About the vocabulary bank
Vocabulary Services
The Vocabulary Management Services, supported by Becta, include two main system components plus a range of support and training. Benefits for users of vocabularies include the opportunity to tag once but classify many times.
Vocabulary Bank
The Vocabulary Bank is a dynamic publishing environment for controlled vocabularies used in UK education. It is a key element in Becta's vocabulary management services. Vocabularies can be downloaded and used in appropriate tools for tagging digital learning content. Through the Bank, you can:
- search for terms in one or more stored vocabularies
- resolve terms
- compare terms between and within vocabularies
- browse vocabularies
- download vocabularies.
Vocabulary Studio
Vocabulary Studio is an online vocabulary management tool used by government agencies and organisations in the education sector. Studio enables vocabulary authorities to create, edit, manage and assure the quality of controlled vocabularies. Once they are ready they can be published directly to Bank to make them more widely available. The service allows vocabulary terms to be mapped within and between vocabularies. In addition Studio contains a Spine of Concepts that supports the governance of terms and mapping between synonyms.
Tagging
It is expected that some of these vocabularies will be used as part of a range of metadata schemes.
The following is recommended:
- Do not use terms identified as node labels (indicated by termType = NL in the XML file).
- Use only preferred terms (indicated by termType = PT in the XML file) in metadata.
- Learning objectives can now be used in metadata and should be indicated by termNote = objective in the XML file.
- Terms should appear in metadata instances using the term identifier (termId) and optionally the name of the term (termName).
- Preferred terms that do not have <termNote>objective</termNote> in the XML file are subject specifiers.
In schemes based on LOM (the Learning Object Metadata standard), classification element (LOM 9) should be used to carry terms. The identifier (id) should be mandatory and given as a single level of taxon. The term name (entry) is optional, but can be useful if people are expected to directly read the metadata. In order to enable terms to be connected in groups (tuples) it is suggested that Purpose is not used and is indicated as optional in schemes. For example (level 1 and mathematics) and (level 2 and geography).
Further information
Becta's vocabulary management services, information on Becta's Industry and developers' website.