Educational Metadata
by Bela Markus
Key words: CPD, distance education, training, virtual academy,
metadata.
Abstract
The criteria for entry to the EU established at the
Copenhagen European Council of June 1993 include the existence
of a functioning market economy as well as the ability to cope
with competitive pressures and market forces within the Union.
Fundamental to this is the existence of a sound and flexible system of
Land Administration, to apply the acquis, and
identified elements essential in the land administration. In Hungary
the education and professional development of this system has since
1973 been supported by University of West Hungary, College of
Surveying and Land Management (CSLM). Under the aegis of CSLM
considerable advances in technology and in corresponding education
support have been made since 1989. However, there remain weaknesses in
CEE countries that are critical for meeting the EU criterion
and for addressing the issue of Institution Building. These were
identified in the United Nations Meetings of Officials in Land
Administration (UN MOLA) Workshop on Land Market in 1998 in
Budapest: Lack of education in the management, legal, economic, human
and ethical aspects of land administration, General lack of user
oriented approach to education, Lack of continuity in education from
universities to professions and appropriate linkage between the two.
In the last four years CSLM has been involved in
four European Union funded distance learning material development
projects targeting professionals in land administration and land /
geographic information management and leading at present EU projects
on continuing professional developments. For the staff of Land Offices
and Surveying / GIS companies distance learning offers a particularly
flexible and effective way of training, eliminating most of the
barriers, providing much better accessibility than traditional
education.
There are three common strategic elements in these
projects. First, the creation of a knowledge centre at CSLM
which will form the base for programmes of education for continuing
professional development for Land Administration in Hungary utilising
existing programmes developed under the TEMPUS OLLO Project and the
existing Land Administration infrastructure. To these will be added
new programmes for higher management and a set of programmes for all
levels in Land Administration focussing on matters pertinent to EU
entry. Second, a delivery system for continuing professional
development based on adapted curriculum structures, management tools
and education technology, both CD and web, with a comprehensive credit
system. Third, the creation of a network of EU centres and
education providers with the objective of participating fully in EU
activities in Land Administration and the EU professional community.
The course material development is based on
knowledge base approach and the course delivery on a distributed
environment. The CSLM acts as a knowledge centre developer, land
office study centres and high schools are dealing with course
delivery. This necessitates the use of metadata on the educational
resources. Metadata is a description of learning objects (like
courses, subjects, learning materials, learning units, documents or
educational services) which may contain data about their form and
content. The best known metadata to us librarians are the catalogue
records for printed publications. Metadata is widely used outside
libraries as well, e.g. in GIS data warehouses.
The reason for creating metadata, from the provider
perspective, is to improve the possibilities of retrieval as well as
to support control and management of learning objects. Distance
learning materials and services with their abundance of different
formats and control measures might not always be usable directly by
everyone: the format might be unfamiliar or unreadable, the content
might be encrypted, otherwise prohibited or only permitted after
payment, the resource might be large, difficult or time consuming to
access etc.
After the first investigations became clear the
Dublin Core will be valuable for many reasons. The Dublin Core became
a standard, metadata records could be understood across user
communities The metadata record created with the Dublin Core could
serve as the basis for a more detailed description if the need arises.
The Dublin Core is flexible enough to modify with the experience of
other researches (Warwick Framework, Learning Object Metadata Group,
ARIADNE project etc.).
The author gives a review of the results, present
status and future activities of the projects of CSLM in building a
virtual academy and the efforts made in designing and implementing an
educational metadata base.
Prof. Bela Markus
Department of Geoinformatics
College of Surveying and Land Management
The University of West Hungary
Pirosalma 1-3
8000 Szekesfehervar
HUNGARY
E-mail: mb@cslm.hu
Website http://geoinfo.cslm.hu
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