DC-Education Application Profile Use Case Gathering Session

1. DC-Education Application ProfileUse Case Gathering Session Sarah Currier Moderator, DCMI Education Community / Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd Lara Whitelaw DC-Education AP Task Group / Metadata Development Manager, The Open University Intrallect Repositories Conference, 22 February 2008, Edinburgh

2. Overview of Session • Brief overview of DC-Education Community (5 mins) • Introduction to DC-Ed Application Profile work (5 mins) • Introduction to Use Cases (10 mins) • Discuss possible Use Cases in pairs; record scenarios (15 mins) • Write up Use Cases (15 mins) • Closing discussion (10 mins)

3. Dublin Core Educational Work DCMI Education Community • Co-Moderators: Diane Hillmann (Cornell University); Sarah Currier (Intrallect Ltd) • DC-Education Application Profile Task Group • Lara Whitelaw (OU) is co-ordinating the Use Case gathering exercise Website: http://www.dublincore.org/groups/education/ Wiki: http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/ JISCmail list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/DC-EDUCATION.html

4. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Charter “The DCMI Education Community is a forum for individuals and organizations involved in implementing Dublin Core and other learning resource metadata in the education domain. The objective of the Community is to promote interoperability within the domain through the use of standard metadata and consensus good practices.”

5. Dublin Core Educational Work NOTE: “The DCMI Education Community is a forum for individuals and organizations involved in implementing Dublin Core and other learning resource metadata in the education domain. The objective of the Community is to promote interoperability within the domain through the use of standard metadata and consensus good practices.”

6. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile • Aim: to provide a “modular” AP to support interoperable description of educational aspects of resources • Scope: educationally significant properties available in Dublin Core + any other educational properties, e.g. elements from the LOM • Out-of-scope: will notdefine or give guidelines for usage of non-educational properties, or non-educational usage of properties • Modular:this will enable people to “plug in” the AP with other APs they are using, e.g. the Libraries AP, the Scholarly Works AP, a modular accessibility AP, or a local AP

7. Dublin Core Application Profiles The DCMI Architecture Forum developed: • Dublin Core Abstract Model • Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles The Singapore Framework requires: • Functional requirements (mandatory) • Domain model (mandatory) • Description Set Profile (DSP) (mandatory) • Usage guidelines (optional) • Encoding syntax guidelines (optional)

8. Singapore Framework The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles: http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/SingaporeFramework/

9. Singapore Framework The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles: • […] describe the functions that the application profile is designed to support, as well as functions that are out of scope. • […] form the basis of evaluating the application profile for internal consistency and for giving guidance on the appropriateness of the application profile for a given use. http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/SingaporeFramework/

10. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Task Group Functional requirements We have the following general requirements: • Support for Resource Discovery • Support for Educational Use of Resources • Extensibility • Jurisdiction Neutrality Based on three general Use Cases (see handout or: http://writer.zoho.com/public/brassada/Generic-Educational-Use-Cases )

11. Dublin Core Educational Work DC-Ed Application Profile Task Group Functional requirements What about more specific requirements? • What educational attributes or properties do you want to describe? • What are your real world interoperability needs? • What do your users want to search for / by? • What else? We want your scenarios /Use Cases in order to base functional requirements on real-world metadata needs

12. Usage Scenario • A brief storyline outlining a sequence of events • Written from an imaginary person’s point of view - very specific • Detailing the assumptions, situations, motives and expectations • Plain English • Not requirements - but gets us familiar with goals and provides useful starting point for Use Cases. *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

13. Example scenario A lecturer gets approval to deliver a new post-graduate course in Knowledge Management Principles. Resources for the course need to be identified, selected, gathered, and organised. Public domain resources may be copied to a repository at the institution for access by course participants only. The lecturer also conducts an environmental scan to determine if there are any courses of this nature elsewhere from which to benchmark and to identify possible third party content. *from "Standards Australia/Standards NZ Handbook: HB 256:2007 : Metadata usage in Australian and New Zealand education and training", Appendix A (free download upon registration): http://www.saiglobal.com/shop/Script/Details.asp?DocN=AS0733782701AT

14. Activity • Look at example Usage Scenario (handout) • Write your own Usage Scenario • Think about: “What does my institution / do my users need from educational metadata?” • Pairs - briefly discuss possible scenarios • Then write a scenario each • 15 minutes *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

15. Use case • Is a collection of scenarios, expressing all possible behaviours as actor tries to achieve goal • This includes the responses of any systems to the users actions... • When writing your scenario are there steps in the sequence that could lead to the actor taking different path? • Are there multiple methods to access a system? • If a step in the sequence fails, is there an alternate action that could be taken? • These alternate steps can be written up as separate scenarios. It is the combination of the different possibilities to achieving a goal that form the Use Case *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

16. Use Case vocabulary/terms • Actor: Something with behaviour. It might be a computer system, person (teacher, student, instructional designer, etc...), organisation or combination of these. • Primary Actor: A stakeholder who requests that the system deliver a goal. • Other actors: Other stakeholders who will get something from the use case. • Scenario: A sequence of actions and interactions that occurs under certain conditions. • Extensions: Alternative steps / possible errors. *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

17. Pointers • Breadth before depth • When in doubt: write less, at a more summary level, in a more narrative form, it’s the communication that matters • Handle failures as well as successes • Avoid the passive voice – write “<actor> does <action>” • Get the goal level right – keep the detail in the right place • Avoid the user interface in Use Cases *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

18. Activity (now or later) • Look at example Use Cases (handouts) • Write your own Use Cases • Use your usage scenario as a starting point: or think of other scenarios • 15 minutes • Take away forms / access them via wiki and return to DC-Education *slides based on Intrallect DRM Use Case presentations written by Ed Barker & Peter Douglas

19. Next steps • Continue/finish writing your Use Case • Submit finished Use Case to: l.whitelaw@open.ac.uk • Encourage anyone in your organisation/community that you feel has a useful view point to complete a DC-Education AP Use Case • Contact Lara (at email above) if you or any of your colleagues need further support with writing your Use Case • Deadline: 29nd February 2008

20. Dublin Core Educational Work Please join the DC-Ed Community! E-mail me or Diane s.currier@intrallect.com dih1@cornell.edu Join the DC-Ed list to be notified of new developments and take part in discussions