Standards Statement Application Profile
This document is an application profile (AP) that clarifies the use of the properties in the description of Achievement Standards Network (ASN) statements.
| Creator: | GEM Exchange |
| Contributors: | Bruce Fulton, JES & Co. Ryan Laundry, GEM Exchange Stuart A. Sutton, GEM Exchange |
| Date Issued: | 8/12/2005 |
| Date Revised: | 11/11/2006 |
| Identifier: | http://purl.org/ASN/about/documentation/statementAP/ |
| Status of Document: | Working Draft: ASN Working Drafts are considered "unstable" and subject to revision until declared otherwise |
| Description of Document: | This document is an application profile (AP) that clarifies the use of the properties in the description of Achievement Standards Network (ASN) statements. This AP has been formatted in conformance with the Dublin Core Application Profile Guidelines produced by the CEN MMI-DC Workshop. |
| RDF Declaration of Application Profile: | Not yet available |
1. Introduction
The concept of application profiles (see Application Profiles: Mixing and Matching Metadata Schemas) has emerged within the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative as a way to declare which elements from which namespaces are used in a particular application or project. Application profiles are defined as schemas which consist of data elements drawn from one or more namespaces, combined together by implementors, and optimized for a particular local application.
Achievement standards in the ASN are represented by two entities: (1) a document-centric entity called the Standards Document; and (2) the Statement entity that represents an individual semantic unit which, in aggregate, make up the achievement assertions of the Standards Document. This AP describes the uses of properties in the Statement entity.
The ASN Statements AP has been defined to support the following possible uses:
- to serve as an interchange format between various systems using different metadata standards/formats;
- to use for harvesting metadata from data sources within and outside of the education and training domain; and
- to support creation of standards correlations in education and training domain records for resources within a variety of systems.
The ASN Statements AP is a specification that defines the following:
- required and permitted properties of an ASN statement;
- permitted schemes and values (e.g. use of a specific controlled vocabulary or encoding scheme);
- refinement of property comments to fit the ASN application; and
- best practice information regarding the use of ASN statements in applications including metadata generation tools, learning management systens and discovery and retrieval tools.
2. Namespaces and Format of entries
The ASN AP currently uses (or plans to use) terms from the following namespaces:
- Achievement Standards Network (ASN) Terms [http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/]
- DCMI Core Metadata Terms [http://purl.org/dc/element/1.1/]
- DCMI Qualified Metadata terms [http://purl.org/dc/dcterms/]
- GEM Core Terms [http://purl.org/gem/elements/]
- GEM Qualified Terms [http://purl.org/gem/qualifiers/]
- IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) [To be determined] NOTE: Work continues on the RDF encoding of the IEEE LOM. Once expressed as RDF properties in a declared namespace, LOM elements will be considered for inclusion in the Application Profile.
- Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) [http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/]
- FOAF (Friend of a Friend) [http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/]
Format of entries:
This Application Profile is presented following the " CEN CWA 14855: Dublin Core Application Profiles Guidelines" produced by the CEN MMI-DC Workshop. On completion of the application profile according to CWA 14855, GEM Exchange intends to declare a Resource Description Framework (RDF) version of the profile according to Guidelines for Machine-processable Representation of Dublin Core Application Profiles, Final CWA, ISSS/WS-MMI-DC/132 (December 2004) at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/cen/ws-mmi-dc/.
