The Achievement Standards Network

See http://asn.jesandco.org/ and the presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/sasutton/edrene-2011-asn

A small worked example of InLOC mapping is given at ASN Alaska history B

An XSL for transformation of RDF ASN export to InLOC XML is available in the binding section.

Introduction

"The Achievement Standards Network (ASN) is an open specification for the representation of educational expectations. The ASN specification provides for:

1. the text of an educational expectation;
2. rich metadata describing that expectation and its context; and
3. a description of relationships between the expectation being described and other related expectations."

The page of greatest direct interest to InLOC is their ASN Application Profile

To set the information below in context, it is important to recognise that the ASN deals with two kinds of entities:

• statements, which are individual definitions of a particular "educational expectation";
• documents, which contain statements and often implicitly define the relationships between statements. Note that a document is just that, and the structures in a document are made explicit in something called a learning map or (in the presentation referenced) learning plane.

ASN statements correspond to LOCdefinitions;
ASN documents are related to LOCstructures.
ASN learning maps seem to correspond more closely to LOCstructures.

The ASN describe the two basic kinds of entity as follows:

• "The standards document representing the promulgated standard as a whole; and
• The statement representing an individual achievement assertion in the standards document. The standards document is comprised of a set of related statements."

However, there will always be some interpretation needed to represent the logical structure of a document, and the set of relations between statements is only definite and explicit in a learning map.

The ASN is closely aligned with Dublin Core, and Semantic Web / Linked Data thinking.

General Information

Features

More description

The Application Profile document contains the ASN conceptual model, visualised thus:

Derivation

"Derived statements: Third parties may create derived statements that refine original statements. 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 statement, or set of derived statements, that decompose an original statement into more granular derived statements to meet particular business needs. Conformant derived statements, like original statements, are identified by URI, are described using ASN statement properties (or property refinements (sub-properties) and utilize appropriate structural and relational properties associating them with original statements and other derived statements."

This is useful because of the rule that the original ASN statements introduce no finer granularity than is clearly present in the source document. Where source documents have complex statements (containing up to 16 components), publishers in particular may want to break these complex statements down so that it is clear which parts of the original statement are addressed by which resources.

Versioning

The problem of versioning is recognised, but not specifically solved within ASN. Should the slightest change in a statement or document require a new identifier? Then, one may use the Dublin Core "source" property to indicate an earlier version. This is an area that should be defined by best practice

Rights and licensing

ASN uses a fairly rich model of rights and licensing. See the "About these standards" page for any set. Fields used include:

• cc:attributionName
• cc:attributionURL
• cc:license

Guidelines requirements

• Correspondences between ASN terms and InLOC terms.
• Indications of how InLOC features that are not in ASN can fit, potentially:
  • Optionality
  • Level definition

Correlation between ASN Statement and LOC definition

This table is copied directly from ASN Application Profile with an added column.

Things not modelled which might be useful

• Licence

Things not modelled separately because not seen as necessary

• AuthorityStatus
• Comment
• IndexingStatus
• Spatial
• Temporal

A distinction is made in ASN, but not in InLOC, between:

• Concept Keyword
• Concept Term
• Local Subject
• Subject

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InLOC consultation with the ASN is through Simon Grant.

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