Community:Collections and Metadata/EducationalMetadata

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NSDL Metadata Primer

How to Contribute Educational Metadata (including Audience) to the NSDL

Go to Table of Contents | Creating Metadata | Technical Issues

The NSDL would LOVE to harvest audience information, educational standards alignments, and other education related metadata for the resources in your collection. Here's how to express this metadata in nsdl_dc, the NSDL's form of Qualified Dublin Core (see Contributing Metadata to the NSDL).

Audience Information

  • Prefer Qualified Dublin Core, such as nsdl_dc, over Simple Dublin Core, such as oai_dc.
Qualified Dublin Core can contain the following elements:
None of these elements can be expressed in Simple Dublin Core, the element set mandated as the base level oai_dc for OAI-PMH, the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Since fielded searches will seek audience information in the above fields, we strongly encourage collections with this information to expose nsdl_dc for OAI harvest. There is no sanctioned way to express this information in Simple Dublin Core (oai_dc).
  • Prefer the NSDL Controlled Vocabulary to Express Education Level (Grade Level)
The use of a single controlled vocabulary for Education Level will facilitate better search results. For example, if one collection uses "Junior High" and another collection uses "Middle School" to describe education level, then neither searches for "junior high" nor searches for "middle school" will return both collections' records. Therefore, the NSDL provides a preferred controlled vocabulary for Education Level values:
  • Provide Schema Valid XML**
The Qualified Dublin Core audience elements belong to the DC terms namespace, http://purl.org/dc/terms/, while the NSDL Education Level controlled vocabulary belongs to the NSDL Education type namespace, http://ns.nsdl.org/schemas/ed_type/ed_type_v1.00/. The following example is a very short, syntactically correct, XML schema valid nsdl_dc record containing these elements:
<nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc schemaVersion="1.02.010" xmlns:nsdl_dc="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/ http://ns.nsdl.org/schemas/nsdl_dc/nsdl_dc_v1.02.xsd">
<dct:audience>elementary school students</dct:audience>
<dct:mediator>middle school science teachers</dct:mediator>
<dct:educationLevel>Junior High School</dct:educationLevel>
<dct:educationLevel xsi:type="nsdl_dc:NSDLEdLevel">Grade 7</dct:educationLevel>
</nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc>
Note that because "Junior High School" is not in the NSDL's controlled vocabulary for Education Level, it cannot have an encoding scheme designated by an xsi:type attribute. Note further that this example is unrealistic because the data in the elements contradicts itself, among other reasons.

Educational Standards Alignments

  • Prefer Qualified Dublin Core, such as nsdl_dc, over Simple Dublin Core, such as oai_dc.
Qualified Dublin Core can contain the following element:
Alignments of resources to Educational Standards should be expressed in the Qualified Dublin Core <conformsTo> element, which refines the Simple Dublin Core <relation> element.
The <conformsTo> element cannot be legally expressed in Simple Dublin Core, the element set mandated as the base level oai_dc for OAI-PMH, the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Since fielded searches will seek educational standards alignments in the above field, we strongly encourage collections with this information to expose nsdl_dc for OAI harvest. However, if that isn't possible, we suggest you insert a Simple Dublin Core <relation> element in oai_dc with your educational standards alignment information.
  • Indicate URIs explicitly
It is appropriate to explicitly indicate that a <conformsTo> value is a URI by adding the "xsi:type" attribute "dct:URI" where "dct" is a an arbitrary defined XML namespace prefix for the DC Terms namespace. If you have non-URI information you wish to include, such as "Kansas Sixth Grade Math Standard", you may include an additional <conformsTo> field (without the URI designation) containing this information. See the XML example below.
  • Prefer the Achievement Standards Network Identifiers for Educational Standards
JES& Co., a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of youth (http://www.jesandco.org/) has been funded through NSDL to make online standards usable in facilitating educational progress by developing the Achievement Standards Network (http://www.jesandco.org/ASF/default.asp). ASN's efforts will facilitate standardization (yes, standardization of standards), interoperability, and automatic processing. Therefore, the NSDL strongly encourages collections to use the ASN identifiers for standards whenever possible.
  • Provide Schema Valid XML**
The conformsTo element belongs to the DC terms namespace, http://purl.org/dc/terms/, as does the URI encoding scheme which is used when expressing URIs in Qualified Dublin Core. The following example is a very short, syntactically correct, XML schema valid nsdl_dc record containing these elements:
<nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc schemaVersion="1.02.010" xmlns:nsdl_dc="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/ http://ns.nsdl.org/schemas/nsdl_dc/nsdl_dc_v1.02.xsd">
<dct:conformsTo xsi:type="dct:URI">http://purl.org/ASF/LearningStandardDoc/2E4EC33B-AAC0-4A84-9580-C7994463C877</dct:conformsTo>
<dct:conformsTo xsi:type="dct:URI">http://url.for.an.edStandard/withoutAnASN/identifier</dct:conformsTo>
<dct:conformsTo>Rhode Island Second Grade Science Standard RI86.2</dct:conformsTo>
</nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc>
Note that <conformsTo> elements WITHOUT the URI designation may contain non-URI information, which may or may not correspond to a particular supplied <conformsTo> element WITH the URI designation.

Additional Educational Metadata

  • Provide more educational metadata if it's available
The Dublin Core profile used by NSDL also includes the IEEE LOM educational extensions proposed by the Dublin Core Education Working Group (http://dublincore.org/documents/2000/10/05/education-namespace/):
and also provides the following:
None of these elements can be legally expressed in Simple Dublin Core, the element set mandated as the base level (oai_dc) for OAI-PMH, the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Since fielded searches will seek this information in the above fields, we strongly encourage collections with this information to expose nsdl_dc for OAI harvest. There is no sanctioned way to express this information in Simple Dublin Core (oai_dc).
More information on how to use the IEEE elements is available from:
http://www.imsglobal.org/metadata/imsmdv1p2p1/imsmd_infov1p2p1.html
http://www.schemas-forum.org/registry/schemas/DCMI-Education/
http://www.ischool.washington.edu/sasutton/IEEE1484.html
  • Provide Schema Valid XML**
These three elements belong to the IEEE LOM namespace, http://www.ieee.org/xsd/LOMv1p0. The following example is a very short, syntactically correct, XML schema valid nsdl_dc record containing these elements:
<nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc schemaVersion="1.02.010" xmlns:nsdl_dc="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:ieee="http://www.ieee.org/xsd/LOMv1p0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://ns.nsdl.org/nsdl_dc_v1.02/ http://ns.nsdl.org/schemas/nsdl_dc/nsdl_dc_v1.02.xsd">
<ieee:interactivityType>expositive</ieee:interactivityType>
<ieee:interactivityLevel>very high</ieee:interactivityLevel>
<ieee:typicalLearningTime>45 minutes</ieee:typicalLearningTime>
<dct:instructionalMethod>experiential learning</dct:instructionalMethod>
</nsdl_dc:nsdl_dc>

** For more on XML namespaces and schemas, see the OAI Best Practices document on XML namespaces and schemas at http://oai-best.comm.nsdl.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NamespacesAndSchemas and/or the NSDL_XML_FAQ at http://metamanagement.comm.nsdlib.org/NSDL_XML_FAQ.html.

Go to Table of Contents | Creating Metadata | Technical Issues

Questions? Comments?
Contact NSDL Repository Metadata Ingest Support: <a href="mailto:mr-ingest@nsdl.org">mr-ingest@nsdl.org</a>

03/20/06 - Naomi Dushay, NSDL Ingest Team

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