Name of Term | A unique token assigned to the term. |
Term URI | A Uniform Resource Identifier used to identify the term. |
Label | A human-readable label assigned to the term. |
Defined By | An identifier of a namespace, pointer to a schema, or bibliographic reference for a document within which the term is defined. |
Source Definition | The definition of the term in the namespace in which the term was orginated. |
Source Comments | Comments on the term from the namespace in which the term orginated. |
ASN Comments | ASN comments about the term including "best practice" information. |
Type of term | The grammatical category of the term (e.g. "Element", "Element Refinement", or "Encoding Scheme"). |
Refines | The described term semantically refines the referenced term. A refinement makes the meaning of the element narrower or more specific. It will share the meaning of the unrefined element but with a more restricted scope. |
Refined By | The described term is semantically refined by the referenced term. |
Encoding Scheme For | The described term, an encoding scheme, qualifies the referenced term. Using an encoding scheme will aid in the interpretation of an element value. These schemes include controlled vocabularies and formal notations or parsing rules. A value expressed using an encoding scheme will thus be a token selected from a controlled vocabulary (e.g., a term from a classification system or set of subject headings) or a string formatted in accordance with a formal notation (e.g., "2000-01-01" as the standard expression of a date). If an encoding scheme is not understood by a client or agent, the value may still be useful to a human reader. |
Has Encoding Scheme | The described term is qualified by the referenced encoding scheme. |
Obligation | Indicates whether the element is required to always or sometimes be present. In this application profile the obligation can be: mandatory (M), mandatory if applicable (MA), strongly recommended (R), conditional (C) with stated conditions, or optional (O). Mandatory ensures that some of the elements are always supported and mandatory if applicable means that this element must be supported if the information is available. An element with a mandatory obligation must have a value. The strongly recommended and the optional elements should be filled with a value if the information is appropriate to the given resource but if not, they may be omitted. |
Occurrence | Indicates any limit to the repeatability of the element including unbounded (U) and single (S). |
3. Summary Table of Statement Properties
| Property Label | Definition |
|---|---|
A code denoting whether a jurisdiction has a statement aligned to a CIS URI. | |
A person or organization chiefly responsible for the intellectual content of the resource being described. | |
Supplemental text provided by the promulgating body that clarifies the nature, scope or use of the statement being described | |
A word or phrase used by the promulgating agency to refine and differentiate the statement being described contextually. | |
Date of creation of the resource. | |
An account of the content of the resource. The text of the statement being described. | |
A general statement describing the education or training context. Alternatively, a more specific statement of the location of the audience in terms of its progression through an education or training context. I.e., the grade or grade band of the statement being described. | |
The statement being described is higher in some arbitrary hierarchy than the statement identified in the «hasChild» property. Identifies child statements of the statement being described. | |
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context. | |
The statement being described is lower in some arbitrary hierarchy than the statement identified in the «isChildOf» property. The statement identified is a parent of the statement being described. | |
The described statement is a physical or logical part of the referenced standards document. | |
A legal, quasi-legal, organizational or institutional domain of the entity mandating the use of the achievement standard--e.g., California. | |
The text string denoting the subject of the statement as designated by the promulgating agency. | |
A reference to a related resource. | |
The textual label identifying the class of the statement as designated by the promulgating body—e.g., "Standard," "Benchmark," "Strand," or "Topic." | |
An alphanumeric notation or ID code as defined by the promulgating body to identify the statement. | |
The publication status of the statement taken from the ASN Status controlled vocabulary. | |
A topic of the content of the statement being described taken from the ASN Subject controlled vocabulary. |
4. General Language Designation Note
All properties containing text strings (e.g., «title», «description», «statementLabel» and «comment») must identify the human language of their text value using the xml:lang attribute.
5. ASN Application Profile
«alignment»
Name of Term | alignment |
Term URI | |
Label | Alignment |
Defined By | http://purl.org/ASN/schema/core/ |
Source Definition | A code denoting whether a jurisdiction has a statement aligned to a CIS URI. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The value of the «alignment» property is used in a CIS State Resolver SOAP service response to denote whether there are any state standards taxon paths for the target jurisdiction in the SOAP response. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«author»
Name of Term | AUT |
Term URI | |
Label | Author |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | A person or organization chiefly responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of a work, usually printed text. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The value of the «author» property may be an agent other than the author of the standards document. For example, some third party may wish to break a statement authored by the standard's promulgating agency down into a more granular set of statements. The author of these more granular statements must be unambiguously identified in order to differentiate the official, or canonical statements, from the non-canonical statements of one or more third-party agents. |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | C [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/conditional] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«comment»
Name of Term | comment |
Term URI | |
Label | Comment |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | Supplemental text provided by the promulgating body that clarifies the nature, scope or use of the statement being described. |
