IEEE LOM

From JISC Standards Catalogue

[ JISC Standards Catalogue Home Page | Standards Entries Home Page | Document Standards | Web Standards | Geographic Information | Image Standards | Multimedia Standards | Metadata Standards | Search Protocols | Internet Transport Standards | Distributed Searching Standards | Metadata Harvesting Standards | Alerting Standards | Identifier Standards | Programming Language Standards | Character Encoding Standards | e-Learning Standards ]

Entry

IEEE LOM

Area

e-Learning

Standard

The IEEE 1484.12.1 – 2002 Standard for Learning Object Metadata is an internationally recognised open standard (published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association) for the description of “learning objects”. IEEE 1484.12.1 is the first part of a multipart standard, and describes the LOM data model. The LOM data model specifies which aspects of a learning object should be described and what vocabularies may be used for these descriptions; it also defines how this data model can be amended by additions or constraints.

IEEE 1484.12.3 - 2005 Standard for eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Schema Binding for Learning Object Metadata Data Model defines how LOM records should be represented in XML; it does so not by providing a single XML Schema but by providing several options which can be tailored to particular application profiles of the data model.

Standardisation

The standard is owned and maintained by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association.

Versions

Both data model and XML binding are in there first version as IEEE standards; however the IEEE version was developed in parallel with the IMS Learning Resource Meta-Data specification, versions of which were based on drafts of the IEEE standard. The latest version of the IMS Learning Resource Meta-Data specification (1.3) adopts the IEEE data model and XML binding, and provides best practice guidelines for their use.

Part One of the standard, the information model, was submitted for reaffirmation towards the end of 2007 (as required by IEEE procedures). At the time of writing the ballot was not completed. A corrigendum for part 1 of the standard is due for submission in 2008.

Maturity

The LOM is mature and very well documented.

Risk Assessment

When used for its intended purpose -learning objects- the LOM is low risk. Some care needs to be taken with the bindings, however: earlier IMS versions (which are still used by many applications) have problems.

Take-up Elsewhere

IEEE LOM is a part of the Metadata Management and Metadata Schema Registry common services of the eFramework.

Further Information

• Learning Object Metadata, WG12, IEEE LTSC, <http://www.ieeeltsc.org/>
• What is IEEE Learning Object Metadata / IMS Learning Resource Metadata?, CETIS, <http://zope.cetis.ac.uk/lib/media/WhatIsLOMscreen.pdf>
• Metadata and Digital Repository Special Interest Group, CETIS, <http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/domain/metadata>

Author

Wilbert Kraan

Contributors

Phil Barker

Date Created

1 October 2005

Version

v3.1 (20 Mar 2008)