Adapting a quality assurance framework for creating educational metadata in an agricultural learning repository
| Pages | 181-199 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471111125159 |
| Published date | 12 April 2011 |
| Date | 12 April 2011 |
| Author | Thomas Zschocke,Jan Beniest |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Adapting a quality assurance
framework for creating
educational metadata in an
agricultural learning repository
Thomas Zschocke
Institute for Environment and Human Security, United Nations University,
Bonn, Germany
Jan Beniest
World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
Abstract
Purpose – The paper seeks to introduce a process for assuring the creation of quality educational
metadata based on the ISO/IEC 19796-1 standard to describe the agricultural learning resources in the
repository of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Design/methodology/approach – Thepaper describes the general notion of quality ineducation and
in the creation of educational metadata. It introduces a quality framework based on the ISO/IEC 19796-1
standard on quality management and quality assurance for learning, education and training. This
standard consists of a reference framework for the description of quality approaches (RFDQ) to describe,
compare,and analyze quality management and quality assuranceapproaches, which has been adapted to
the creation of educational metadata in the context of the learning object repository of the CGIAR.
Findings – In order to achieve consistency in the description of learning resources in a repository
through quality educational metadata, a standardized process for metadata creators is essential. The
reference framework of the ISO/IEC 19796-1 standard provides a flexible approach that allows the
optimization of the metadata creation process while assuring quality of the descriptive information.
Practical implications – The paper proposes a standardized process for the creation of learning
object metadata based on the ISO/IEC 19796-1 standard, and makes suggestions on how to use the
reference framework when adapting a quality model for educational metadata.
Originality/value – ISO/IEC 19796-1 is a very recent standard with a flexible reference framework
to develop a quality model in education and training. It provides a novel approach for organizations
maintaining learning repositories that are interested in standardizing the educational metadata
creation process, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved.
Keywords Quality control,Developing countries, Standards,Organizational processes,
Education sector,Metadata
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Providing high quality educational products and services is critical not only when it
comes to the teaching and learning process, but also in the context of semantically
enriched resources in learning repositories. High quality metadata ensure accurate and
complete access to digital resources and enable end-users to easily find and retrieve the
resources they require (Shankaranarayanan and Even, 2006). With the availability of
digital resources in many different repositories, the control and quality assurance of
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Creating
educational
metadata
181
Received 6 October 2010
Accepted 7 October 2010
The Electronic Library
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2011
pp. 181-199
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640471111125159
the metadata that describe these resources are paramount for end-users, for instance,
when sharing knowledge (Stephens, 2004; Sturdy, 2001), conducting business on-line
(Manouselis and Costopoulou, 2006), making available scientific research outputs
(Schweik et al., 2005; Thomson et al., 2003), offering learning resources in education
(Currier et al., 2004) or using the semantic web in general (Greenberg et al., 2003; Sicilia,
2006).
Quality is also at the heart of education and training as it influences what students
learn and what kinds of benefits they can draw from their education (UNESCO, 20 04).
The vital importance of quality assurance has also been recognized in higher
agricultural education (Schmidt et al., 2007) where the use of technology-mediated
instruction is considered by many to provide innovative ways to help enhance teaching
and learning effectiveness and improve the quality of education and training in
agriculture (Murphrey et al., 2002; Zschocke and Beniest, 2007). The Communique
´
released at the UNESCO, 2009 World Conference on Higher Education (UNESCO, 2009)
reconfirms the importance to ensure quality education especially in the context of open
and distance learning (ODL) approaches and the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs). Both have helped to widen access to education,
especially with the increased availability of open educational resources (OERs) by
many countries and institutions of higher learning also in developing countries.
Current research about agricultural learning repositories (e.g. Manouselis et al., 2008;
Manouselis et al., 2010; Manouselis, Rudgard, Keizer and Salokhe, 2009; Manouselis,
Salokhe and Keizer, 2009) shows the great impact of sharing and reusing learning
resources within a global infrastructure of learning repositories about agricultural and
rural development topics on helping to improve the development and welfare of
agricultural and rural populations especially in developing countries. The
implementation of relevant international standards and specifications such as IEEE
Learning Object Metadata (LOM) (IEEE Computer Society, 2002) ensures that these
systems are fully interoperable and their learning resources are truly reusable (Najjar
et al., 2003), making progress towards a future “learning object economy” (Downes, 2001).
The use of these standards helps to strengthen technology-enhanced learning (Duval,
2004; Duval and Hodgins, 2006; Duval and Verbert, 2008) by promoting a “large-scale
learning object infrastructure” (Duval and Hodgins, 2003), which also extends into the
agricultural sector in international development. However, providing quality metadata to
describe learning resources, which is needed to maintain the interoperability of digital
learning object repositories, still remains a challenge (Barton et al., 2003; Guy et al., 2004).
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) recognized
the significance of the need to assure the quality of its learning resources and to apply
current learning technologies to make them more widely accessible. A recent impact
study about the education and training offered by the CGIAR recommended that all of
its international research institutes should develop appropriate quality assurance
protocols to be applied at all stages in both formal and informal training (CGIAR
Science Council, 2006). The study also suggested to make more strategic use of
e-learning tools and methods to increase the efficiency of CGIAR education and
training. In response to these suggestions, the CGIAR training community established
a digital repository of its agricultural learning resources, integrated with a Web-based
learning management system (Beniest and Zschocke, 2005). In order to enhance the
search and retrieval facility of the repository the group developed an application profile
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