How to handle courses?

[trugwaldsaenger]

As discussed with @karindr last week, we have an issue with the classification of courses. They can appear in three different forms:

1) As publications: In some cases we have only the course material available. In this case the course is a publication, which is made out of several other publications. Example: https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn%3Auuid%3A2ba2ffce-4d50-40fc-bc58-3c3431d82d78? (currently classified as "service")

2) As events: With Moocs and other open courses we have the case that we have courses, which users can participate in. Since they typically have a start and an end-date, we added them as events. Example: https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn:uuid:ed2bccde-5e8c-43b5-a11d-88104a1404c4?

3) As services: Normally courses are run on a plattform (mooc platform, LMS). But sometimes they are presented on a separate website, which makes them more an independend service (Subtype: Tutorial or learning platform). Example: https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn%3Auuid%3Aaa0a8be7-f7b4-4268-898c-ccaa66387ace?

@karindr and I agree, that this makes little sense, since nobody will understand the difference and similar information is spread all over different categories. We agree that it will be best to put all examples in one commen sub-category "courses". But it is stillunclear if "courses" should be a subcategory of "publications", "services" or "events".

Even if we find a solution for this question (I guess we simply have to decide on it somehow), we still have the problem, that the input templates are divergent. I tend to think that courses are "publications". But in this case we have currently have only the rather rudiment templates for "publications", which lack many needed fields like topic/subject, audience group, license, start end date and probably others.

[karindr]

I strongly recommend to use service and the subcategory course there. From the point of a visitor coming to the OER World Map it is useful if he finds the information leading him to OERs in one category and the category with most information leading to OERs is service. Publication is mostly used for a kind of meta information on OER like policies, articles, interviews and so on, only few resources are found there.

[acka47]

This is not easy. However, I would not include the "Digitale Elternbilung" offer under courses anyway. It is an online service for parents with now course-like structure or curriculum.

I think a particular course that is offered at a specific time is correctly added as an event. But we might distinguish this case from a description and a set of materials for a specific course. We could link them together as a description of a course along with instances of a course (which themselves can have multiple events associated with them if it is a multi-weeks/months event). This is related to #1153.

[trugwaldsaenger]

I strongly recommend to use service and the subcategory course there. From the point of a visitor coming to the OER World Map it is useful if he finds the information leading him to OERs in one category and the category with most information leading to OERs is service. Publication is mostly used for a kind of meta information on OER like policies, articles, interviews and so on, only few resources are found there.

I reflected on this and I`m still not convinced. We do have a subcategory "Learning Resource (OER)" on beta. Also it is quite clear, that a course is an OER, just have a look at the wide spread Hewlett OER definition:

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

So we should not mix up our basic categories. A spreadsheet is an OER, a repository is the related service. A textbook is an OER, a textbook collection the related service. Consequently I think that a course is an OER and a Learning Mangement System is the related service.

Having that said, I agree that we should not only take an ontological perspective here, but also a practical... Nevertheless I would like avoid mixing up categories if possible. Rather we could think about a frontend solutions here (For example, if someone is browsing for Learning Management Systems, we could include a link like this: "Are you looking for individual courses? Have a look here!"

[trugwaldsaenger]

Just discussed this issue offline with @acka47. We agree that linking the ressource part of a course (= course material) with the event part as described above would make sense. To continue practically we agreed that:

1. courses with date should be added as events
2. courses without actual date should be added as publications
3. in both cases we should add a tag "course"
4. courses on OER should be additionally be tagged as "oer on oer"

[literarymachine]

We do have a subcategory "Learning Resource (OER)" on beta.

FYI, you also have this available on production:

[trugwaldsaenger]

@karindr @acka47: Do we agree, that this issue can be closed for now?

I think a particular course that is offered at a specific time is correctly added as an event. But we might distinguish this case from a description and a set of materials for a specific course. We could link them together as a description of a course along with instances of a course (which themselves can have multiple events associated with them if it is a multi-weeks/months event). This is related to #1153.

@acka47: I still think this is a good direction to procede. Should we make a seperate issue for this?