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Terminology February 4, 2010

Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , trackback

We have just finished the first iteration of looking at the terminology within the LOR, and have a list of suggested changes required.  Although this can be seen as quite a laborious task the results can greatly help with training and support. Some language is important for users to engage with e.g. metadata and to a certain extent learning object (because we have it in the title of our repository and that is what it is for), althought there have been vast discussions and research into what is a learning object. I quite like what wikipedia says, I know it’s wikipedia but it is straightforward and understandable:

A learning object is a resource, usually digital and web-based, that can be used and re-used to support learning

However, metadata is a tricky one as many definitions include data about data which is not particularly helpful for the teaching world.  Where as something along the lines of that it is a way of tagging a resource with meaningful information, that will describe it and it will also help it to be found more easily in a search, e.g. a library catalogue, Flickr, YouTube, Google advanced search etc.  - is along the lines of what it is and what it does and therefore justifies its importance.

With terminology a judgment needs to be made re: the language required to engage with a certain subject, so in the world of repositories the epistemological aspects e.g. open content will need a certain amount of engagement and where as other language which relates to usability of the repository may be changed  e.g. files instead of assets, even if the alternative definition is not totally synonymous.

Colleagues within this project have considerable experience of supporting academics in their use of e-tools and often have to make these judgments when carrying out training and undertaking support. The flexibility of our system is that we can go through and change the usability language e.g. the name of a button,  this, however, will be in the context of facilitating colleagues’ engagement with the epistemological aspects of content sharing, e.g. metadata, so we will carry on using this term for the time being.    


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