Introduction

Since its inception there has been an increasing expectation that XCRI will address vocabularies, particularly subject vocabularies, even though this is not directly within its remit. A common method of searching across repositories of learning opportunities has been the 'holy grail' of course information systems, so that learners do not have to grapple with different search mechanics in otherwise very similar systems.

The ASAP project took a sample of subject areas from several subject classification systems and lists of keywords and mapped them to a common spine vocabulary. It then developed a working, web-based prototype of the search functionality for the sample subject areas. Course data was then obtained from existing or past XCRI mini-project implementations. The prototype contains a complete data set for the Open University and a smaller, partial set from the University of Huddersfield.

The prototype demonstrates how a user can select a search term and use it to obtain search results from multiple course lists, where each course list can be keyed to one or more different keywords or classification systems.

The ASAP prototype

The proprietary thesaurus at the heart of ASAP maps a number of different classification methods and institution specific keyword lists to a common spine. This allows ASAP to provide both a common, generic approach to mapping courses and a tailored approach specific to institutions, and even course or subject specific mappings.

When a user searches using ASAP, they begin by entering a search term. That search term is then compared to the thesaurus and used as an 'entry point' into the thesaurus. The system then follows each relationship through the thesaurus to build a specific 'sub-thesaurus' for that search term. The sub-thesaurus is then used to query the courses held in the database, and all courses linked to nodes within the sub-thesaurus are retrieved. Each course is tagged with its relationship to the original search term node, and scored depending on its relevance and distance from the original node. The resulting data set is then returned for presentation to the user.

We have provided a script that users can follow to see the ASAP mechanism demonstrated and to compare it with conventional subject searching. Click here to access the script and here to access the ASAP prototype.

Further information can also be found on the JISC website and the XCRI website.