Introduction

The basic goal of the Bologna process, which has been going on since 1999, is to make education systems throughout Europe easier to compare and to assess relative to each other, in order to facilitate the exchange of students and teachers as well as the mobility on the labour market. As part of this effort a number of steps have been taken to standardize structures, procedures and quality measures used in eduction systems among the currently 46 member states.

The standardization of course description and program description documents[1] is one central element in the Bologna process. The documents contain descriptions of, among other things, the learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment methods of each course or program, so as to make them comparable across institutional as well as national borders. Course descriptions contain information which is important to both employers and educational institutions in their assessment of a student's or candidate's knowledge, skills, and general competence. They are important to academic and administrative staff as they constitute requirements for the teaching to be offered. For students they serve not only as a source of information, but also as a kind of contract between each individual student and his or her institution. In other words, course descriptions may also be seen to have a legal status.

Therefore, it is important for institutions to exert control over the contents of course descriptions. And since course descriptions change, it is important to be able to keep track of the changes. This paper describes aspects of an XML-based document management system, UnderDok, which has been developed in order to tackle some of these challenges. Other work in this area has focussed on development of general, cross-institutional and international ontologies and semantic web resources (see, for example, [Demartini et al. 2012], [Camarero et al. 2009], and [Amorim et al. 2006]). The aims of UnderDok are more modest, and limited to issues of institutional document management.

Editing cycle

Course descriptions go through a more or less continuous editing process involving a large number of persons with different roles in a particular cycle, ending up twice a year[2] in a formally authorized version which is legally binding for the institutions' relation to students admitted to the courses in question for the next two or three years. Thus, at any point of time, several different versions of a document describing the same course may apply for students enrolled in the course at different times.

Once authorized by the institution at the appropriate level, the course descriptions are submitted to a national database including all higher educational institutions in the country, thus containing thousands of course descriptions. In the national database each document is represented in the form of a record structured corresponding to the main document fields (to be described below), with only limited indication of lower-level structure.

The revision of each course description involves several people in different roles. Normally, a revision will be initiated and formulated by someone teaching the course, checked for adherence to formal requirements by administrative staff, reviewed by a program committee (or by several, if the course is part of several programs), and then submitted to the department, faculty or university board for authorization, depending on the kind of changes made. All of these steps may be repeated when required. It is vital that all changes relative to the last previously authorized version of the document are clearly indicated.

This process is mostly performed through the revision and exchange of Microsoft Word or other proprietary format documents, using a variety of text processing and change tracking tools. Once authorized, revisions are transferred to the national database by manual copy and paste. With no support for control of cross-references, vocabulary or standard phrases, and only weak and fragile change-tracking, the process is not only labor intensive, but also extremely error-prone.

Document structure

Course description documents have a fixed overall structure consisting of twenty-one main fields of text.[3] The contents of some of these fields is very specific (e.g. number of ECTS points,[4] degree level, teaching term), varying normally only in which of a limited set of values they may have. The contents of other fields is less specific, and yet other fields may contain free prose which will normally be unique to each course description. Thus, course descriptions are paradigmatic examples of semi-structured documents.

The documents frequently cross-reference each other, for example in referring to other, prerequisite or overlapping courses or programs.

Some of the fields are required to appear in several languages. For example, course titles should always be given in both official written forms of Norwegian as well as in English. Learning outcomes should always appear in both English and Norwegian. In addition, descriptions of courses taught in other languages than Norwegian will naturally appear in extenso in that other language.

The documents contain a large number of standard phrases, ranging from a few words to a few paragraphs which should be identical across several documents. Typical examples are information about general requirements, deadlines, formal rules etc. which are common to some, but not all, courses or programs.

In the course of the editing cycle it is also necessary to exert a more general control of vocabulary. This is so for two reasons. First, the fact that the documents are authored and edited by a large number of people easily leads to inconsistencies in style. Within each of the two official forms of Norwegian, there is ample room for choice between various forms of spelling and grammar, but mixing different choices from document to document, or even within the same document gives a very bad impression and reflects poorly on the institution. Similar considerations apply to the choice of different forms of other languages, such as British or American English. Second, the documents contain references to technical or semi-technical terminology which should be used consistently throughout the corpus. For example, if the terms "semester essay" and "supervised essay" refer to the same kinds of things, one should use only one of the terms.

Appendix A gives an example of the English version of a course description. Each of the twenty-one main fields of the document is indicated by a separate headline. (Curiously, even the text of headlines is sometimes subject to change.)

