Towards SDG 4 : trade -offs for geospatial open educational resources

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.