Sections

1 Purposes
2 Information
3 Architectures
4 Mapping
5 Transforming
6 Transferring
7 Feedback
Workshop Presentations

Our links

PDP survey
LIP Baseline Pack
UK Dev LIP

External Links

DPA 1998
IMS LIP

4 Mapping the information to the specifications

One may have decided what information will support the purposes identified for the system in question, have located that information, and checked on the appropriateness of gathering and storing it. Alternatively, one may know what systems need to interoperate, and have checked that it is acceptable to do so. The roads merge at this point on this central track of considering how that information can be mapped onto the standard specifications that are proposed in this area. Much work has already been done here, so here we indicate this work, and give a reference guide.

The central consideration here is that mapping personal development information, particularly where reflection and thinking have been included, is challenging, because of the "soft" nature of much of the information involved. In many cases, it may not be clear how to map certain information, and a detailed understanding of the specification is necessary. At some point, proposals for mapping must be checked with rest of the interoperating community, to ensure that the mapping decisions made are compatible with those of others, and thus that information transferred will be usable in the other systems.

What is LIP?

The IMS Learner Information Package (LIP) specification was first released in March 2001. It was then chosen by CETIS LIPSIG as the best available way of interoperably representing firstly education transcript information, and subsequently the other learner information related to personal development planning, and e-portfolios. A major introduction to LIP is available, in MS Word format, as The LIP Baseline Pack, published in October 2003. This introduces both our usage of IMS LIP for learner records, and our initially proposed extensions to it.

We have been continuing to develop our understanding and proposals for the use of LIP, and this is shown at the UK Developmental LIP site, covering the XML schemas, examples conforming to those schemas, and extensive documentation, including spreadsheets detailing proposals for mapping personal development and e-portfolio information onto LIP with our extensions.

Using LIP to represent information

Rather than duplicating information and extensive discussion in the above places, here we offer a quick reference guide to basic mapping, with reference to the IMS LIP 1.0 specification.

IMS LIP identification info; binding.

Used in transcript. As IMS, but we are still considering specific additions to vocabularies to cover a wider range of information. Contains name (vocab) partname (vocab) address (UK vocab) demographics (vocab) agent (UK vocab) agentdomain (vocab).

IMS LIP accessibility info; binding.

This part of the specification has been partly superseded by ACCLIP, and we intend to vary ACCLIP by adopting the proposal in CEN Workshop Agreement 14590 "Description of language capabilities".

IMS LIP goal info; binding; UK vocab.

Used straightforwardly as IMS, with a UK vocabulary.

IMS LIP qcl info; binding; UK vocab.

IMS stands for "qualification, certificate, licence". Used in transcript for qualifications, but we have not yet fully or finally resolved the tricky issue of representing the level of qualifications. We use it also for any other achievement, whether certified or not.

IMS LIP activity info; binding; UK vocab.

Used in transcript for educational activities. Can be used for any activity.

IMS LIP competency info; binding.

Used to list skills, competencies, and similar, whatever they are called. They may or may not be defined by RDCEO structures.

IMS LIP interest info; binding.

Used to list personal interests.

IMS LIP affiliation info; binding; UK vocab.

Used for affiliations, not only following IMS, to associations or societies, but also to educational institutions, employers, and other bodies. In the transcript it is used for educational institutions.

IMS LIP transcript info; binding.

We are not currently proposing to use this element.

IMS LIP securitykey info; binding.

Use has not yet been determined for UK standards.

IMS LIP relationship info; binding; UK vocab.

Specification not detailed within IMS LIP. We use it with a new vocabulary to detail all of the several relationships that may exist between other elements. It is particularly important and significant used with the new reflexion element, relating together parts and wholes; and relating competency elements to other evidential elements.

Reflexion element

This is the main addition that we are proposing to IMS LIP. Please see the discussion in the main documents referred to above.

Structure and relationships within the information

A very useful part of learner information involves the relationships between the different parts of the information. Apart from the relationship element, IMS LIP provides that some elements can include sub-elements of the same type. Thus one term could be contained within an academic year in the representation. This may work for simple cases, and we initially adopted that approach for representing the transcript. However, on subsequent reflection, we have decided that the standard representation should not be nested in this way. Why not?

Take, for example, a piece of project work, perhaps completed over the summer. It is related to the year's academic work, as it is likely to be a requirement for academic progress. But it might involve an employer with which the learner has an ongoing relationship: in this case it would also be part of a longer-lasting employment relationship. Thus one activity could have more than one larger activity which it is part of. The "tree" model would break down. In contrast, having all the activities separately, with explicit relationships, is a good way to represent those activities.

Relationships have been briefly discussed above. This table, reproduced from other documentation, gives an indication of which relationships may hold between which types of element.

Other related specifications

IMS LIP was not designed to do everything, and there are some specifications that are better adapted to do certain things.

IMS ACCLIP

As mentioned above, this is the IMS revision of the original approach to accessibility taken for IMS LIP 1.0. It replaces the representation of medically-defined disabilities with operationally-defined preferences for the hardware and software used in education and personal development.

IMS Enterprise

This is designed for the relatively straightforward exchange of list of people in organisational groups, and their roles.

HR-XML

The HR-XML specifications cover areas of information related to LIP, and the IMS work on setting out a standard for e-portfolios is taking these specifications into account. In particular, HR-XML is designed with the needs of corporate human resources departments in mind.

EDUCAUSE/Internet2 eduPerson

There are no established patterns for building general-purpose institutional directories. The eduPerson directory data standard helps institutions make eduPerson-compliant directory data available to institutional servers, enabling them to extract information from many directories with a single query.

BS 8788, UKLeaP: UK Learner Profile

At the time of writing, the work on this is getting underway. Wherever this work goes beyond or supersedes the current UK Developmental LIP, we intend to adopt it. We expect it will have a lot in common.

Mappings in practice

One of the first stages that was done in the project to pilot interoperability between PDP systems was to map the available and relevant information onto the developmental UK LIP specifications. Following the link from here to "Experience of pilot projects", tables for ePARS and LUSID can be found. Neither of these is complete, and in each case a substantial amount of work has gone in to establishing the current position.

If you are a members of one of the JISC MLEs for Lifelong Learning projects, we are here to support you. For general and non-technical matters, please contact the Centre for Recording Achievement. For technical questions you may contact Simon Grant directly.

Please also send suggestions for additions or improvements to this page or site to Simon Grant.

Revised 2004-02-01 06:13:07