Briefing Paper #4, LD4PE Overview, describes the IMLS-funded Linked Data for Professional Education (LD4PE) project that is developing a competency-based prototype referatory of learning resources for teaching and learning Linked Data practices in design, implementation, and management. The Briefing describes the project’s milestones including the RFD-based competency framework that will drive the indexing of Linked Data learning resource descriptions to the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind those resources address.

The briefing describes the nature of the competency framework and the crowd-sourcing of expertise being used in its development. In addition, the Briefing discusses the toolkit of AngularJS editors under development for both creating of the competency framework and the learning resource descriptions.

Briefing URL: https://ld4pe.dublincore.org/briefing-papers/ld4peoverview/

LD4PE Overview—Briefing #4

URL:

https://ld4pe.dublincore.org/briefing-papers/ld4peoverview/

Creator:

Stuart A. Sutton (Information School, University of Washington)

Last Update:

2015-08-01

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This Briefing Paper provides an overview of the IMLS-funded Linked Data for Professional Education (LD4PE) project to develop a competency-based prototype referatory of learning resources for teaching and learning Linked Data practices in design, implementation, and management.

1. Introduction

Understanding Linked Data standards and practices has become a key requirement for information professionals in galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM). Major national libraries and bibliographic services are leading the trend to: (1) publish authority files, catalogs, datasets, and bibliographic standards as Linked Data; and (2) gather Linked Data from diverse external sources such as dbpedia, Freebase and MusicBrainz to enhance their local discovery and retrieval systems. Broad initiatives such as LODLAM and OpenGLAM are pushing the boundaries of Linked Data integration across galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Professionals in cultural memory institutions find themselves on shaky ground as this seismic paradigm shift pushes the need for competent professionals from national centers toward local institutions. Indeed, the challenge to professional preparedness goes deeper, also affecting the teachers of the next generation of professionals and the trainers who provide continuing professional development.

This urgent need to develop Linked Data competencies in the professional workforce is driving major initiatives to provide learning resources (LR) about the underlying standards and data model—for example, the EU’s Euclid project, LOD2, School for Data, PlanetData, Open Data Institute, Lean Semantic Web, Cloudera, GATE, Linked Data Cookbook, and Cookbook for Translating Data Models to RDF Schemas. The products of these initiatives range from curricular structures and full courses to simple “recipes”—brief packages of “how-to” videos and step-by-step instructions targeted to specific (frequently unarticulated) learning outcomes. These scattered initiatives and their resources can be easy to find by those who already know what they are looking for, but everyone else struggles to put the available resources into a context.

The LD4PE project is developing the Exploring Linked Data website to help alleviate this struggle through support for the structured discovery of the LR available online through both open and commercial providers. At the heart of the website will be a competency framework for Linked Data practice that supports indexing learning resources according to the specific competencies they address. To accomplish this goal, Exploring Linked Data is leveraging Linked Data technology by modeling in RDF and assigning global identifiers (URIs) to statements of competence, and then using those URIs to map LR metadata to nodes in the Index. Deliverables of the LD4PE project include:

1. Competency Framework. RDF-modeled “Competency Index for Linked Data” (Index) based on the ASN Description Language (ASN-DL) for describing formally promulgated competencies and benchmarks;
2. Toolkit. An openly available, web-based tool set to support the: (a) generation of RDF metadata describing learning resources; and (b) creation of learner trajectory maps expressing curricular structures or personal learning journeys superimposed over the competency framework;
3. Learning Resource Descriptions. A set of cataloged LR that have been mapped to the competencies and benchmarks of the Index to support competency-based resource discovery by teachers, trainers and learners.
4. Explore Website. A website to be managed by DCMI as part of its educational agenda for open discovery of competency-based learning resources, access to the toolkit, learner maps, and supporting resources; and
5. Best Practices. Readily accessible best practice documentation for all processes, from community-based competency framework development and LR description through learner trajectory creation.

2. Competency Index

Competency frameworks defining what a learner should know and be able to demonstrate underpin labor market credentialing mechanisms including college/university degrees, educational certificates, industrial certification, occupational licenses and even emerging micro-credentialing through digital badging. Learning environments strive for a tight coupling between these controlling frameworks, the resources necessary to achieve the learning objectives embodied in the frameworks, and what is actually assessed in terms of learner competence. [ 6 ]

2a. Index Development

Government and quasi-governmental agencies, commercial entities and professional organizations promulgate most of these competency frameworks under tight editorial control by a select body of experts. In contrast to these highly constrained contexts, the LD4PE is developing the means for crowd sourcing expertise in both the development and formative assessment of the project’s competency framework with synthesis and finalization of the published framework in the hands of a small, volunteer Editorial Board.

Projects such as schema.org are demonstrating that useful outcomes can be achieved through forms of crowd sourcing when technology enabled version control system—e.g., Github—help democratize the process of generation through broad community input.

Figure 1 illustrates the various components in the LD4PE competency-creation process. Discovery and Description, through its quest to discover, describe and map LR descriptions to competencies, provides a continuous environmental analysis of the evolving coverage of the Index in terms of:

1. orphan competencies—competencies found in LR that cannot be mapped to the Index; and
2. misaligned granularity—imprecise mapping options where there is a mismatch between granularity levels of Index competencies and those found in an LR.

Figure 1. Crowd sourcing expertise for the Index.

Linked Data Expert engagement through both solicited and unsolicited proposals for new competencies provides a mechanism through a version-controlled submission process for subsequent review and synthesis into the evolving Index by the Editorial Board.

The outcome of this process is a community-developed Index that describes a set of learning objectives and outcomes in terms of relevant knowledge, skills, practices, and habits of mind necessary to learn successful Linked Data practice from design and modeling through implementation and maintenance.

2b. Index modeling

The Index data is modeled as an RDF graph using the Achievements Standards Network Description Language (ASN-DL). The ASN-DL is comprised of two resource classes, the asn:StandardDocument representing the competency framework being described as a whole, and the asn:Statement representing the individual component competency assertions of the document. Object properties are used to replicate the original hierarchical or graph modeling of the canonical document while an evolving array of object properties express the semantic relationship between individual assertions.

