Harvesting Metadata for XR Digital Learning Objects

Abstract

AbstractThe current work is a proposal for Moodle administrators who aim to provide content creators and teachers with capabilities to describe in a semi-automatic way their learning resources with LOM-based metadata and make these metadata available to search service providers so that other stakeholders can easily find and retrieve them. It was composed within ARETE project to support reusability and discoverability of 3D/AR and other types of educational resources included in the project’s Moodle digital repository.Aiming on utilizing previous work on this domain, the code of two existing plugins was modified and enriched to serve the project’s needs. This paper aims to demonstrate in detail two plugins that will be utilized in ARETE’s Moodle digital repository to support the discoverability of learning resources by creating and exposing their metadata to make them available for harvesting. The content in the ARETE repository is particularly relevant to 3D/AR learning activities created through an XR authoring toolkit. Nevertheless, educational content in other formats continues to be supported by the aforementioned plugins.The integration of IEEE-LOM and OAI-PMH standards to a Moodle repository seems to be a feasible way to enhance the development of learning content by utilizing relevant already existing resources that can be easily found and retrieved. However, the difficulty of finding service providers that could support the collection of learning resource metadata and be willing to build search engines on top of them suggests the need to consider different approaches.