Study of metadata for learning objects

Metadata is descriptive information for data. The purpose of metadata is to facilitate describing, managing and discovering resources in huge distributed repositories. Metadata experts worldwide create the Dublin Core (DC), which acts as a fundamental core metadata standard on which industrial metadata standards based. For educational industry, the need is increasing for description and exploration of a learning object (LO) in distributed learning object repositories (LOR) worldwide. Several organizations aim to establish metadata standards for facilitating better identifying, exchanging and reusing learning objects according to their specific needs. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published Learning Object Metadata (LOM), which is a credited standard on the global level since it best represents the characteristics of digital learning objects. Conversion from one metadata standard to another is necessary in case that people want to exchange and reuse learning objects tagged using different kinds of metadata standards. Mapping between the DC and the LOM is an essential job in many e-learning systems. In this thesis, we present a new web based metadata editor for the DC and LOM, and a Web Services oriented mapping tool between them. Other clients can use our editor to create DC or LOM metadata records when catalog their learning objects into our LOR, and integrate the mapping web services as a part of different systems regardless of different platforms, protocols, and displaying devices. Our objective is to promote the reusability and interoperability for both the DC and the LOM users, therefore benefit the learning object industry by lowering the cost of using metadata. The DC-LOM mapping tool is demonstrated in our e-learning system called UbiLearn developed at the MCRLab of University of Ottawa