Courses, Catalogs and Related Issues

[jeannekitchens]

Round up course catalog and related isues and link our working document here.

[jared-diener]

Working document is here.

[philbarker]

Catalog Class capability requirements

A catalog lists offerings for some time-bound period and links to other relevant information such as policies and admin information.

We need to be able to

• represent course/program catalogs and their relationships to administrative information and offerings.
• support users to discover, select, locate and obtain copies of catalogs that are hosted elsewhere as documents (e.g. PDFs) elsewhere.
• be clear what time period the catalog covers.
• represent the content of catalog (especially courses offered) in machine processable form, in order support search and analysis, e.g. linking transfer value to a specific offering of a course & allowing LERs to include reference to specific offerings or courses.

Out of scope
Faculty staff lists and similar PII.

Other commonly included catalog information that are existing CTDL classes

• Support Services
• Departments, colleges, academic units
• Costs + financial assistance

[philbarker]

Draft Domain Model

I think that so far we have a fairly solid draft addressing the first three points above, with a solution for the third sketched in but not developed:

Draft definitions

These are very sketchy...

URI: ceterms:Catalog
Label: Catalog
Definition: Listing of offerings.
Comment: Frequently scoped by being offerings from a single organization and for some time-bound period. May contain links to other relevant information such as policies and admin information.

• Question: Should we limit this to "Course" Catalogue or something similar that does not exclude programs, apprenticeships, assessments etc.

URI: ceterms:TimeFrame
Label: Time Frame
Definition: Description of a period of time.
Comment: Useful for creating machine processable data about a named period such a term, session, academic- or financial-year.

URI: ceterms:hasTimeFrame
Label: Has Time Frame
Definition: Temporal coverage of a resource.
Domain: ceterms:Catalog
Range: ceterms:TimeFrame

• Note: we have ceterms:temporalCoverage but the range and its use as a superproperty for dates makes it unsuitable; which is a shame.

URI: ceterms:timeFrameType
Label: Time Frame Type
Definition: Type of time frame; select from an existing enumeration of such types.
Comment: Useful for identifying that a time frame is an academic term, semester, financial year etc.
Usage Note: Best practice is to choose from an existing concept scheme such as ceterms:tbd.
Target scheme: ceterms:tbd

• TBD: The target scheme; base it on the existing Pesc vocabulary for session type (FullYear, Semester, Trimester, Quarter, Quinmester, MiniTerm, SummerSession, Intersession, LongSession, FallSession, FourOneFourPlan, Continuous, DiffersByProgram, Other, TwelveMonth), with additions such as AcademicYear, CalendarYear.

Clarification needed on dates

It is important to be able to identify which catalog was in effect at any particular point in time. This may not be the same as its temporal coverage start and end dates. For example,

James Maadison University Undergratuate Catalog 2025-2026 (pdf)

• The time period covered is August 2025 to August 2026, so those would be the start and end date of the TimePeriod (time period type: academic year).
• We assume it came into effect when it was published: approximateDateEffective : May 2025
• We are not sure when it ceases to be effective, but it ceases to be the current catalog when the next one is published, let's say May 2026
• The definition of ceterms:expirationDate is "Date beyond which the resource is no longer offered or available. " but we know that archives catalogues are still available, so this would probably not be an appropriate date to use for the end date of effectiveness unless clarified.
• Likewise, the information in the catalog remains a valid description for the time period covered, so ceasn:dateValidUntil would not be appropriate.

So we need to either clarify how expirationDate relates to availability / archived copies or create a new property as the end point of "effectiveness". Given the explosion of date properties, let's at least try the former.

e.g. change the definition from

• "Date beyond which the resource is no longer offered or available."

to

• "Date beyond which the resource is no longer offered or available as the current version."

and add a usage note:

• "May be used to indicate the end point of a period of applicability that starts with ceterms:dateEffective. May be used for resources that are archived but no longer in effect."