Study on the use of metadata for digital learning objects in university institutional repositories

Abstract

This study analyzes the present use of metadata describing the educational resources that some universities include in the collections of their institutional repositories (IRs). The goal is to test the viability of implementing value-added services by offering educational resources from IRs in addition to those available from learning object repositories (LOR), based on their metadata. We identify and analyze the different metadata models in a sample of university IRs, concentrating on: the use of one or multiple metadata schemas coexisting in the repository; the use of educational metadata schemas and application profiles such as IEEE LOM or DC-Ed; the possible extensions (qualifiers or any refinements) to DC-Simple; the specific metadata elements used to describe educational features (such as audience, type of educational material, learning objectives, etc.) and the values of the metadata elements, especially the use of specific vocabularies for elements of educational interest.