The ASN-DL is extensible through addition of new properties and subproperty refinements to support domain specific profiles. Value vocabulary namespaces relevant to the jurisdiction of the competency framework may be specified and encoded as RDF using the W3C’s Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS).

Figure 2. Example Index ASN-DF modeling

The ASN-DL is extensible through addition of new properties and subproperty refinements to support domain specific profiles. Value vocabulary namespaces relevant to the jurisdiction of the competency framework may be specified and encoded as RDF using the W3C’s Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). To date, LD4PE has not needed to define any project-specific value vocabularies.

2.c Index scope

One of the major challenges during the early months of the process has been operationalizing the term “Linked Data” in such a way that the scope of both the developing Index and the LR to be described and mapped are tractable within the context of the 2-year grant. “Linked Data” denotes a method for publishing structured data on the web that builds on: (1) a set of open standards and technologies to support semantic queries and graph traversal such as HTTP, URI/IRI, RDF, RDFa, SPARQL, triplestores, OWL, SKOS and others, and (2) the four practices first set out by Sir Tim Berners-Lee—use URIs as names for things; use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names; When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL); include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things. [ 1 ] While the scope of the Index and the LR descriptions to be included in Exploring Lined Data could extend across the full substrate of specific areas of competence supporting practice, such a broad scope is untenable in terms of a single competency framework. The project continues to struggle with this scoping issue.

3. Toolkit

The LD4PE project is committed to development using open standards, and, where appropriate, adaptions of existing tools and toolsets—implementing anew only where necessary. The LD4PE toolkit will be a set of open tools that enable Exploring Linked Data. Key areas of project implementation are light-weight, browser-based editors for creation of LR descriptions, competency descriptions and a mapping mechanism for creating learner trajectories.

3a. Metadata Generation Tools

To support the generation of metadata describing LR and for authoring the Index and its competency assertions, the project is developing an open toolkit of browser-based editors implemented using AngularJS for: (a) RDF LR descriptions based on an application profile of the LRMI (schema.org) schema, and (b) Index metadata based on the ASN Description Language (ASN-DL) for competency framework modeling and description.

3b. Learner Trajectories Tool

While the Index defines a set of competencies, it neither prescribes any competencies as “core” nor defines a logical sequencing of its components. In other words, the Index does not, in itself, define a curriculum by prescribing a single learning trajectory or pathway through the set of competencies expressed as nodes in the Index graph. The LD4PE project will customize existing tools to enable teachers, trainers, and learners to map their own pathways through the Index graph. These pathways can be saved as named graphs that traverse, or overlay, the competency nodes of the Index.

The named graphs for learning trajectories or pathways may be identified as formal curriculum structures or as personalized trajectories created by instructors or learners as evidence of progress. They may also function as suggested paths forward in the learning process or as guides to other instructors or learners in creating their own trajectories.

Figure 3. Learning trajectory maps.

Several decades of research has shown that such maps reveal the macrostructure of the body of information or knowledge within a field, making the context of that information or knowledge more apparent and useful to learners (O’Donnell et al., 2002; Hall & O’Donnell, 1996; Hall & O’Donnell, 2010). [ 3 ], [ 4 ] & [ 5 ] Similarly, learning trajectory overlays contextualize competencies and learning outcomes in a “larger picture” of learning expectations, outcomes, and personal learner progressions.

Thus, LD4PE stands in sharp contrast to other projects in not prescribing a single curricular point of view but in providing instead the means for instructors, trainers and learners to chart multiple, diverse pathways for learning—pathways defined as public or private, individual or collective, prescribed or exploratory. Each named graph provides a different roadmap for discovering and traversing lesson plans, how-to recipes, webinars, and tutorials that have been described and aligned to the competency nodes of the Index graph.

4. Architecture

The Exploring Linked Data technical architecture consists of a WordPress public interface on top of a triplestore managing LR descriptions and learning trajectories. The Index will be publicly available through the ASN-D2L open repository, and reflected through WordPress as a custom taxonomy.

Figure 4. Exploring Linked Data architecture.

The toolkit comprised of the editing and learner trajectory tools will function as open, stand-alone applications that can be used independent of the WordPress instance and the triplestore. While the initial goal is to serve as a referatory, some LD4PE project partners will be creating LR to be hosted by Exploring Linked Data. Video-based LR will be streamed from publicly accessible services such as YouTube, SlideShare and Vimeo.

The Exploring Linked Data website will primarily provide competency-based access to learning resources. In addition, it will provide a publication venue for both learning trajectory maps and select LR such as a pilot set being created by project partners Sungkyunkwan University Institute of Information and Management (Korea), OCLC, Elsevier, Synaptica, and Access Innovations. Developed and managed by the LD4PE Project, the website will mature to become part of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative’s freely available toolset. WordPress out-of-the-box social media functions, including broadcast and recommender systems, will foster the engagement of domain experts, teachers and trainers, learners, and resource providers.

5. Best Practice Documentation

Publicly available guidelines will be published through the Exploring Linked Data website covering best practices in:

1. Community development and management of competency frameworks;
2. Creation of useful metadata descriptions of LR using the LRMI application profile;
3. Alignment of LR to relevant competencies; and
4. Creation of LR targeted to specific competencies.

6. Conclusion

While LD4PE will focus on skills, knowledge, and professional practice in the area of Linked Data, nothing precludes the extension of its competency-based approach to other areas of LIS, archives, and museum curricula. Similar competency frameworks could be developed describing practice in knowledge organization systems, cataloging, and organizational management.

This approach will be appropriate wherever the goal is for learners to achieve competence within a defined set of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind. DCMI is committed to sustaining the products and assets of this work moving forward because it sees the project’s conceptualization and its outcomes (including best practice documentation related to the framework itself) as generalizable to all areas of principled metadata design and best practice, while also providing a guiding template for future development of DCMI’s education and training agenda.