Overall design of UnderDok

UnderDok is an XML-based document system designed to support editing, quality assurance and change tracking of course descriptions as described above. It has also been an important design consideration that it should be suited for maintenance and adaptation to local requirements by staff with only minimal training in XML. In particular, the system provides means of letting users change schemas and influence the effects of stylesheets without requiring knowledge of XSLT or XML schema languages.

A main DTD called System.dtd specifies elements for declaring XML elements and attributes. An XML document, DTDkilde.xml, which conforms to the main DTD, defines the basic element structure that all documents have to conform to. Another XML document, AttOver.xml, declares attributes, legal attribute values and optional headlines for elements declared in DTDkilde.xml. A stylesheet, LagDtd.xsl, reads the two XML documents (DTDKilde.xml and AttOver.xml) and generates the local project DTD, UUI-dok.dtd). All course description documents as well as AttOver.xml are of types declared in UUI-dok.dtd.

Figure 1

Course descriptions are represented as XML document instances with twenty-one main elements, each element corresponding to one of the twenty-one main fields of course descriptions as described earlier. Appendix B contains the XML source for the document given in Appendix A.

Since course descriptions require only very trivial formatting, the output format is basic XHTML (without scripts, css or the like). A number of different stylesheets are available. What these stylesheets all have in common is that they collect data not only from the source document, but also from other course descriptions and from the file AttOver.xml. (In Appendix A, for example, all headlines and much of the prose comes from AttOver.xml, while the course titles in the section "Recommended previous knowledge" are extracted from other course descriptions.)

Figure 2

The advantage for users of UnderDok is that they can (indirectly) modify both the schema and the effect of stylesheets without (directly) modifying neither the schema nor the stylesheets, but only AttOver.xml, which is a plain XML document. Thus, no knowledge of schema or stylesheet languages is required.

Structured attributes

Consider the main element Undervisningstad. In the XML source (Appendix B), it reads:

<Undervisningstad Er="Bergen"/>
In Appendix A it is displayed as follows:

Figure 3

In UUI-dok.dtd, we find the following content model and attribute declaration:

    <!ELEMENT Undervisningstad  (Nor | Eng | (Nor,Eng))* >
    <!ENTITY % Undervisningstad-verdier " ( Bergen | Anna | Ingen ) " >   
    <!ATTLIST Er %Undervisningstad-verdier; #REQUIRED >

Assume that an encoder wants to replace "Bergen" with "Oslo". "Oslo" is not a legal value of @Er. The encoder has two options:

1) He may assign @Er the value "Anna" ("Other"), and supply "Oslo" as element content of both Nor and Eng:

<Undervisningstad Er="Anna">
  <Nor>Oslo</Nor>
  <Eng>Oslo</Eng>
</Undervisningstad>

This is an example of what we might, for the lack of a better name, call "attribute elements". Attribute elements have one and only one required attribute. In most occurrences the element will normally be empty. However, one of the legal values of the attribute may be used to indicate that it has content, and that the value of the attribute is given by the element content.

2) He may edit the relevant part of AttOver.exe, which reads:

<Element id="Undervisningstad">
    <Overskrift>
        <Nor>Undervisningsstad</Nor>
        <Eng>Place of Teaching</Eng>
    </Overskrift>
    <Attributter>
        <SpesialAttributter>
            <Verdi id="Bergen">
                <Nor>Bergen</Nor>
                <Eng>Bergen</Eng>
                <Kort/>
            </Verdi>
        </SpesialAttributter>
    </Attributter>
</Element>
    

, add the missing value:

<Element id="Undervisningstad">
    <Overskrift>
        <Nor>Undervisningsstad</Nor>
        <Eng>Place of Teaching</Eng>
    </Overskrift>
    <Attributter>
        <SpesialAttributter>
            <Verdi id="Bergen">
                <Nor>Bergen</Nor>
                <Eng>Bergen</Eng>
                <Kort/>
            </Verdi>
            <Verdi id="Oslo">
                <Nor>Oslo</Nor>
                <Eng>Oslo</Eng>
                <Kort/>
            </Verdi>
        </SpesialAttributter>
    </Attributter>
</Element>
    

and then run a standard procedure to update the project DTD, which will now look like this:

    <!ELEMENT Undervisningstad  (Nor | Eng | (Nor,Eng))* >
    <!ENTITY % Undervisningstad-verdier "( Bergen | Oslo | Anna | Ingen ) " >   
    <!ATTLIST Er %Undervisningstad-verdier; #REQUIRED >
This allows him to change the XML source document to read:

<Undervisningstad Er="Oslo"/>

While method 1) will have an effect only for the edited document, method 2) will make the value "Oslo" available for the @Er attribute of the Undervisningstad element in all documents.

