, MLR has not yet been widely implemented and it is not possible to predict
if it will become a commonly used approach for describing learning resources. MLR
is fully compliant with the Resource Description Framework (RDF)4. RDF is a generic
semantic web standard for describing concepts and resources and modelling
information, which organises data into triples. Each triple has the following format:
Subject-Predicate-Object
An example is:
Learning object X (subject) contains resources related to (predicate) training package
Y (object).
This approach to describing resources has the potential for greater flexibility, as
resources and objects can be defined and then related to each other in more detailed
and sophisticated ways that would be very difficult or impossible to achieve with the
hierarchical XML-based approach to metadata. However, it is a fundamentally
different approach to describing resources and would therefore require significant
change to implement. This would include the development or modification of software
tools for creating and using metadata, as well as training and support for metadata
generation. The MLR standard is not required to be implemented with RDF (the
standard itself is technology-neutral), however it seems very likely that RDF will be
the default way MLR will be implemented in practice.
Potential benefits include:

Addressing many of the unnecessary complexities of the IEEE LOM

Greater allowance for localisation and customisation

Interoperability with IEEE LOM and Dublin Core metadata means it is easier
to create cross-walks and mappings between different metadata application
profiles, which means it should be easier to share data across educational
communities.

Greater flexibility in describing resources and their relationships.
3.3 Conclusion
It is too early to determine whether the education community will take up either of
these two very different approaches. Implementation will require support from tool
and software vendors including Learning Management Systems and repository
systems. The enduring popularity of the SCORM 1.2 specification shows that it can
be very difficult to implement change in the technical standards used by the sector,
due to the cost and effort involved.
3
4
See: http://www.cen-ltso.net/main.aspx?put=991&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
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Both approaches would offer benefits in being able to describe learning resources
more flexibly, however neither approach has gained significant traction in the
community at this stage. The E-standards Expert Group should retain a watching
brief over developments in the metadata space and should revisit this topic in 2015 to
determine whether any further action is required.
4 Recommendations
Recommendation 1: Publish updated Vetadata documentation and notify relevant
user groups
Recommendation 2: To facilitate interoperability between the Schools and VET
sectors, a mapping should be undertaken between ANZ-LOM and Vetadata.
Recommendation 3: Investigate ASQA requirements for identifying and describing
assessment items and related evidence of assessment, to determine the implications
for the Vetadata specification.
Recommendation 4: The EEG maintains a watching brief on the LRMI and MLR
initiatives and reviews their status again in 6-12 months time.
Recommendation 5: The EEG considers one or both of the following actions in 2015
if deemed appropriate at that time:

A trial for marking up a sample of learning objects using LRMI

A mapping between Vetadata and MLR.
5 Further reading
Information about schema.org: http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2014/960
Blog post on MLR and LRMI:
http://elearningstandards.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/metadata-acronyms-mlr-or-lrmi/
Information about RDF: http://www.w3.org/RDF/
LRMI website: www.lrmi.net
MLR website: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50772
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More Information
National VET E-learning Strategy
Email: flag_enquiries@natese.gov.au
Website: flexiblelearning.net.au
New Generation Technologies
incorporating E-standards for Training
Email: e-standards@flexiblelearning.net.au
Websites:
New Generation Technologies: ngt.flexiblelearning.net.au
E-standards for Training: e-standards.flexiblelearning.net.au
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