At the close of the IMLS-funded project in late 2016, management of Exploring Linked Data with fall to DCMI’s Education & Outreach Committee and a standing Task Group (currently called the LD4PE Task Group). Under this leadership, the content of Exploring Linked Data will extend beyond the prototype’s focus on Linked Data to other areas of professional competency-based education and training in metadata design, implementation, and use.

Acknowledgements

The work described in this poster is partially funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

References

[1] Berners-Lee, Tim (2006). Design Issues: Linked Data. Retrieved June 28, 2015 from http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html.

[2] Crandall, M.D., Tennis, J., Sutton, S.A., Baker, T. & Talley, D. (2013). Planning a platform for learning linked data. In Moen, W. & Rushing, A. (Eds.), International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. Retrieved June 28, 2015 from http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/view/3693/1916.

[3] Hall, R.H. & O’Donnell, A. (1996). Cognitive and affective outcomes of learning from knowledge maps. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 21, 94-101.

[4] Hall, R.H., Hall, M.A. & Saling, C.B. (2010). The Effects of graphical postorganization strategies on learning from knowledge maps. J. Exp. Educ. 67(2):101-112 (DOI:10.1080/00220979909598347).

[5] O’Donnell, A.M., Dansereau, D.F. & Hall, R.H. (2002). Knowledge maps as scaffolds for cognitive processing. Educ. Psychol. Review 14, 71-85.

[6] Sutton, S. A. & Golder, D. (2008). Achievement Standards Network (ASN): An application profile for mapping K-12 educational resources to achievement standards. In Heike Neuroth (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, (pp. 69-79). Retrieved, June 28, 2015 from http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs/article/view/920/916.

[7] Ward, N. & Nicholas, N. (2010). Benefits of machine readable curricula. Retrieved, June 28, 2015 from http://bit.ly/CurriculaBenefits.

2015-07-04. Today we added three ASN Briefing Papers covering the basics of the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) model and description language. The documents are still being polished but should be useful to those unfamiliar with competency frameworks and how they are described using the ASN-DL (Description Language).

Here are the three Briefings:

• Briefing Paper #1: ASN Overview
• Briefing Paper #2: ASN Ontology
• Briefing Paper #3: ASN “Profiles”

We will continue refining these Briefings and adding new ones.

ASN-DL Overview—Briefing #1

URL:

https://ld4pe.dublincore.org/asn-briefing-1/

Editors:

Joseph Chapmann (Desire2Learn)

Stuart A. Sutton (Information School, University of Washington)

Last Update:

2015-07-01

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Basic ASN Architecture

The ASN is made up of two fundamental entities: (1) standards documents, and (2) statements. ASN takes each standards document as it is produced by its official promulgating agency and “atomizes” its content into atomic statements. These two entities—documents and statements—are framed in terms of an entity-relationship model (ER) and embodied in RDF/XML (Resource Description Framework). Both structural and semantic relationships between the ASN’s primary entities—the standards document entity and its atomic statement entities—have been defined.

The following diagram illustrates the use of the document and statement entities in expressing a single standard in the Ohio 2001 mathematics standard. The relationships between the entities in the diagram are hierarchical and are represented by the arrows in the diagram.

Note that each entity has been assigned a unique identifier in the form of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

The diagram above illustrates what is called an ASN Taxon Path which is defined as a single traversal of a branch of a standards document–here from the root (i.e., the standards document description) to a leaf (i.e., a statement at some arbitrary level in the branch hierarchy).  Just as the atomizing of the text de-contextualizes the standard document’s member statements for unique identification and reference, the notion of the ASN Taxon Path re-contextualizes those statements.  This re-contextualization is fundamental to human comprehension of the standards since many atomic statements, standing alone, convey insufficient meaning.  As a result, all ASN services return full ASN Taxon Paths.

The following figure illustrates another ASN Taxon Path.

For the purpose of illustrating the notion of the ASN entities and relationships, the content of both of the ASN Taxon Paths illustrated above has been kept at a minimum.  In fact, metadata describing additional attributes (e.g., subjects, grade levels, etc.) of both the standard document and statement entities are provided.  Documentation of the ASN Application Profile is available. 

Resolving (Dereferencing) an ASN URI

All ASN URIs can be resolved or dereferenced by humans or applications.  The dereferencing of an ASN URI returns the full upward path of the ASN Taxon Path in which the entity identified by the URI is a member.  Thus, dereferencing the ASN URI  http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1024B7C found in the Ohio mathematics example above returns an RDF/XML description of the full Taxon Path as illustrated including the text of its member statements.

If the statement URI being referenced is an entity further up in the hierarchical path from the literal leaf, dereferencing would treat the URI being dereferenced as the leaf entity in the Taxon Path and return the upward path.  The Taxon Path in such a case would not include statements downward in the path from the dereferenced entity.

The dereferencing of an ASN URI is managed by the ASN URI Resolver.  The ASN URI Resolver is the simplest service offered by the ASN and requires no special knowledge on the part of humans or applications to handle dereferencing.

Cross-Jurisdiction Mapping (Intermediary Services)

Intermediaries in the context of K-12 content standards are services that handle the mapping of an ASN state standards statement URI to a statement URI from another state.  In other words, it is a service that draws a more or less rough equivalency relationship between standards statements in two separate standards documents.  Those documents may be two versions of a single state’s standards or documents from two entirely different states.  Intermediaries make it possible to fulfill the following sorts of end-user needs:

1. I have an ASN URI for a standard from Nebraska, is there an equivalent standards statement in the Arizona standards?
2. I have retrieved a very useful lesson plan that has been correlated to a Nevada standard but I live in California.  What California standard might this lesson plan help me fulfill?
3. I have retrieved a very useful lesson plan correlated to a Nevada standard using an ASN URI and I’d like to see whether there are other similar lesson plans I might use to meet my Nevada standard but which have been correlated to standards from other states using ASN URIs.  Are there any such lesson plans?

