Just want to note that these proposals have been discussed by LRMI over the last year or so in conference calls and on the mail list. Specifically, The most recent discussions start in August on with messages on the topics of "Adding EducationEvent to domain includes" and "educationalLevel", conclude in October as the topic on "extended domains & new terms", and the proposal was signed off in the November call.

Further discuss here would of course be welcome.

Phil Barker, responding to request from @danbri for info on how this proposal was developed.

(editted to add links that got lost)

Fixed in version 8

I have some difficulties to find practical examples og how to differeniate between "teaches" and "assesses".

I now have a better idea about the difference. But I didn't understand it from the current description. Maybe the description should be updated. My misunderstanding came from my particular use case of presenting a course BEFORE the course is conducted. From this perspective, I expected that TEACH and ASSESS would come up with the same content :-)

@msofferready certainly many courses include both assessment and teaching, especially if the exam is a part of the course, so you could use both. Would it help someone searching for a resource that assesses something if they found the course you are describing? If you used "assesses X" in a search would you expect to find your course about X or would you prefer to find just exams and other tests about X?

Depending on the level detail that is useful to you it may be worth saying that the course hasParts, some of which (lessons, lectures, assignment etc) teach X, some of which (tests, exams, etc) assess X.

We have to be careful about being too specific in the definitions because education isn't as straightforward as many people think. Remember that we have things like formative assessment and marked assignments with feedback, tools like duolingo and flash cards, and methods like socratic dialogue and problem based learning which all use "asking questions" to help someone learn.

I can't think of an improvement on the current "help someone learn" for teaches.

Perhaps for assesses we could include something like "determine someones knowledge, skills or other attributes" where the current definition has a circular reference to "assesses".

@philbarker The concept is now understandable for me, I would leave it the way it is. As I said: I didn't understand it right from the description alone at https://schema.org/EducationEvent, so it might still be possible to be more specific or add an example. Other than that, it's fine for me.

Thx a lot for your patience and your help!

Does https://schema.org/teaches duplicate functionality of https://schema.org/about, when it could also be an rdfs:subPropertyOf of :about?

The current definition of :teaches:

• https://schema.org/subjectOf is the inverse property of https://schema.org/about
  • Add "subjectOf" as a reverse for "about" #1670
• SCH: make https://schema.org/teaches a subPropertyOf of :about
  From "RDF Schema 1.1" https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_subpropertyof :

  3.5 rdfs:subPropertyOf

  The property rdfs:subPropertyOf is an instance of rdf:Property that is used to state that all resources related by one property are also related by another.

  A triple of the form:

  P1 rdfs:subPropertyOf P2

  states that
  P1 is an instance of rdf:Property,
  P2 is an instance of rdf:Property and
  P1 is a subproperty of P2.
  The rdfs:subPropertyOf property is transitive.

  The rdfs:domain of rdfs:subPropertyOf is rdf:Property. The rdfs:range of rdfs:subPropertyOf is rdf:Property.

  • :isbn is an rdfs:subPropertyOf https://schema.org/identifier
    

    schemaorg/data/schema.ttl

    Lines 6537 to 6543 in cac3fbd

    	:isbn a rdf:Property ;
    	rdfs:label "isbn" ;
    	:domainIncludes :Book ;
    	:rangeIncludes :Text ;
    	rdfs:comment "The ISBN of the book." ;
    	rdfs:subPropertyOf :identifier ;
    	owl:equivalentProperty <http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/isbn> .

• SCH: Extend the range of :about to include https://schema.org/DefinedTerm
  • Properties that take an URL in anticipation of an external enumeration should be marked as expecting DefinedTerm #2734

  • schemaorg/data/releases/15.0/schemaorg-all-https.ttl

    Lines 19230 to 19238 in cac3fbd

    	schema:about a rdf:Property ;
    	rdfs:label "about" ;
    	rdfs:comment "The subject matter of the content." ;
    	schema:domainIncludes schema:CommunicateAction,
    	schema:CreativeWork,
    	schema:Event ;
    	schema:inverseOf schema:subjectOf ;
    	schema:rangeIncludes schema:Thing ;
    	schema:source <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1670> .

• STORY: Users can look up DefinedTerms within a context/domain/field of application
  • DefinedTermSet: Is there an intention to create a DefintedTermSet search engine #3223

Yes, teaches is more specific than about.

@danbri no, logically I don't think there are. Though I think you might not want always every learning objective to be listed as the subject (e.g. Physics textbook: about = Physics, teaches ~ 100s of learning objectives).

I don't need a separate about field to label/tag other types, so why is there one for these?

Because it duplicates functionality,
I think:

• teaches should be a subPropertyOf :about
• Add DefinedTerm to the range of about
• Add examples that show when and how to use each property:
  • about
  • educationalAlignment
  • teaches