一个标准能适合所有的项目吗：开放教育的选择

One Standard to Rule Them All?: Descriptive Choices for Open Education

基于支持全英开放教育资源项目(英国开放教育资源项目，简称UKOER 项目) 的经验，本文将探讨该项目开展过程中所涌现出的各种不同的开放教育资源描述方法，及其对资源共享、工作流程计划、资源聚集观的影响。由于UKOUER 项目包括个人层面的项目、学科层面的项目和院校层面的项目，而这三种类型的项目又有各自不同的特点，显然难以用一种技术或者描述性的解决方案来适合所有的项目。因此，目前这些项目只提供有限的描述性信息，包括项目标签、作者、题目、日期、链接地址、文件格式、文件大小、权限，以及一些附加信息，包括语言、学科分类、关键词、标签、评论和描述。所有项目可以自由选择编码、存储和分享上述信息的方法。本文通过大量的例证介绍了项目的描述方法，其中还包括工作流程和所作出的尝试。我们将考虑所选择的工具(资源库、Web2. 0 应用、虚拟学习环境)与标准选择的关系，以及本地需求和更广泛社区需求之间的关系。我们会考虑这些选择对资源传播和发现的影响，例如，资源描述对大量开放教育资源的发现服务的影响。

Drawing on our experience of supporting a nationwide Open Educational Resources programme (the UKOER programme), this paper discusses the diverse range of approaches to describing OERs that have emerged across the programme and their impact on resource sharing, workflows, and an aggregate view of the resources. Because of the diverse nature of the projects in the programme, ranging from individual educators to discipline-based consortia and institutions, it was apparent that no one technical or descriptive solution would fit all. Consequently projects were mandated to supply only a limited amount of descriptive information (programme tag, author, title, date, url, file format, file size, rights) with some additional information suggested (language, subject classifications, keywords, tags, comments, description). Projects were free to choose how this information should be encoded (if at all), stored, and shared. In response, the projects have taken many different approaches to the description and management of resources. These range from using traditional highly structured and detailed metadata standards to approaches using whatever descriptions are supported by particular web2.0 applications. This experimental approach to resource description offers the wider OER community an opportunity to examine and assess the implications of different strategies for resource description and management. This paper illustrates a number of examples of projects' approaches to description, noting the workflows and effort involved. We will consider the relationship of the choice of tool (repository, web2.0 application, virtual learning environment) to the choice of standards; and the relationship between local requirements and those of the wider community,and the impact of those choices on the dissemination and discoverability of resources. For example, the implications of resource description choices for discovery services which draw on multiple sources of OERs.