Internationalization Work Group 2019-11-22

Owned by Ann Su
Last updated: Dec 02, 2019 by Eric Jansson
2 min read

Participation

  • Miguel Candia, Google
  • Ed Comer, Student1
  • Jordan Craig, Amazon
  • Linda Feng, Unicon, Inc.
  • Stephen Fuqua, Ed-Fi Alliance
  • Gene Garcia, Microsoft
  • Don Hutchings, ITG America
  • Emil Marunde, Follett Corp.
  • Geoff McElhanon, Edufied
  • Kevin Wiggen, Microsoft
  • Chris McCracken, Amazon (sitting in for Tarun Verma)
  • Eric Jansson, Ed-Fi Alliance

Support:

The meeting is scheduled 2019-11-22 at 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm CT via WebEx.

Agenda/Meeting Minutes:

  1. Introductions of work group members
  2. Terms of the Ed-Fi Community Intellectual Property Disclosure Policy 
    1. Intellectual Property Slides
  3. Review of and questions about of work group charter
  4. Discussion of key design principles – I’ve seeded a list here: Internationalization Work Group - Initial Scope Questions This list is framed as a set of potential differences from where the APIs and Ed-Fi data model are today.

Comments or feedback from the last meeting:  


Discussion:

Key Design Principals
Education Organization Hierarchy

  • Request for a resource that shows the existing hierarchy
  • Microsoft (via Gene) is modeling this as a single EdOrg entity that has a reflexive relationship. The allows for regions (like Germany) that have very complex systems to use the same model as relatively simple hierarchies. The EdOrg entity differentiates types via a Type category variable. One downside to this design is that all attributes for all EdOrgs are on the same entity even though they do not necessarily apply to all types of EdOrgs.
  • If the Microsoft model is used, there is a question on how to enforce only attributes specific to each type of EdOrg be allowed. One proposal is to incorporate the EdOrg Type in the entity name when it needs to be specific (inheritance model). This could be a distinction between the data model and api bindings.
  • A second option would be to have two main categories of entities: those related to enrollment and those related to administrative activities.

NEW Internationalized Elements

  • Some elements, like Name, will need to be reworked. Internationally, names do not always fit the FirstName, MiddleName, LastSurname pattern.
  • Address is another example.
  • Most attributes around a person could fall into this category (e.g., email, address, name, demographics, characteristics)
  • Another point to discuss and probably standarize is reading - Left to Right versus Right to Left.
  • May want to consider new demographics around religion, region, and currency.
  • International assessment standards (e.g., Asia) have existing standards to consider.

Next Steps:

Action Items

  • - The group would like to divvy up some of the larger ideas amongst themselves to work through and then report back to the group at the next meeting.
  • Don will work on Assessments
  • Linda will work on those areas in the IMS realm (EdOrg Hierarchy, Person Roles, possibly Entity Names)
  • Gene will work with Linda on areas to do with rostering
  • Ed will analyze key structure and referential integrity implications

Next  meeting: Date and time – Friday, Dec. 6, 2019 12:00pm-1:00pm CT via WebEx