While there are a number of existing and emerging intermediaries based on different theoretical and technical premises, they all basically function as illustrated in the following figure:

In the yellow ASN band across the figure, we see illustrative standards statements from Texas, California and New York.  The mapping choices between the state standards are two-fold: (1) a service could  do a one-to-many mapping from each state statement to its equivalent in each of the other state standards documents—a tedious, impractical process; or (2) a single set of all encompassing expressions (an intermediary) might be created that capture the content of all of the state standards that make it possible to map each state statement once to the intermediary and then to use that intermediary as a “switching language.”  All intermediaries pursue some form of the second choice.

The ASN supports the design and development of any number of 3rd party intermediaries based on different principles and technologies.

Extending Granularity of an ASN Taxon Path

For some service providers consuming and using the ASN state standards, the level of granularity of leaf statements may not be sufficiently granular to meet all service purposes.  For example, the following statement from an Ohio standard might be further atomized into sixteen additional, more granular statements based on the cognitive process (analyze, solve, verify, and interpret) and the task (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division):

“Analyze and solve multi-step problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using an organized approach, and verify and interpret results with respect to the original problem.” [http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1024B7C]

The ASN makes it possible to increase the granularity of expression in a standards document by distinguishing between canonical (original) statements as promulgated by the standards bodies and non-canonical (derived) statements added by 3^rd parties.  Derived 3rd party ASN statements “refine” original statements by making more specific, granular assertions. Since derived statements are treated as first-class entities in the ASN, they are assigned URIs in the same manner as original statements and clearly identified as such.  Of course, derived statements can be easily eliminate, not display, or treated in some manner as simple annotations by services consuming the standards documents.

As a result of this extensibility, any authorized 3^rd party may directly create more granular statements in the ASN or without authorization in their own namespace and relate those statements to the canonical (original) statements using the ASN-identified structural relations in the ER model.

While these 3^rd party derived statements may be included in the ASN repository, nothing precludes a service from creating its own namespace to handle its refinements of canonical ASN statements and exposing those refinements (or not) to the Web community.

The following figure illustrates this 3rd party “annotation” processes.

Example uses of the ASN refinement capability might include:

• Testing services creating assessment instruments that target only parts of canonical statements; or
• A school district wishing to refine its state’s ASN standards expressed in grade bands by breaking out facets of particular official statements by individual grades while still maintaining the semantic association with the state statement.

Expressing “Strength of Fit”

Frequently, it is useful to map from one resource to another to express the level of useful similarity between the two nodes. Such mappings may be from one competency framework node to another node in the same or another framework (i.e., competency-to-competency), or to map from a learning resource to a competency node (i.e., learning resource-to-competency). In ASN, the utility of that mapping is a function of its “strength of fit”. The ASN ontology provides an array of properties that express this strength of fit relationship in competency-to-competency mappings (called “alignments” in ASN) and learning resource-to-competency mappings (called “correlations” in ASN).

The table below includes brief descriptions of the current competency-to-competency mapping predicates. For the full description of both the competency-to-competency mapping properties and the learning resource-to-competency mapping properties, see Briefing Paper #2: ASN Ontology.

Relationship	Definition	Illustration
Align To	A target competency to which the described competency is aligned. Note: An “alignment” is a general assertion of some degree of unidentified equivalency between the two resources being aligned. (Inverse of Aligned From)
Align From	A target competency to which the described competency is aligned. Note: An “alignment” is a general assertion of some degree of unidentified equivalency between the two resources being aligned. (Inverse of Aligned To)
Broad Alignment	The target competency covers all of the relevant concepts in the competency being described as well as relevant concepts not found in the competency being described.
Exact Alignment	The relevant concepts in both the described and target competencies are coextensive.
Major Alignment	Major overlap of relevant concepts between the described and target competencies.
Minor Alignment	Minor overlap of relevant concepts between the described and target competencies.
Narrow Alignment	The competency being described covers all of the relevant concepts in the target competency as well as relevant concepts not found in the target competency.
Prerequisite Alignment	The target competency is a prerequisite to the competency being described.

Abstract

The ASN profiling language provides communities and organizations with the means to define profiles of the ASN to meet particular needs through inclusion of additional properties and classes from other namespaces and definition of constraints on data patterns. ASN profiling is based on the Dublin Core’s conceptualization of application profiles and description set templating as well as refinements to these conceptualizations developed by the U.S. Library of Congress to support BIBFRAME profiling.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Basic Structure
• 3. Detailed Application Profile Description Grammar
• 4. Use of Contextual Classes
• 5. Example Editor Configured for the ASN-D2L Profile
• Appendix A: ASN-DL Profile Element Tables & Examples
  • Profile Template
  • Resource Template
  • Property Template
  • Value Constraint
  • Value Data Type
• ASN Profile Specifications
  • United States Profile
  • Australian Profile

1. Introduction

The ASN Description Language (ASN-DL) is a graph-based metamodel for creation of 1-n ASN profiles for the description of competency frameworks defined by national, regional and organizational bodies (jurisdictions). The ASN-DL assumes that no single, tightly defined schema for describing competency frameworks will meet all needs. Instead, the ASN-DL provides the means to “profile” the ASN through extension, refinement and augmentation to meet particular needs. It is through such profiling of the ASN that different jurisdictions and entities define their own solutions while maintaining the ability for their metadata to be harmonized across profiles. ASN Profiles also provide the means for local constraints on acceptable data (i.e., defining data “rules” on specific RDF graphs) to be communicated to others. To achieve these goals, the ASN-DL provides a small vocabulary of classes and properties and a set of mechanisms for tailoring an ASN Profile to handle particular jurisdictional, organizational or application needs.

A “profile” in the sense meant here is a means of instantiating “closed world assumptions” in a given context. In similar vein, the ASN DL defines a vocabulary and encourages multiple other (unrelated) entities to create and maintain extension and refinement sets of constraints on the ASN vocabulary without violating it.

This ASN Briefing will illustrate development of new ASN profiles using the mechanisms provided by the ASN-DL. Examples are provided using the United States Profile (ASN-D2L) as set out in full in Appendix B and the Australian Profile (ASN-AU) set out in full in Appendix C.

