Costs of an educational occupational credential
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Having found an educational / occupational credential it should be possible to identify the costs of acquiring the credential. Depending on the way in which the credential is offered and the extent to which the person interested in acquiring that credential already meets the requirements defined by the credentialer, these costs may be quite complex. There may be costs directly associated with obtaining the credential (e.g. registrations costs), costs for any assessment that is necessary, or costs for a course which leads to the credential. The credential, assessment and course may or may not all be offered by the same organization.
Discussion: EOCred: EOCred: cost of a credential thread from Jan and Feb 2018.
Proposal
The offers property may be used to show Offers to provide the credential and any associated courses or assessments independently, and the price property of the Offer can be used to show the direct cost of the thing being offered.
It is possible for a variety of Offers to be shown in case different costs apply to different circumstances. For example, a text value for eligibleCustomerType could be used if an Offer only applied to members of the credentialing organization or to a designated category of persons (e.g., active military).
For a simple case, where there is no associated course or additional assessment, an EducationalOccupationalCredential with the appropriate offers will satisfy the requirement (see example 1 below).
In more complex cases, where the costs of associated courses or assessments may be of interest, the general principles are:
- to describe costs of independent things separately, and to link these things so that they can be aggregated in an intelligent and context-dependent manner, however,
- where the offer of one thing is dependent on the offer of another, use the addOn property of Offer.
Where successful completion of a course leads to an educational / occupational credential, the educationalCredentialAwarded property of the Course may be used to link from the Course to the credential.
Note: we have a use case to provide a mechanism to link from credential to Course, which will also be relevant. The syntax of JSON-LD provides one way to do this with the @reverse keyword, see example 2.
Note: There is no Assessment type in schema.org and so a similar solution is not available for assessments (though we have a use case to show such relationships). It is possible to provide extensive data about the Offer of an assessment without providing a link to the itemOffered.
Where the course or assessment and credential are closely related, for example where a credential is not available any other way than by taking a course, the addOn property of the Offer associated for the assessment may be used to show that cost of the credential is included in the cost of the course.
Where the cost of the assessment is included in the cost of the credential, the addOn property of the Offer for the EducationalOccupationalCredential may be used.
Examples
These examples show valid ways in which the vocabulary terms may be used in order to provide information about costs of credentials. Other options may also be valid, and which options are best will depend on the circumstances of a specific implementation.
Note: These examples should not be taken as being authoritative or accurate descriptions of the resources on which they are based.
1. No Course costs, cost of assessment included in the cost of the credential
Based on CMALT
The costs for the educational occupational credential are provided as an offer; there is no extra cost for the assessment, and so this is shown as a free add-on.
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"url" : "https://www.alt.ac.uk/certified-membership",
"name": "CMALT",
"description": "Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology",
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"name": "Registration fee",
"price": "150",
"priceCurrency": "GBP",
"offeredBy" : {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Association for Learning Technology",
"url": "https://www.alt.ac.uk/"
},
"addOn" : {
"@type": "Offer",
"description": "the cost of assessment is included"
}
}
}
2. Costs are associated with the course that leads to the credential
Based on Santa Rosa Junior College certificate in Culinary Arts and associated program of study.
The programme of study is described as a schema:Course, using the offers property to show the costs and linking to the certificate as the educationalCredentialAwarded; as the certificate appears to be free it has been shown as an add-on to the Offer of the Course. Additionally the Certificate is described as an EducationalOccupationalCredential. JSON-LD's @reverse property is used to link from the Certificate to the Course: if both parts of the graph are already present this is not necessary, however if the Course information is separate such a link would be useful.
{"@graph": [
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"@id": "http://example.org/SRJCCACert",
"name": "Undergraduate certificate in Culinary Arts",
"offers" : {
"@type": "Offer",
"offeredBy": {
"@type": "EducationalOrganization",
"@id": "https://www.santarosa.edu/",
"name": "Santa Rosa Junior College"
}
},
"@reverse": {
"educationalCredentialAwarded": {
"@type": "Course",
"@id": "https://portal.santarosa.edu/srweb/SR_ProgramOfStudy.aspx?ProgramType=1&Program=003202&Version=3"
}
}
},
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "Course",
"@id": "https://portal.santarosa.edu/srweb/SR_ProgramOfStudy.aspx?ProgramType=1&Program=003202&Version=3",
"name": "Programme of study for Culinary Arts Certificate",
"educationalCredentialAwarded": {
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"@id": "http://example.org/SRJCCACert"
},
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"name": "in-state tuition and fees",
"price": "3088",
"priceCurrency": "USD",
"eligibleCustomerType": "in-state students",
"offeredBy": {
"@type": "EducationalOrganization",
"@id": "https://www.santarosa.edu/",
"name": "Santa Rosa Junior College"
},
"addOn": {
"@type": "Offer",
"itemOffered": {
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"@id": "http://example.org/SRJCCACert"
},
"price": "0",
"description": "The program fees include the cost of the certificate."
}
}
} ]
}
3. Costs are associated with an assessment
Loosely based on on SQA HNC Facilities Management, showing information about a Certificate, and an offer of a Service (the assessment) which is charged for. (The information about the assessment is invented for this example.) The Certificate is free, but only available if the assessment is passed, and so it is shown as an add-on to the assessment.
{
"@graph": [ {
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"@id": "http://example.org/SQAHNCFM",
"name" : "HNC Facilities Management Certificate"
},
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "Offer",
"itemOffered": {
"@type": "Service",
"@id": "http://example.org/SQAHNCFMAssessment",
"name" : "HNC Facilities Management Assessment",
"description": "Examination only for HNC Facilities Management",
"serviceType": "Educational Assessment"
},
"price": "??",
"priceCurrency": "GBP",
"availableAtOrFrom": {
"@type": "Place",
"name": "Example exam centre"
},
"addOn" : {
"@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
"@id": "http://example.org/SQAHNCFM",
"description": "HNC Facilities Management Certificate awarded on passing the assessment",
"price": "0"
}
} ]
}