The learning registry: building a foundation for learning resource analytics

We describe our experimentation with the current implementation of a distribution system used to share descriptive and social metadata about learning resources. The Learning Registry, developed and released in a beta version in October 2011, is intended to store and forward learning-resource metadata among a distributed, de-centralized network of nodes. The Learning Registry also accepts social/attention metadata---data about users of and activity around the learning resource. The Learning Registry open-source community has proposed a schema for sharing social metadata, and has experimented with a number of organizations representing their social metadata using that schema. This paper describes the results and challenges, and the learning-resource analytics applications that will use Learning Registry data as their foundation.