Phil’s JISC CETIS blog

The other day I took part in one of the FlashMeetings that are periodically convened by Erik Duval (chair of the IEEE LTSC LOM working group) concerning maintenance and development of the IEEE LOM standard. There are no entirely new developments since my last LOM update, but since it is over a year since that update I guess it is worth posting a quick reminder and latest news about what is happening.

1. Reaffirmation
The IEEE have now reaffirmed the LOM data schema (1484.12.1), which means that it continues as a standard for another 5 years.

2. Corriegenda
We discussed Draft 5 of the corriegenda (which fixes some known issues in the LOM without making substantive changes to the standard). A couple of new mistakes in the documentation have been identified and rectified, see the draft document for details. Those on the call believe that we identified all changes that are necessary to turn this draft into the final version. This will be circulated on the LTSC LOM mailling list soon. (Many thanks to Javier Godoy who has been leading this work.)

3. Expressing LOM in the Dublin Core Abstract Model
Unfortunately this wasn’t discussed. The DCMI IEEE LTSC Taskforce section of my last update on Dublin Core represents pretty much the latest I’ve heard on this.

Like my son said when we were stuck behind some agricultural vehicles the other week: “things with big wheels and big engines move more slowly than smaller things”.

Here’s a quick update on current activity by Erik Duval and others on the IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata ahead of an IEEE LTSC meeting next week. In summary the LOM has been reaffirmed as an IEEE Standard, will be corrected through a corrigendum, is converging with other metadata approaches and may possibly be renewed in the light of what we have learned about metadata since it was designed. (more…)

As promised when I wrote the short update on repository specs, here is the complementary information about what’s been happening over the last few months with education metadata specs. Brief version: some minor changes to the IEEE LOM have been agreed; closer harmony between the LOM and Dublin Core is in the offing; and if you think that DC comprises 15 elements you need to look at it again.

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