LRMI
The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is a project to create a common vocabulary for describing educational content. While there are many benefits to such a project, the main goal of the initiative is improve end-user search and discovery of learning resources.
- For general information, see http://www.lrmi.net/about.
- LRMI is integrated into schema.org.
- Most of the LRMI properties are integrated into http://schema.org/CreativeWork. This is the definitive version of the LRMI properties.
- The LRMI spec is currently at http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification and at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI/Properties/1.1, with the addition of suggested equivalencies with LOM and Dublin Core.
LRMI briefly toyed with the idea of a competency object, but as Phil Barker has told me, the wider aim was to describe the alignment between a resource and a competency (among several other things) and definitely not to describe the competency in any detail. The educationalAlignment property serves this purpose by linking to any kind of node in an "educational framework". A competency framework is clearly just one kind of educational framework, as is a learning outcome framework. This means that LRMI helpfully makes no distinction in the same way that InLOC makes no distinction between competencies, learning outcomes, and other similar things.
The object of the educationalAlignment property is specified as an AlignmentObject. This is detailed at http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification/alignment-object; and at AlignmentObject, which in addition notes the useful properties inherited from the schema.org Thing.
The targetURL property of AlignmentObject is described as "The URL of a node in an established educational framework", so there seems a very clear mapping to this from a LOCdefinition URI. To fill in what looks like the clear mapping:
| LOCdefinition property | maps to LRMI AlignmentObject property |
|---|---|
| id | targetURL |
| title | targetName |
| description | targetDescription |
The mapping of LOCstructure is to be determined, perhaps with input from the LRMI community.
Interestingly, the "alignment" idea is also implemented by Mozilla Open Badges. The LRMI alignment concept came from Stuart Sutton's work on the property conformsTo as applied to US education standards such as Common Core (thanks again to Phil Barker).