Abstract:
Through the ISPRS scientific initiative presented in this paper, we aim to make geospatial educational resources available and
discoverable to those who teach and those who want to learn. In earlier work, we designed and implemented a prototype catalogue
for geospatial educational resources, aimed at a target audience in higher education. The success of search and discovery in any
catalogue relies heavily on the metadata that describes catalogue entries. Initial feedback showed that users find it difficult to use
some of the metadata elements in the prototype to describe their teaching materials. In order to better understand their difficulties and
further refine the metadata for describing educational resources that are used for geospatial purposes specifically, we asked a number
of participants to describe geospatial educational resources according to four sets of metadata attributes. This paper presents the
results of the study and recommends a set of metadata attributes that are specifically useful for geospatial educational resources.
Implementation trade-offs are discussed, e.g., deciding between metadata attributes that are very specific or more generic, and
catalogue entries that are immediately available to Web search engines without any quality checks vs. catalogue entries that are
moderated by a community of educators before publishing them. By providing metadata about geospatial educational resources, the
international geospatial community can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable
quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