Source (ASN) Comments | Use «comment» when the text provides useful context for the statement. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | O [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/optional] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«conceptTerm»
Name of Term | conceptTerm |
Term URI | |
Label | Concept Term |
Defined By | |
| Source Definition | Use «conceptTerm» for a word or phrase provided by the promulgating agency of the standard that refines or differentiates contextually the particular statement being described. |
| Source Comments | A concept term is a word or phrase used by the promulgating agency as a means of categorizing a statement for purposes of organization or clustering of similar statements. For example, the Ohio science standards (2002) use words and phrases to organize grade-level indicators in conceptual clusters. Example Ohio concept terms include "Understanding Technology," Diversity and Independence of Life," and "Forces and Motion" to name but a few. (See Ohio example where the concept terms have been highlighted in yellow.) Concept terms should be differentiated from vocabulary terms that are used by the promulgating agency as separate standards statements that refine one or more other standards statements. General subject designations used by the promulgating agency for the general subject matter of a standard should not use the «conceptTerm» property but should use the «localSubject» property instead. |
ASN Comments | — |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | O [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/optional] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«created»
Name of Term | created |
Term URI | |
Label | Date Created |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | Date of creation of the resource. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The «created» date for all canonical (official) statements should match the date of creation for the source standards document unless a different date is explicitly stated by the promulgating agency. The «creation» date for a non-canonical statement created by a third party should be the date the third party created the statement. Recommended best practice for encoding the date value is defined in a profile of ISO 8601 [W3CDTF] and follows the YYYY-MM-DD format. |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«description»
Name of Term | description |
Term URI | |
Label | Description |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | An account of the content of the resource. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The value of the «description» property is the text of the statement that is displayed by default as the "content" of the statement being described. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | C [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/conditional] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«educationLevel»
Name of Term | educationLevel |
Term URI | |
Label | Education Level |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | A general statement describing the education or training context. Alternatively, a more specific statement of the location of the audience in terms of its progression through an education or training context. ASN: Repeat the «educationLevel» property for each grade in a grade band. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
| Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«hasChild»
Name of Term | hasChild |
Term URI | |
Label | Has Child |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The statement being described is higher in some arbitrary hierarchy than the statement identified in the «hasChild» property. Identifies child statements of the statement being described. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | — |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«identifier»
Name of Term | identifier |
Term URI | |
Label | Identifier |
| Defined By | |
Source Definition | An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The URI of the statement being described. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«isChildOf»
Name of Term | isChildOf |
Term URI | |
Label | Is Child Of |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The statement being described is lower in some arbitrary hierarchy than the statement identified in the «isChildOf» property. The statement identified is a parent of the statement being described. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | — |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«isPartOf»
Name of Term | isPartOf |
Term URI | |
Label | Is Part Of |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The described resource includes the referenced resource either physically or logically. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The value of the «isPartOf» property is the URI of the Standards Document of which the statement being described is a member. |
Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«jurisdiction»
Name of Term | jurisdiction |
Term URI | |
Label | Jurisdiction |
Defined By | |
| Source Definition | A legal, quasi-legal, organizational or institutional domain of the entity mandating the use of the achievement standard--e.g., California. |
Source Comment | For official (canonical) statements issued by the promulgating agency, the jurisdictional URI should be the same as the jurisdictional URI for that agency used in the standards document. For unofficial (non-canonical) statements, the jurisdictional URI must be the URI of the organization that created the unofficial statement and "associated" it with an official statement through use of the «isChildOf» property. |
ASN Comments | — |
| Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«localSubject»
Name of Term | localSubject |
Term URI | |
Label | Local Subject |
Defined By | |
| Source Definition | The text string denoting the subject of the statement as designated by the promulgating agency. |
Source Comment | The local subject may (or many not) be the same as the ASN subject. If the local subject and the ASN subject are the same, enter the local subject text string in the «localSubject» property as well as the ASN subject URI in the «subject» property. |
ASN Comments | — |
| Type of term | |
Refines | |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«relation»
Name of Term | relation |
Term URI | |
Label | Relation |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | A reference to a related resource. |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | — |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | O [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/optional] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«statementLabel»
