Age group should not be used as a folksonomy

[hans]

I was looking at this page: http://lemill.net/content/age_group

We are going to have a tagcloud of age ranges there soon. If I am teaching 7th grade students (age 13-14), then I don't want to browse age ranges 12-16, 13-16, 14-15, 14-16, etc.

Option 1: we provide predefined age ranges for browsing

Option 2: we remove possibility to browse by age range

[tarmo]

Option 3: We create a tagcloud with just the individual ages - we can split the age ranges into individual years, no problem.

[tarmo]

Hans... How far should the tag cloud extend? If someone specifies unlimited range, then do we have an entry in the tagcloud for each number between 1 and 99?

[hans]

Displaying all ages as a separate tag is not very practical way to browse the system. If you are teaching 7th grade you will have 14 years old and 15 years old students in my class and maybe one or two 16 year old students. Do not expect that teachers will open 3 separate tabs with the results in their browser.

It is also very difficult to say, that this material is suitable for 15 year old students, but not suitable for 13 year old students. In case of languages it is quite useless. Some students start studying English in 1st grade, some start in 6th grade.

For browsing we should have some ranges like:

• up to 6
• 6-8
• 8-10 *10-12
• 12-14
• 14-16
• 16-18
• 18 and up

Do not take it as a final list. I think that the age ranges should overlap a little bit. I really need Teemu's and Mart's opinion here.

This is only about browsing by age group. For entering the age values will keep it as it is (two fields to enter a number).

PS. Age ranges are useful only if it is possible to browse by multiple categories (#401).

[hans]

We had some discussion with Teemu, Tarmo and Mart. We decided, that teachers talk about grades, not about student's age. We should use grades in the user interface and map grades to age. We should get information for this mapping from WP1.

Open question: what do we do now, when we do not have the mapping data? Do we use age ranges so far?

[hans]

Yesterday we were discussion the "educational metadata" of learning materials again. We decided that all four educational elements of LRE Application Profile do not really fit with the way teachers describe learning materials.

We decided that:

• Typical Age Range, Learning resource type, Intended end user role and Learning context should be removed
• Instead of Typical Age Range and Learning context we ask grades
• In addition to grades material can be for special education or higher education

The grades are listed as checkboxes:

• 1st grade
• 2nd grade
• 3rd grade
• 4th grade
• 5th grade
• 6th grade
• 7th grade
• 8th grade
• 9th grade
• 10th grade
• 11th grade
• 12th grade
• special education
• higher education

Should we call this "metadata" element a Target group? Are there countries that have more grades than 12 in Europe?

[tarmo]

Children start at different ages, and there's preschool as well. There's no way "2nd grade" makes any sense in the scope of Europe unless it's mapped to age ranges, and translated into the grading system of the country of the user. This should actually not be discussed in a defect ticket, so I'm converting this into a story. Let's get the story right and then implement.

[teemu]

I am proposing that right now we go with the grade list and when we have the European mapping we will implement it. So no age groups, but grades - at this point.

It is true that the grades will not match - see Tarmo's comment - at this point. But we should keep the design consistent and not change things all the time in the UI. As the final point will be grades that will be mapped, let's now implement the grades without mapping and have it in there when it works. Now I am repeting myself.

[hans]

I agree with Teemu, that we should have grades. Grades work very well inside one country and at first teachers are trying to find learning materials in their own language.

Materials in English are probably most interesting for language teachers, but for languages grades or typical age range both does not work. In case of languages study year is comparable characteristics. The same materials is relevant for students who start to learn English in 3rd grade and for those who start in 6th grade.

[hans]

Updated list of grades:

• pre-school education
• 1st grade
• 2nd grade
• 3rd grade
• 4th grade
• 5th grade
• 6th grade
• 7th grade
• 8th grade
• 9th grade
• 10th grade
• 11th grade
• 12th grade
• special education
• higher education

To Teemu & Mart: Do we have more than 12 grades in some countries?

[hans]

We have additional information field Typical Age Range also for activities. I think that if teachers are talking about activities, then they think about age groups, not grades.

I am not sure that we really need that information for activities because most of activities are suitable for very wide age range. If there are certain age restrictions, these can be written to the description.

[hans]

This ticket can be closed because we don't have age groups anymore.