Learning Resource Metadata Initiative Seeks Input from Education Professionals

Online survey participants will be entered to win one of five $25 Amazon gift cards

Philadelphia, PA, February 11, 2014 – The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) has launched a new survey to discover if and how states and districts are currently using education metadata. If they aren’t, the LRMI seeks to understand their level of interest in a metadata schema that could help them discover learning resources to optimize personalized learning. The survey is available online and is open now through Friday, February 21, 2014. Those who complete the survey will be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift card.

The survey includes 15 questions and should take approximately five minutes or less to complete. In addition to gauging a general awareness of metadata initiatives, the survey includes questions such as “What search criteria would be most helpful in searching for educational resources online?” and “If search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo offered the ability to filter results by standard instructional criteria such as grade level, subject area, media type, etc. would that improve your level of satisfaction with Internet searches for educational resources?”.

Surveys must be completed by February 21, 2014, and those who complete the survey and provide their email address will be entered to win one of five $25 Amazon gift cards.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-led by the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons, the LRMI developed a common metadata framework for describing educational content and products on the web so educators, students, and parents can more efficiently search for quality resources. In April 2013, Schema.org, the consortium of search engines Microsoft Bing, Google, Yahoo!, and Yandex that is working to establish common metadata tagging across the Internet, adopted the LRMI schema. This means that the LRMI properties can now be indexed as part of the structured metadata that major search engines crawl in their searches.

“The goal of this survey is two-fold,” said Dave Gladney, LRMI project manager at the Association of American Publishers PreK-12 Learning Group. “We want to gauge general LRMI awareness, as well as gain a more in-depth perspective on how the education community is utilizing metadata so we can be better informed as we continue to advance this project.”

To learn more about the LRMI, visit www.lrmi.net. Receive project updates directly by signing up for the free monthly LRMI newsletter, LRMI Update, here.

About The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) aims to make the educational resource search experience richer for educators and learners and improve the discoverability of resources for content creators. The Association of Educational Publishers (now the nonprofit arm of the Association of American Publishers) and Creative Commons have co-led the project since its founding in 2011.