The development of metadata standards for teaching domain in Taiwan

Maximizing flexibility, scalability, and compatibility is the aim for the localization of metadata standard. Metadata (data about data) provides a common nomenclature to describe learning resources in a common way. Metadata standard provides an unambiguous way for describing the same attribute of learning resources. However, there exist indeed cultural differences among different countries and areas. Metadata standards should preserve enough flexibility to deal with cultural differences. In this paper, two application profiles of metadata standards, Teaching Material Markup Language (TMML) and Metadata Lifecycle Model, adapted from IEEE LOM, SCORM, and Dublin Core are introduced. Moreover, key factors to successful development of localization for metadata standards are discussed.