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Rationalize/simplify education-related properties #2427

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philbarker opened this issue Dec 12, 2019 · 14 comments
Closed

Rationalize/simplify education-related properties #2427

philbarker opened this issue Dec 12, 2019 · 14 comments

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@philbarker
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Using the educationalAlignment property and an AlignmentObject to show how a learning resource relates to shared educational frameworks as an indirect way of expressing information about important educational characteristics (the AlignmentObects alignmentType) has turned out to be overly complex and under used. Some such characteristics could be usefully included as simple properties, e.g.

  • teaches: what the resource is intended to help someone learn
  • assesses: what the resource is intended to assess
  • educationalLevel has already be used for as a property for EducationalOccupationalCredentials but could be used more widely.

Other properties such as educational prerequisite may also be important enough to merit their own properties.

educationalAlignment / AlignmentObject should be retained to catch the long tail of other types of alignment, but its use for where there are direct properties should be discouraged in the future.

Some of these properties would also be useful for the EducationEvent type.

@philbarker
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philbarker commented Mar 11, 2020

Just want to note that these proposals have been discussed by LRMI over the last year or so in conference calls and on the mail list. Specifically, The most recent discussions start in August on with messages on the topics of "Adding EducationEvent to domain includes" and "educationalLevel", conclude in October as the topic on "extended domains & new terms", and the proposal was signed off in the November call.

Further discuss here would of course be welcome.

Phil Barker, responding to request from @danbri for info on how this proposal was developed.

(editted to add links that got lost)

@philbarker
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Fixed in version 8

@ghost
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ghost commented Mar 7, 2022

I have some difficulties to find practical examples og how to differeniate between "teaches" and "assesses".

@stuartasutton
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stuartasutton commented Mar 7, 2022 via email

@HughP
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HughP commented Mar 7, 2022 via email

@danbri
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danbri commented Mar 7, 2022 via email

@ghost
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ghost commented Mar 8, 2022

I now have a better idea about the difference. But I didn't understand it from the current description. Maybe the description should be updated. My misunderstanding came from my particular use case of presenting a course BEFORE the course is conducted. From this perspective, I expected that TEACH and ASSESS would come up with the same content :-)

@philbarker
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@msofferready certainly many courses include both assessment and teaching, especially if the exam is a part of the course, so you could use both. Would it help someone searching for a resource that assesses something if they found the course you are describing? If you used "assesses X" in a search would you expect to find your course about X or would you prefer to find just exams and other tests about X?

Depending on the level detail that is useful to you it may be worth saying that the course hasParts, some of which (lessons, lectures, assignment etc) teach X, some of which (tests, exams, etc) assess X.

We have to be careful about being too specific in the definitions because education isn't as straightforward as many people think. Remember that we have things like formative assessment and marked assignments with feedback, tools like duolingo and flash cards, and methods like socratic dialogue and problem based learning which all use "asking questions" to help someone learn.

I can't think of an improvement on the current "help someone learn" for teaches.

Perhaps for assesses we could include something like "determine someones knowledge, skills or other attributes" where the current definition has a circular reference to "assesses".

@ghost
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ghost commented Mar 8, 2022

@philbarker The concept is now understandable for me, I would leave it the way it is. As I said: I didn't understand it right from the description alone at https://schema.org/EducationEvent, so it might still be possible to be more specific or add an example. Other than that, it's fine for me.

Thx a lot for your patience and your help!

@westurner
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westurner commented Feb 5, 2023

Does https://schema.org/teaches duplicate functionality of https://schema.org/about, when it could also be an rdfs:subPropertyOf of :about?

The current definition of :teaches:

:teaches a rdf:Property ;
rdfs:label "teaches" ;
:domainIncludes :CreativeWork,
:EducationEvent ;
:isPartOf <https://pending.schema.org> ;
:rangeIncludes :DefinedTerm,
:Text ;
:source <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/2427> ;
rdfs:comment "The item being described is intended to help a person learn the competency or learning outcome defined by the referenced term." .

@philbarker
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Yes, teaches is more specific than about.

@danbri
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danbri commented Feb 6, 2023 via email

@philbarker
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@danbri no, logically I don't think there are. Though I think you might not want always every learning objective to be listed as the subject (e.g. Physics textbook: about = Physics, teaches ~ 100s of learning objectives).

@westurner
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I don't need a separate about field to label/tag other types, so why is there one for these?

Because it duplicates functionality,
I think:

  • teaches should be a subPropertyOf :about
  • Add DefinedTerm to the range of about
  • Add examples that show when and how to use each property:
    • about
    • educationalAlignment
    • teaches

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