For a general introduction to the ASN-DL, it’s uses, properties and classes, see Briefing Paper #1 – Introduction and Briefing Paper #2 – ASN Ontology.

2. Basic Structure

A jurisdiction’s ASN Profile is an information model for describing competency frameworks that is based in the ASN-DL and particularized for the jurisdiction through the processes of:

1. refinement (definition of subclasses and subproperties of existing ASN classes and properties);
2. extension (use of properties and classes either newly created for use with the specific ASN Profile or reused from other ontologies); and
3. value constraints (restricting the permissible value datatypes or classes).

The result of these processes of refinement, extension and value constrain definition is a declarative specification of the particular “RDF data shape” required for a jurisdiction’s RDF data to be deemed “conforming”. The resulting “shape” provides implementers with both a means of unambiguously communicating about the Profile and developing mechanisms for validation of data conforming to it. By being declarative and stating the validation intent rather than the validation method, an ASN Profile description is useful in many different implementation scenarios including development of data validation mechanisms using deployed solutions such as Stardog ICV, IBM’s Resource Shapes, TopQuadrant’s SPIN (a W3C Member Submission), and SPARQL.

An ASN Profile document has two fundamental parts: (1) a set of template-defining tables based in the ASN Profile Grammar (see section 3 below) that describe the Profile’s permissible resource classes, the object and datatype properties associated with those classes, and the constrains on permissible property values (i.e., value vocabularies and datatypes); and (2) a JSON serialization of the resulting constraints defined in the tables.

FIG 1. below illustrates the basic templating structure of an ASN Profile document:

1. a profile template for describing the Profile itself;
2. resource templates describing the resource classes making up the Profile;
3. an array of property templates defined for each resource class that are used to describe the possible metadata structure of a “record” conforming to the Profile; and
4. value constraint templates defining constraints to be applied to properties that restrict the permitted values associated with the property templates.

3. Detailed Application Profile Description Grammar

The following Extended Backus-Nuar Form describes the syntax used in Appendix A to describe the essential ASN Profile syntax elements for defining the templates. The ASN grammar extends the BIBFRAME grammar defined in BIBFRAME Profiles: Introduction and Specification through addition of the allowedValueURI value constraint to support specification of “pick lists” of resource classes.

 Profile ::= id | title | description | date | contact | remark | resourceTemplates*
 resourceTemplates ::= id | resourceURI | resourceLabel | remark | propertyTemplates*
 propertyTemplates::= propertyURI | propertyLabel | mandatory | repeatable? | type |
                      valueConstraint | remark
 valueConstraint ::= valueLanguage | languageURI | languageLabel| valueDataType | valueTemplateRefs |
                     allowedValueURI | editable | defaultURI | remark
 valueDataType ::= dataTypeURI | dataTypeLabel | dataTypeLabelHint | remark
 valueTemplateRefs ::= editable | defaultURI | defaultLabel
 mandatory ::= "true" | "false"
 repeatable ::= "true" | "false"
 editable ::= "true" | "false"
 id ::= URI
 resourceURI ::= URI
 propertyURI ::= URI
 languageURI ::= URI
 dataTypeURI ::= URI
 valueTemplateRefs ::= URI
 allowedValueURI ::= URI
 defaultURI ::= URI
 type ::= literal | resource
 literal ::= valueLanguage | languageURI | languageLabel | valueDataType
 resource ::= valueTemplateRefs | editable | defaultURI

4. Use of Contextual Classes

Many jurisdictions and other entities that create competency frameworks have existing authority files, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and thesauri defining acceptable values for concepts such as education levels and subjects. These vocabularies provide significant jurisdiction-specific context to the Profile; and, therefore, they should be used to constrain data values. Such authority files and controlled vocabularies may be currently expressed as simple text terms or be modeled as contextual classes using a description language like W3C’s Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). We strong recommend that consideration be given to modeling a Profile’s key vocabularies as skos:ConceptScheme classes with individual concepts of the class skos:Concept.

When controlled vocabularies and authority files are modeled as a skos:ConceptScheme with concepts defined as skos:Concept, instead of expressing a U.S. education level as being “Grade 5”, the value can be identified as a member of a concept class using the U.S. URI <http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/5> from the ASN-D2L Education Level Vocabulary. Similarly, the subject concept of “Statistics & probability” could be more usefully named as <http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/scot/2570> from the Australian Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) . Expressing these various concept terms as members of formal classes makes it possible to use them as Linked Data “glue” and guarantees uniformity of use and machine readability that is lacking with terms encoded as plain literals.

Therefore, every effort should be made in developing an ASN Profile to convert “strings” to “things”—i.e., from literals to linkable resources identified by resolvable URI.

5. Example Editor Configured for the ASN-D2L Profile

The ASN profiling language and it’s precise grammar facilitate the description and enabling of form-based editors. The following images are of the ASN-DL editor under development through a U.S. Institute for Library & Museum Studies (IMLS) grant to the Information School at the University of Washington. The editor is implemented in Angular-JS and supports the core ASN model and profiles–currently the U.S. and the Australian profiles.

Appendix A:
ASN-DL Profile Element Tables & Examples

Profile Template

Identifier

Title

Description

Date

Contact

Remark

Resource Templates

Example A: Profile Description

{
  "Profile": {
       "id": "asnUS:Profile",
       "title": "ASN Profile: U.S. Competency Framework Schema",
       "description": "An ASN profile for competency framework description 
                      reflecting the descriptions in the ASN-D2L database",
       "date": "2005-01-01",
       "contact": "Joseph Chapman, Desire2Learn; Stuart Sutton, University
                   of Washington",
       "remark": "Partially developed through NSF funding."
       "resourceTemplates": [
             { ... }
       ]
    }
}

Resource Template

Identifier

Resource Identifier

Resource Label

Property Templates

Contact

Remark

Example B: Resource Template

...
"resourceTemplate": [
    {
       "id": "asnUS:StandardDocument",
       "resourceLabel": "Standard Document",
       "resourceURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/StandardDocument",
       "propertyTemplates": [
             { ... }
       ]
    }
...