Name of Term | statementLabel |
Term URI | |
Label | Statement Label |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The textual label identifying the class of the statement as designated by the promulgating body--e.g., "standard," "benchmark," "strand," or "topic." |
Source Comments | — |
ASN Comments | The value of the «statementLabel» property is the name of the class and not the textual label assigned to the statement being described by its promulgating body. Thus, a statement with a «description» that states "Benchmark 12: Students will demonstrate by writing ..." would have a «statementLabel» value of "Benchmark" denoting the class of statement and not "Benchmark 12". |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«statementNotation»
Name of Term | statementNotation |
Term URI | |
Label | Statement Notation |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | An alphanumeric notation or ID code as defined by the promulgating body to identify the statement. |
Source Comments | — |
| ASN Comments | Notations suitable for this property do not include simple sequencing numbers. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | — |
Obligation | MA [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatoryIfApplicable] |
Occurrence | S [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/1] |
«status»
Name of Term | status |
Term URI | |
Label | Status |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The publication status of the standards document or standards document statement--e.g., "Draft," "Active," "Deprecated," "Original," and "Derived." |
Source Comments | For statements, the value of the «status» property denotes whether the statement is "original" in terms of of the statement being a faithful representation of the original document or "derived" meaning that the statement was created by some 3rd party (e.g., an statement that breaks an original statement down into more granular parts in order to meet some project-specific goal). Only the promulgating agency through the ASN administration can assign a status of "original." Status in the ASN is expressed as a faceted alphanumeric triple. For a full explanation, see ASN Status Triples. |
ASN Comments | — |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | |
Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
«subject»
Name of Term | subject |
Term URI | |
Label | Subject |
Defined By | |
Source Definition | The topic of the content of the resource. |
Source Comments | Typically, a Subject will be expressed as keywords, key phrases or classification codes that describe a topic of the resource. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary or formal classification scheme. |
ASN Comments | The value of the «subject» property must be drawn from a declared controlled vocabulary. The ASN provides a mandatory controlled vocabulary (see below). Subject terms created by the standards promulgating agency for a specific standards document should be included. Any other declared controlled vocabulary of subject terms may be used. |
Type of term | |
Refines | — |
Refined By | — |
Encoding Scheme For | — |
Has Encoding Scheme | |
| Obligation | M [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/Obligation/mandatory] [Note: A statement must be assigned at least one subject term from the ASN subject controlled vocabulary] |
Occurrence | U [http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/maxOccurs/unbounded] |
6. Example Statement in RDF (mythical jurisdiction)
<!-- B E G I N S T A T E M E N T -->
<asn:Statement rdf:about="http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1024F0C">
<!-- DESCRIPTIVE PROPERTIES -->
<dc:description rdf:parseType="Literal" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-US">Explain the philosophical foundations of the American political system in terms of the inalienable rights of man and the purpose of government, with emphasis on the basic principles of natural rights expressed by John Locke, including the state of nature, property, equality, and dissolution of government <i>Second Treatise of Government</i></dc:description>
<dc:subject rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNTopic/Civics"/>
<asn:conceptTerm>Civil Rights</asn:conceptTerm
<asn:localSubject>U.S. Civics</asn:localSubject>
<asn:jurisdiction rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNJurisdiction/xx">
<dcterms:educationLevel rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/K"/>
<dcterms:educationLevel rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/scheme/ASNEducationLevel/1"/>
<asn:statementLabel>Performance Objective</asn:statementLabel>
<asn:statementNotation>Civ-3.5</asn:statementNotation>
<asn:comment>Focus: Philosophical foundations of government</asn:comment>
<dc:relation>http://some-related-resource.html</dc:relation>
<!-- AGENCY PROPERTIES -->
<!-- Note that the author may be the same as for the Standards Document to which the Statement belongs; but that need not be the case where a third party creates a more granulary statement in its own namespace -->
<loc:AUT xml:lang="en-US">OZ Social Studies Sub-Committee on Learning Standards</loc:AUT>
<!-- LIFECYCLE PROPERTIES -->
<asn:status>Official</asn:status>
<dcterms:created>2001</dcterms:created>
<!-- STRUCTURAL RELATIONSHIP PROPERTIES -->
<dcterms:isPartOf rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/resources/D1000092"/<
<gemq:isChildOf>http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1010708</gemq:isChildOf>
<gemq:hasChild>
<rdf:Seq>
<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1011EB1"/>
<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://purl.org/ASN/resources/S1010764"/>
</rdf:Seq>
</gemq:hasChild>
</asn:Statement>
<!-- E N D S T A T E M E N T -->
7. Download an Example State Standard File
An example of an RDF/XML standards file for California Science (1998) is available for download. The file is encoded as a PDF and is 879KB in size. Click here to download the file.
8. Major changes since last update
- «localSubject» The «localSubject» property was added to make it possible to unambiguously distinguish between the subject or topic term used by the promulgating agency from the ASN Subject vocabulary used by the ASN to categorize cross-jurisdictional statements throughout the ASN. In processing future standards documents, this property will be used to transcribe subjects exactly as they are expressed by the promulgating agency.
- «jurisdiction» The «jurisdiction» property was added to make it possible to distinguish official (canonical) statements from non-official (non-canonical) statements in the ASN.
