Learning Object Metadata and its application

Abstract

A number of international efforts have been initiated during the past few years leading to the evolvement of various educational metadata specifications for the commonly agreed description of educational resources. Educational metadata can significantly enhance the effective description, search and retrieval of learning objects resulting in efficient organization of educational resources for technology supported instruction. As more and more applications are implemented using educational metadata, it becomes obvious that it would be difficult for a single metadata model to accommodate the functional requirements of all applications. This paper focuses on different existing educational metadata standards with the relative merits of each one, it will also examine the fundamental elements or basic structure of each one of the existing standards, and discuss the interoperability issues. Because of the various E-learning metadata standards that exist, interoperability is a major issue. A major barrier limiting system’s interoperability is the use of different specifications that define the structure and content of learning objects.