Example C: Resource Template

...
"resourceTemplate": [
    {
       "id": "asnUS:Statement",
       "resourceLabel": "Statement",
       "resourceURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement",
       "propertyTemplates": [
             { ... }
       ]
    }
...

Property Template

Identifier

Property Label

Mandatory

Repeatable

Type

Value Constrant

Remark

Example D: Property Template (mandatory / literal)

...
      "propertyTemplate": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title",
              "propertyLabel": "Title",
              "mandatory": "true",
              "type": "literal"
         },
         { ... }
      ]
...

Example E: Property Template (optional / resource)

...
      "propertyTemplate": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/hasChild",
              "propertyLabel": "Has Child",
              "type": "resource",
              "valueConstraint": {
              ...
              }
         },
         { ... }
      ]
...

Value Constraint

Language

Language URI

Language Label

Datatype

Value Template Reference(s)

Use Values From

allowedValueURI

Editable

Remark

Example F: Value Constrain referencing the Value URI of another Resource Template in the Profile

...
     "propertyTemplates": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf",
              "propertyLabel": "Is Part Of",
              "type": "resource",
              "valueConstraint": {
                    "valueTemplateRefs": [
                   	"asnUS:StandardDocument"
                   	]
              }
         },
         { ... }
     ]
...

Example G: Value Constrain referencing an enumerated list of acceptable value URI

...
	 "propertyTemplates": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/license",
              "propertyLabel": "License",
              "type": "resource",
              "valueConstraint": {
                   "repeatable": "false",
                   "mandatory": "true",
                   "allowedValueURI": [
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/",
                        "http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" 
                        ]
              }
        },
    	{ ... }
     ]
...		

Example H: Value Constrain referencing one or more value set(s) (controlled vocabularies and authority file classes)from which values must be taken

...
	 "propertyTemplates": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/publicationStatus",
              "propertyLabel": "Publication Status",
              "type": "resource",
              "valueConstraint": {
                   "repeatable": "false",
                   "mandatory": "true",
                   "usesValuesFrom": [
                        "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNPublicationStatus/", 
                        ]
              }
        },
    	{ ... }
     ]
...	 

Value Data Type

DataType ID

DataType Label

DataType Label Hint

Remark

Example I: Data Value Type

...
      "propertyTemplates": [
         { ... },
         {
              "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/dateValid",
              "propertyLabel": "Date Modified",
              "type": "literal",
              "valueConstraint": {
                   "valueDataType": {
                        "resourceURI": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date",
                        "valueLabel": "ISO 8601"
                   }
              }
         },
         { ... }
      ]
...

Appendix B: ASN-D2L Profile Specification

{
  "Profile": {
       "id": "asnUS:Profile",
       "title": "ASN Profile: U.S. Competency Framework Schema",
       "description": "An ASN profile for competency framework description as used 
                        by the ASN-D2L database",
       "date": "2005-01-01",
       "contact": "Joseph Chapman, Desire2Learn; Stuart Sutton, University 
                   of Washington",
       "remark": "Partially developed through NSF funding.",
       "resourceTemplates": [
          {
             "id": "asn:StandardDocument",
             "resourceLabel": "Standard Document",
             "resourceURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/StandardDocument",
             "propertyTemplates": [
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/alignFrom",
                    "propertyLabel": "Aligned From",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:StandardDocument" 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/alignTo",
                    "propertyLabel": "Aligned To",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:StandardDocument" 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://www.loc.gov/loc.terms/relators/AUT",
                    "propertyLabel": "Author",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/dateCopyrighted",
                    "propertyLabel": "Date Copyrighted",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueDataType": {
                           "resourceURI": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date",
                           "valueLabel": "ISO 8601"
                        }
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/dateValid",
                    "propertyLabel": "Date Valid",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueDataType": {
                           "resourceURI": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date",
                           "valueLabel": "ISO 8601"
                        }
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/term/description",
                    "propertyLabel": "Description",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "true",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel",
                    "propertyLabel": "Education Level",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "true",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/",
                             ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/hasChild",
                    "propertyLabel": "Has Child",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "true",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/identifier",
                    "propertyLabel": "Identifier",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },                  
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/jurisdiction",
                    "propertyLabel": "Jurisdiction",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNJurisdiction/", 
                            "http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/countries/",
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/language",
                    "propertyLabel": "Language",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-1/" 
                            ],
                        "defaultURI": "http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-1/en"    
                    }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/license",
                    "propertyLabel": "License",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "allowedValueURI": [
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/",
                             "http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/localSubject",
                    "propertyLabel": "Local Subject",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#note",
                    "propertyLabel": "Note",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/publicationStatus",
                    "propertyLabel": "Publication Status",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNPublicationStatus/", 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/publisher",
                    "propertyLabel": "Pubisher",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },                 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/repositoryDate",
                    "propertyLabel": "Repository Date",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "true",                    
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueDataType": {
                           "resourceURI": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date",
                           "valueLabel": "ISO 8601"
                        }
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/rights",
                    "propertyLabel": "Rights",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/rightsHolder",
                    "propertyLabel": "Rights Holder",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/source",
                    "propertyLabel": "Source",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "true"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/subject",
                    "propertyLabel": "Subject",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNTopics/", 
                            ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title",
                    "propertyLabel": "Title",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "true",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },                 
             ]
          },
          {
             "id": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement",
             "resourceLabel": "Statement",
             "resourceURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement",
             "propertyTemplates": [
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/alignFrom",
                    "propertyLabel": "Aligned From",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/alignto",
                    "propertyLabel": "Aligned To",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/altStatementNotation",
                    "propertyLabel": "Alternate Statement Notation",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },                 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://www.loc.gov/loc.terms/relators/AUT",
                    "propertyLabel": "Author",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/authorityStatus",
                    "propertyLabel": "Authority Status",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                             "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNAuthorityStatus/", 
                        ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/broadAlignment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Broad Alignment",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/comment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Comment",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/comprisedOf",
                    "propertyLabel": "Comprised Of",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/conceptKeyword",
                    "propertyLabel": "Concept Key Word",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/conceptTerm",
                    "propertyLabel": "Concept Term",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "true",
                        "mandatory": "false",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                             "http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/scot/",
                             "http://dbpedia.org/resource/",
                             "https://www.freebase.com/",
                             "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/",
                             "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/",
                             "http://viaf.org/viaf/",
                             "http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/",
                             "http://vocab.getty.edu/att/",
                             "http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/"
                        ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/crossSubjectReference",
                    "propertyLabel": "Cross-Subject Reference",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/derivedFrom",
                    "propertyLabel": "Derived From",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/term/description",
                    "propertyLabel": "Description",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "true",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/educationLevel",
                    "propertyLabel": "Education Level",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "true",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                             "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/",
                        ]
                    }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/exactAlignment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Exact Alignment",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#exactMatch",
                    "propertyLabel": "Has Exact Match",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/hasChild",
                    "propertyLabel": "Has Child",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/indexingStatus",
                    "propertyLabel": "Indexing Status",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "true",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                             "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNIndexingStatus/",
                        ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/isChildOf",
                    "propertyLabel": "Is Child Of",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement",
                            "asn:StandardSocument" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/isChildOf",
                    "propertyLabel": "Is Part Of",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "true",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:StandardDocument" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/isVersionOf",
                    "propertyLabel": "Is Version Of",
                    "repeatable": "false",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/language",
                    "propertyLabel": "Language",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-1/" 
                            ],
                        "defaultURI": "http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-1/en"    
                    }
                 }, 
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/listID",
                    "propertyLabel": "List ID",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/localSubject",
                    "propertyLabel": "Local Subject",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/majorAlignment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Major Alignment",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/minorAlignment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Minor Alignment",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/narrowAlignment",
                    "propertyLabel": "Narrow Alignment",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueTemplateRefs": [ 
                            "asn:Statement" 
                            ]
                       }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/skillEmbodied",
                    "propertyLabel": "Skills Embodied",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "true",
                        "mandatory": "false",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                             "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/SkillsEmbodied"
                        ]
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/spatial",
                    "propertyLabel": "Spatial",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueDataType": {
                           "resourceURI": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date",
                           "valueLabel": "ISO 8601"
                        }
                    }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/statementLabel",
                    "propertyLabel": "Statement Label",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "valueLanguage": "en"
                        }
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/statementNotation",
                    "propertyLabel": "Statement Notation",
                    "type": "literal",
                    "repeatable": "true",
                    "mandatory": "false"
                 },
                 {
                    "propertyURI": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/subject",
                    "propertyLabel": "Subject",
                    "type": "resource",
                    "valueConstraint": {
                        "repeatable": "false",
                        "mandatory": "true",
                        "usesValuesFrom": [
                            "http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNTopics/", 
                            ]
                    }
                 },                 
             ]
          }
      ]
   }
}

