Bundling the findings of the Didactic Metadata working group

The “Didac­tic Meta­data” work­ing group took stock of its progress at a con­fer­ence held at twillo and Hanover Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts. Case stud­ies from cur­rent projects were dis­cussed in numer­ous the­matic ses­sions in Hanover, sup­ple­mented by an out­look on activ­i­ties at EU level to increase the inter­op­er­abil­ity of uni­ver­si­ties in teach­ing and learn­ing.

Accounting conference at twillo and the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts

The dis­cus­sion about the index­ing of free teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als is gath­er­ing pace in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries. After the results of a sur­vey on “Didac­tic meta­data in OER and teach­ing por­tals” and the “Com­pendium of didac­tic meta­data” were pre­sented in quick suc­ces­sion a few months ago, the rel­a­tively new “Didac­tic meta­data (higher edu­ca­tion)” work­ing group has now drawn up an ini­tial interim bal­ance. As part of a review con­fer­ence sup­ported by the Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion in Higher Edu­ca­tion (StIL), cen­tral approaches and find­ings of the work­ing group were bun­dled, jointly reflected on and fur­ther steps dis­cussed in Hanover on Sep­tem­ber 10 and 11, 2024.

Interactive workshops for systematization

As part of a pre-work­shop, the par­tic­i­pants — around 25 open edu­ca­tion experts and employ­ees of OER por­tals — were hosted by the OER por­tal twillo on the premises of the HIS Insti­tute for Higher Edu­ca­tion Devel­op­ment (HIS-HE). After the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of HIS-HE, Dr. Grit Würm­seer, had famil­iar­ized the par­tic­i­pants with the broad spec­trum of HIS-HE’s fields of activ­ity, Dr. Elke Bosse (HIS-HE) invited them to think fur­ther about the cat­e­gory sys­tem of the StIL fund­ing projects in an inter­ac­tive for­mat. Based on the cat­e­gory sys­tem of the fund­ing projects, ref­er­ence points for the sys­tem­ati­za­tion of meta­data for edu­ca­tional con­tent were high­lighted. Stef­fen Rört­gen then intro­duced the “Sim­ple Knowl­edge Orga­ni­za­tion Sys­tem” (SKOS), a for­mal lan­guage from the field of clas­si­fi­ca­tions and other con­trolled vocab­u­lar­ies pub­lished in 2009, and offered a prac­ti­cal way to cre­ate your own vocab­u­lary using GitHub.

Diversity of topics and forward-looking ideas

On the sec­ond day of the work­shop, five the­matic ses­sions were held at the Lin­den cam­pus of Hanover Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts to dis­cuss issues from areas such as “prob­lem-based search”, “didac­tic design pat­terns” and “didac­tic meta­data with AI”. In con­nec­tion with the Pat­tern­pool project, the after­noon ses­sion dis­cussed how didac­tic use cases and the prob­lem-based approach can be merged into a list (Marit Vissi­en­non). In addi­tion, the for­ward-look­ing con­cept of “(KN)OER col­lec­tions” was pre­sented — curated OER col­lec­tions on selected top­ics with cur­ric­u­lar inte­gra­tion options (Con­stanze Reder-Knerr). In a world café, the par­tic­i­pants of the KNOER ses­sion dis­cussed selected issues such as qual­ity assur­ance and the con­nec­tion of the col­lec­tions with didac­tic meta­data and assess­ments.

Focus on European interoperability

In a con­clud­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, Channa van der Brug (Euro­pean Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion Hub and Stifter­ver­band) addressed ques­tions of inter­op­er­abil­ity in higher edu­ca­tion from a Euro­pean per­spec­tive. She gave insights into the activ­i­ties at EU level to increase the inter­op­er­abil­ity of higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions in teach­ing and learn­ing and dis­cussed with the par­tic­i­pants how the work of the Didac­tic Meta­data Work­ing Group can ben­e­fit from process pro­pos­als and approaches at Euro­pean level. Van der Brug referred to the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion’s report “A Vision for Edu­ca­tional Inter­op­er­abil­ity” (2023). The cor­re­spond­ing activ­i­ties of the “EDEH Edu­ca­tional Inter­op­er­abil­ity Squad” aim to estab­lish a “Higher Edu­ca­tion Inter­op­er­abil­ity Plat­form” at Euro­pean level.

Future plans and opportunities for participation

The results of this suc­cess­ful first face-to-face meet­ing of the Didac­tic Meta­data Work­ing Group, which was closely ori­ented towards rel­e­vant teaching/learning sce­nar­ios and ques­tions of prob­lem-based search­ing, are to be taken up and deep­ened in smaller work­ing groups, upcom­ing work­ing group meet­ings and on-site con­fer­ences in order to fur­ther dynam­i­cally advance devel­op­ments in the field of cat­e­go­riza­tion sys­tems and didac­tic meta­data. If you are inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Didac­tic Meta­data Work­ing Group, which is pri­mar­ily aimed at open edu­ca­tion stake­hold­ers from the higher edu­ca­tion sec­tor, please con­tact the mod­er­a­tors Katha­rina Tros­torff (e‑teaching.org, Leib­niz-Insti­tut für Wis­sens­me­dien) and Stef­fen Rört­gen (FWU Insti­tute for Film and Image).