Scheduling patterns

[jeannekitchens]

It is common to generalize if scheduled learning opportunites or assessments are offered during the day, evenings, and/or weekends. Learning opportunities could provide one or all of these options. These are generalizations not exact times for instances. The puprose is to give people general information because many people have other activities during any given day.

Schema.org equivalent https://schema.org/timeOfDay (Pending) - The time of day the program normally runs. For example, "evenings". Note this is a property with EducationalOccupaionProgram. The timeOfDay property would have been added based on use cases and community input. Possibly facilited by Phil?

This could be a concept scheme: GeneralSchedule - generalizations of when access to learning opportunities or assessments are offered. Comment: These are not start and end times or exact instances of an offering. They are generalizations that help people plan around their daily activities. Or, it could be a General Schedule property.

WeekendSchedule - Learning Opportunities or Assessments accessible during weekend hours.
NightSchedule - Learning Opportunties or Assessments accessible during evening houus
DaySchedule- Learning Opportunties or Assessments accesible during day time hours.

This is a ProPath use case. Scroll down to Program Offerings https://apps.illinoisworknet.com/cis/wioatraining/program/3774_405

[siuc-nate]

Long ago in the planning phase for Pro Path I had come up with a property and concept scheme for this:

• scheduleType (property)

  • Schedule Type
  • General type of schedule pattern; select from an existing enumeration of such types.

• Schedule (concept scheme)

  • Schedule
  • Broad types of schedules for which events are typically planned.

It more or less had the concepts below, though I have pruned some and tweaked a few here:

• schedule:SingleInstance
  • Single Instance
  • Schedule is a single instance of this event.
• schedule:Weekdays
  • Weekdays
  • Schedule is typically during regular weekdays, Monday through Friday.
• schedule:Weekends
  • Weekends
  • Schedule is typically during regular weekends, Saturday and Sunday.
• schedule:Daytime
  • Daytime
  • Schedule is typically during daytime hours.
• schedule:Nighttime
  • Nighttime
  • Schedule is typically during nighttime hours.
• schedule:SpecificWeekDays
  • Specific Days
  • Schedule typically occurs on specific days of the week, often skipping one or more days in between.
  • Examples include schedules such as "monday-wednesday-friday" and "tuesday-thursday".
• schedule:Weekly
  • Weekly
  • Schedule is typically once per week.
• schedule:Monthly
  • Monthly
  • Schedule is typically once per month.
• schedule:Annually
  • Annually
  • Schedule is typically once per year.
• schedule:Summer
  • Summer
  • Schedule is typically during summer months.
• schedule:Irregular
  • Irregular
  • Schedule has no significant pattern.
• schedule:SelfPaced
  • Self-Paced
  • Schedule allows for participation at a self-determined pace, though some specific dates and deadlines may be involved.
• schedule:OpenEntryExit
  • Open Entry/Exit
  • Schedule allows for the participant to enter, participate with, and complete the resource during any period of the resource's run time.
• schedule:OnDemand
  • On-Demand
  • Schedule allows the participant to choose when the resource begins.
• schedule:EventBased
  • Event Based
  • Schedule is determined or triggered by other events, such as completion of activities, completion of the resource, events external to the resource, or other events; refer to the resource's information for details.
• schedule:FullTime
  • Full-Time
  • Schedule is considered full-time.
• schedule:PartTime
  • Part-Time
  • Schedule is considered part-time.

They were based on a combination of personal experience, the original propath crosswalk, and the related IWDS concept scheme:
The ProPath Crosswalk includes (row 35):

• Night
• Summer
• Weekend
• Other (specify)

The IWDS concept scheme includes (rows 3-14):

• Full-Time Enrollment
• Part-Time Enrollment
• Weekend Classes
• Night Classes
• Day Classes
• Open Entry/Exit
• Other (specify)

So we probably don't need all of the terms listed in big concept scheme above, but it may make for a good starting point. The use of "typically" is intentional and meant to allow for things like events and holidays that may cause slight disruptions to otherwise normal schedules.

It might be worth just having a "scheduleTypeDescription" property instead and see how far we get with that, as it would allow us to add a "scheduleType" property later on if needed.

[philbarker]

The request for the schema.org timeOfDay property came from Google, and was based on the data they saw on websites advertising educational programs and what they needed in order to meet user needs when building search products. In retrospect I think they gave it a poor name as "weekend" is important but not a time of day.

[jeannekitchens]

@philbarker good to know and they did give it a poor name but the intent makes sense. For CTDL, this is not instance data. This is a generalization to communicate if something is available in general in a way to help people who have other activities in their lives. It used to be back in the day, where learning opps occured duing the day mainly during normal working hours. Today, people need to know if the can attend at night because they work or over the weekend because they have family to take care of ect...

[jeannekitchens]

@siuc-nate thanks for pulling all of those details together. Very thorough.

[philbarker]

schema.org has a concept scheme for the days of the week (Mon - Sun*). Should we add these to supplement or replace schedule:SpecificWeekDays ?

• or Sun - Mon if you prefer :)

[siuc-nate]

That would call into question whether or not we need:

• Weekdays
• Weekends
• SpecificWeekDays
• Weekly

I think actually providing all 7 days of the week as concepts may be a bit overly specific? The idea here is to capture types of schedules, not exact schedules - I would hope we don't need to capture those, as having a certain amount of ambiguity makes it easier for people doing searches to get results. It's a fine line to walk though. And it is worth considering before we start carving these concepts into stone.

[philbarker]

Weekends/Weekdays seems as important as daytime/nighttime for someone who has a regular job and wants to know whether they can attend a course (though "evening" would be more common that nighttime in the UK -- should that be added). Likewise, if an evening course is always on Tuesdays that would be a significant factor in determining whether I could attend it.

[siuc-nate]

So are you saying we should instead have:

• SingleInstance
• Daytime
• Nighttime
• Monthly
• Annually
• Summer
• Irregular
• SelfPaced
• OpenEntryExit
• OnDemand
• EventBased
• FullTime
• PartTime
• Sunday
• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday

My worry is that being too specific will require more complex queries for people who are interested in more general data - and we don't want to include "Weekdays" and "Weekends" in addition to listing out all of the weekdays, because then someone who wants to publish weekdays will have to determine whether or not to pick all available options, and someone searching for them will have to remember to query for all available options. I prefer to keep things simpler unless/until there is a demand for more detail.

A schedule tightly constrained to a particular day of the week seems like an edge case to me. Does that also imply that we should list out all 12 months of the year instead of using "Monthly" and "Summer"? Someone could also be looking for classes during specific months.

We can capture that kind of granularity - the question is, should we? In other words, do the presumably rarer cases where it's useful to be that specific make it worth the added effort on the parts of publishers/consumers for the cases where that kind of specificity isn't needed (or isn't available in the source data)? And would the slightly less specific data still be somewhat useful to those "more specific" cases?