Appendix C: ASN-AU Profile Specification

TODO NOTE: In this section, provide the complete ASN-AUS profile in JSON.

References

[1] BIBFRAME Profiles: Introduction and Specification (Draft—5 May 2014)

http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/docs/bibframe-profiles.html

Revisions

• @@@

ASN Ontology—Briefing #2

URL:

https://ld4pe.dublincore.org/asn-briefing-2/

Editors:

Joseph Chapmann (Desire2Learn)

Stuart A. Sutton (Information School, University of Washington)

Last Update:

2015-07-01

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Table of Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 Index of Terms
• 3 Namespaces/Vocabularies Used
• 4 Schema Serializations
• 5 Conceptual Model
• 6 ASN Terms—Properties & Classes

1 Background

The Achievement Standards Network (ASN) Description Language (ASN-DL) is comprised of a core set of Resource Description Framework (RDF) properties and classes that can be combined in community profiles with properties and classes defined by others to describe competency frameworks. This Briefing describes only those properties and classes defined in the ASN namespace. To see how these terms are combined with those defined by others into a community or organization profile that expresses particular descriptive needs, see Briefing Paper #3: ASN Profiles.

The core RDF namespace described in this Briefing provides IRIs for vocabulary terms useful in RDFa markup and in development of application profiles in the manner defined by Dublin Core. Custom community of application profiles for competency frameworks that meet particular national or project needs can be designed using: (1) properties and classes from the ASN Core namespace, (2) locally defined sub-classes and sub-properties of the ASN terms; and (3) other RDF schemas and ontologies useful in the context of the application profile.

The ASN-DL schema is available here in a number of serializations including RDF/XML, Turtle, and JSON-LD.

Development of the ASN-DL dates back to 2000 and gained significant momentum with near decade-long funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)starting in 2002 to the Information School at the University of Washington and its collaborator, JES & Co., a U.S. non-profit. The goals of the NSF funding were two-fold:

1. ASN-DL: to design a description language for machine encoding of the competencies guiding K-12 STEM education in the U.S.; and, to promote it’s wide, international adoption as a defacto standard; and
2. ASN-D2L (US | CA): to develop a U.S./Canada repository of competency frameworks for K-12 based on the ASN-DL.

In 2007, a the University of Washington and JES & Co. began a cooperative endeavor with Australian colleagues to advise in development of the Australian ASN-DL profile and collaborate on needed tool development to support the emerging competency framework ecosystem based on the ASN-DL. Work is currently underway on the frameworks of the Canadian provinces.

Subsequent support for the ASN was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2013, stewardship of the ASN-US repository was transferred to Desire to Learn with a commitment to maintain access to the repository as an open, public service.

