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Should a well implemented metadata system be transparent to the user? An obvious question perhaps but a valid one nonetheless and depending upon the context the answer might not be as obvious as you may think.

Metadata is all around us yet how aware are we of its existence? An example. Most of us use Google at some point to search for pages on the web. Google uses metadata, quite a bit of it in fact yet most is not obviously apparent to us, at least not as metadata per se. There's a web page's title, metadata of a kind though you might rightly argue that's part of the page's data rather than metadata. More obvious metadata for any given page might include the date the page was last modified (available via the web server's page cache), the language, mime type (not all objects on the web are HTML web pages; think pictures, video, PDFs, etc.) and a few other bits of information. A web page's URL is also metadata, and that's quite an important part of searching Google, not least because Google creates its own metadata about a web page used to compile its PageRank. All these metadata are used to construct your search results when you search Google. Thankfully you can be blissfully unaware of their existence and still get pretty authoritative results. However, awareness of Google metadata can help you perform more focused searches but generally most of us are happy with the results we get when using the familiar single, simple search box.

Then there's learning object metadata. How aware are we of that, and indeed my main question, how aware should we be? The current learning object metadata specification from the IEEE weighs in around 69 metadata fields, that is 69 boxes in which something could be entered to describe a learning object. Let me say at the outset that you don't have to enter anything into any of these fields, they're not mandatory. But of course if a metadata system is to be of any use you'd have to use at least some of these fields otherwise what's the point. And it's a given that some metadata is essential for resource discovery and reuse, and therefore standardization in what those metadata are is essential. However, depending upon what your learning object is, some IEEE LOM fields will be more useful than others at describing your object. Some groups are working hard at helping to create a consensus as to what are the core fields that a learning object could use to aid resource discovery and reuse.

There's clearly an overhead associated with creating metadata as any data that can't be automatically gleaned from the object itself or created by the system a la Google has to be added by someone. Consequently there must also be a trade-off between the utility of metadata vs the cost of adding metadata. At one extreme no metadata is probably not going to be very helpful (and actually quite difficult to achieve given the inherent metadata surrounding any object placed on the web - see above). At the other extreme a comprehensively completed IEEE LOM record is likely to be too costly for many objects. As a result of this trade-off one of the hot topics in e-learning is trying to identify where the balance is, recognising that it's probably going to be different depending upon the context.

So, back to the question. Should a well implemented metadata system be transparent to the user? And a supplementary question, how can we as learners use this metadata to enhance our learning experience beyond that which was possible before the creation of the IEEE LOM?

Are there any really effective implementations of metadata e.g. the IEEE LOM in learning management systems that are transparent to the user yet sufficiently useful to justify the effort that went into creating them? And the $64,000 question, are these implementations used, and if so how, by whom and to what effect?

Scott Leslie has updated his list of learning object repositories that offer RSS feeds of their items. Nice work Scott. I particularly liked the collapsible headlines (once I figured out they were there: click the minus sign in the box at the right of the headlines in blue).

Although I expect RSSWinterfest won't mention learning object syndication using RSS or the importance of syndicating e-learning content in general, I will still be a virtual attendee in the hope of being pleasantly surprised.

Here's your chance to make a difference and help create the semantic web. This new post is based in the UK at QinetiQ, the largest science and technology research enterprise in Europe. Don't hang around though as the closing date is 10 January 2004. The job advert states "... the initial focus is on military applications ..." so you'll get to work on black ops too but at least you'll have access to a large budget!

I can't bear the thought of Alan not having anything to read via RSS so here's a quick post. It's nice to be missed, though I don't feel as though I've been away. As Seb has written, sometimes other things just take over your life. I've also been keeping my typing fingers busy with other projects.

While I was away doing other things David Wiley and team have set up their pitch with a new peer reviewed publishing project. Bravo! It's early days although a few papers have already been published. I'm not yet sure how Pitch will be different from other collaborative systems though with the pedigree of the first three authors I expect we'll see some great things. I anticipate that many of the hidden strengths of the project are in the work flow. Anyone who's had a paper peer reviewed and published in the 'established' literature will know that even rapid communications can take weeks to appear (though some are very rapid I accept) and a full paper can take months. Still, once your paper is accepted though it must be good, right? Well (stop the presses), no, peer review is no guarantee of truth, quality, and non-biased writing. That's reflected by the fact that we have tens of thousands of peer reviewed academic journals, often many tens or even hundreds of individual journals in the same small field. There are different degrees of 'truth', 'accuracy' and 'non-bias', at least there are in the published literature although in terms of absolutes there aren't of course (read this for a readable piece on understanding science and the science-based literature). Community interest and custom-and-practice can inadvertently perpetuate bias despite the most rigorous peer review.

But I digress (this is a topic that tried writing about before but have yet to get it right), back to the work flow advantages and community commentary offered by journals like Pitch. With regards the lengthy traditional peer review process, of course it doesn't have to be this way. It's as much about peer consent as it is about peer review. By that I mean the academic community accepts that in order to publish in the literature you have to (as a generalisation) submit your paper to a journal's editorial team, submit to their peer review process, assign your copyright to the journal's publisher, and then finally pay to buy back a copy of your (hopefully) published paper. Well times they are a changin. Increasingly authors are retaining their own copyright, are contributing to electronic journals (though not all offer the apparent cost and time saving that the electronic medium would seem to offer thanks to the strangle-hold of the existing publishing industry) and through entrepreneurial publishing ventures are getting their papers for free. Communities are springing up around some online journals where commentary extends debate.

So, let us welcome Pitch and let's all pitch in and make it a success because it'll likely only ever be as successful as you make it.

As a postscript to my post last week, it's not that I don't think reusable learning objects have a lot to teach us about how e-learning might work. I do. Much of my effort over the last few years has been in some way related to RLOs. It's just that I have a dawning realization that what educational technologists think of when they talk about learning objects is not the same as what lecturers and teachers think. And I don't just mean the old debate about whether a picture is an RLO or whether a course is. I mean something much deeper, about the way people interact with RLOs, what they're for and how they work for us. What works in the real world of teaching and learning, and what doesn't. At some point I think both communities needs to start interoperating.