2 Index of Terms in the ASN Namespace

Properties

• Aligned From
• Aligned To
• Alternative Statement Notation
• Assesses Competency
• Authority Status
• Broad Alignment
• Comment
• Comprised Of
• Concept Keyword
• Concept Term
• Cross Subject Reference
• Derived From
• Exact Alignment
• Exact Correlation
• Export Version
• File Created [Deprecated]
• Has Child
• Identifier
• Indexing Status
• Is Child Of
• Jurisdiction
• List ID
• Local Subject
• Major Alignment
• Major Correlation
• Minor Alignment
• Minor Correlation
• Narrow Alignment
• Narrow Correlation
• Prerequisite Alignment
• Prerequisite Competency
• Proficiency Level
• Publication Status
• Repository Date
• Skill Embodied
• StatementLabel
• Statement Notation
• Teaches Competency

Classes

• Competency Map
• Correlation Resource
• Educational Framework
• Jurisdiction Encoding Scheme
• Learning Resource
• Map
• Proficiency Scale
• Standard Document
• Standard Statement
• Status Encoding Scheme

3 Namespace/Vocabularies Used

4 Schema Serializations

The following serializations of the latest version of the ASN-DL schema are available:

1. RDF/XML
2. Turtle
3. JSON-LD

5 Conceptual Model

1. The ASN Conceptual Model is framed in terms of two entities:
   1. The asn:StandardDocument representing the promulgated competency framework as a whole; and
   2. The asn:Statement representing an individual achievement assertion in an instance of asn:StandardDocument. The asn:StandardDocument is comprised of a set of related instances of asn:Statement.
2. All instances of asn:StandardDocument and asn:Statement conforming to the ASN Conceptual Model are identified by globally unique identifiers in the form of IRI that are dereferencable over the Web.
3. A set of core properties define the relationships between the asn:StandardDocument and asn:Statement and between statement dyads. The relationships defined in the core are of two types:
   1. Structural relationships: Structural properties are responsible for replicating the necessary structural relationships between components of the standards document—e.g., structuring hierarchies of instances of asn:Statement in the form of taxon paths and establishing the relationship between an instance of asn:StandardDocument and its set of component asn:Statement.
   2. Semantic relationships: Semantic properties define relationships of meaning between statements including assertions of equivalence or other forms of conceptual synergy of any useful sort. For example, the asn:crossSubectReference property asserts that the instance of asn:Statement in one asn:StandardDocument is related in an interdisciplinary manner to a asn:Statement in a second asn:StandardDocument.
4. The statement entity is of two kinds—original and derived:
   1. Original statements: Statements in standards documents formally promulgated by a jurisdiction are called original statements in the ASN. Original statements are jurisdictionally binding.
   2. Derived statements: Third parties may create derived instances of asn:Statement that refine an asn:Statement originally coined by another. Derived statements have no jurisdictional binding and are clearly identified as “derived.” For example, a 3rd party may create in its own namespace a derived asn:Statement or a set of such statements that decompose an an original asn:Statement into more granular expressions to meet particular business needs. Conformant derived statements, like original statements, are identified by URI, are described using ASN statement properties (or property refinements) and utilize appropriate structural and relational properties associating them with original statements and other derived statements.
5. The set of core ASN properties is extensible. The current set of properties will be extended to support additional structural and semantic relationships as they emerge in standards documentation and in use of standards data.
6. At a minimum, dereferencing a standards document or original or derived statement IRI must return the metadata describing the entity identified by the URI including any structural and semantic references to other ASN entities. Such returns should be in machine-readable RDF serialized in JSON-LD, Turtle, or RDF/XML.

The following figure illustrates the entities and select relationships in the ASN Conceptual Model.

6 ASN Terms—Properties & Classes

Properties

The format and content of the ASN property tables are summarized below:

Align From

Align To

Alternative Statement Notation

Assesses Competency

Authority Status

Broad Alignment

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/broadAlignment
Label	Broad Alignment
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The target competency covers all of the relevant concepts in the competency being described as well as relevant concepts not found in the competency being described.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Property Domain	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Broad Correlation

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/broadCorrelation
Label	Broad Correlation
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The competency covers all of the relevant concepts in the learning resource being described as well as relevant concepts not found in the learning resource.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines	http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo
Property Domain	Learning Resource (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/LearningResource)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Comment

Comprised Of

Concept Keyword

Concept Term

Cross Subject Reference

Derived From

Exact Alignment

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/exactAlignment
Label	Exact Alignment
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The relevant concepts in both competencies are coextensive.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Property Domain	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement

Exact Correlation

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/exactCorrelation
Label	Exact Correlation
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The relevant concepts in the educational resource and the competency are coextensive.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines	http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo
Property Domain	Learning Resource (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/LearningResource)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Export Version

File Created [Deprecated]

Has Child

Identifier

Indexing Status

Is Child Of

Jurisdiction

List ID

Local Subject

Major Alignment

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/majorAlignment
Label	Major Alignment
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	Major overlap of relevant concepts between the two competencies.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Property Domain	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Major Correlation

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/majorCorrelation
Label	Major Correlation
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	Major overlap of relevant concepts between the learning resource being described and the competency statement.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines	http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo
Property Domain	Learning Resource (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/LearningResource)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Minor Alignment

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/minorAlignment
Label	Minor Alignment
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	Minor overlap of relevant concepts between the two competencies.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Property Domain	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Minor Correlation

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/minorCorrelation
Label	Minor Correlation
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	Minor overlap of relevant concepts between the learning resource being described and the competency statement.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines	http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo
Property Domain	Learning Resource (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/LearningResource)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Narrow Alignment

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/narrowAlignment
Label	Narrow Alignment
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The competency being described covers all of the relevant concepts in the target competency as well as relevant concepts not found in the target competency.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Property Domain	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Narrow Correlation

Property URI	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/narrowCorrelation
Label	Narrow Correlation
Defined By	http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/
Source Definition	The learning resource being described covers all of the relevant concepts in the competency statement as well as relevant concepts not found in the competency.
Source Comments
Type of Term	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines	http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo
Property Domain	Learning Resource (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/LearningResource)
Property Range	Statement (http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/Statement)

Prerequisite Alignment

Prerequisite Competency

Proficiency Level

Publication Status

Repository Date

Skill Embodied

StatementLabel

Statement Notation

Teaches Competency

Classes

The format and content of the ASN class tables are summarized below:

Competency Map

Correlation Resource

Educational Framework

Jurisdiction Encoding Scheme

Learning Resource

Map

Proficiency Scale

Standard Document

Statement

Status Encoding Scheme