Let us assume that the encoder also wants to change the headline "Place of Teaching" to read "Place of Instruction". This can be obtained by changing the Overskrift (Headline) element of AttOver.xmll, to read:

    <Overskrift>
        <Nor>Undervisningsstad</Nor>
        <Eng>Place of Instruction</Eng>
    </Overskrift>

The effect of this operation is that all documents will contain the headline "Place of Instruction" instead of "Place of Teaching". With the modifications described above, the source will now display as follows:

Figure 4

While new attribute values can either be specified in individual documents or be made available for all documents, changes to headlines will always affect all documents.

What has all this got to do with structured attributes? Strictly speaking, the legal values of @Er are initially the strings "Bergen", "Anna" ("Other"), and "Ingen" ("None"); and the only thing that happens in the course of the process described above is that the string "Oslo" is -- in a rather roundabout way, one might say -- added to the list of legal values.

This simple example may admittedly give an impression of much ado about (nearly) nothing. However, the Verdi elements may contain subelements, marked sections, comments, and any other construct which is allowed in the location from which they are referenced by an attribute element. Since AttOver.xml is itself of type UUI-dok.dtd, validation ensures that the inclusion of such structured content does not break the validity of the course description documents.

A somewhat more complex example may illustrate this. One of the values of the @Er attribute on the element Studierett, "Privatist", is specified as follows:

 <Element id="Studierett">
  <Overskrift>
   <Nor>Krav til studierett</Nor>
   <Eng>Access to the Course Unit</Eng>
  </Overskrift>
  <Attributter>
   <SpesialAttributter>
    <Verdi id="Ope">
     <Nor>Emnet er ope for studentar med studierett ved Universitetet i
      Bergen.</Nor>
     <Eng>The course is open to students admitted at the University of Bergen </Eng>
     <Kort/>
    </Verdi>
    <Verdi id="Privatist">
     <Norsk>
      <Avsnitt>Emnet er ope for studentar med studierett ved Universitetet i
       Bergen.</Avsnitt>
      <Avsnitt>Personar utan studierett ved UiB kan søkje til Det humanistiske
       fakultet om å få gå opp til eksamen i emnet. For meir informasjon, sjå: <Lenke>
        <Mål>http://www.uib.no/hf/utdanning/opptak/saerskilt-eksamen-ved-det-humanistiske-fakultet</Mål>
        <Anker>Særskilt eksamen ved Det humanistiske fakultet</Anker>
       </Lenke>
      </Avsnitt>
     </Norsk>
     <English>
      <Avsnitt>The course is open to students admitted at the University of
       Bergen.</Avsnitt>
      <Avsnitt>Persons who are not admitted as students at the University of
       Bergen may apply to the Faculty of humanities to be admitted to
       examination in the course. For more information, contact the <Lenke>
        <Mål>mailto:studierettleiar@hf.uib.no</Mål>
        <Anker>Student Advisor</Anker>
       </Lenke>
      </Avsnitt>
     </English>
     <Kort/>
    </Verdi>
   </SpesialAttributter>
  </Attributter>
 </Element> 

In this respect, attribute elements have much in common with XML entity references. There are two reason why UnderDok does not use entity references: First, the occurrence of entity references cannot be constrained with DTDs. Second, we have found that a need to transform documents from one XML form to another with XSLT arises from time to time. Although it is possible to do so without having entity references expanded, we found that strategy less convenient than using attribute elements.

It is clear enough, however, that although attribute elements may serve some, they cannot (at least not conveniently) serve all the purposes which have been called for under the name of structured attributes in the XML literature. For example, Stefan Ram [Ram 2004] suggests the following "hypothetical XML-variant":

< tower
  height = <meterlength>40</meterlength>
  Name   = "miller tower"
  />
Under the assumption that one wants to be able to allow any number as element content of the meterlength element in this example, attribute elements would be unsuited, as one would have to declare one attribute value for each number. Similar remarks go for the much more powerful structured attributes discussed by Michael Kay in [Kay 2013]. Attribute elements are primarily useful in cases where one wants to exert control over frequently recurring element content.

Revision control

Revision control is essential to the quality of the work described above. At every stage in a cycle one needs to know exactly which changes have been made relative to the last previously authorized version, rather than relative to the last previous edit session. For that reason, ordinary change tracking facilities as usually found in off- the shelf word processors, are not very well suited. Such programs usually record every change that has been made, including changes that have later been cancelled.

Furthermore, different changes are assigned different significance in the revision process -- revisions of certain fields require different treatment than others. For example, changes in ECTS points, assessment methods, or compulsory requirements require a more elaborate procedure than changing a typo in prose parts such as "Aim and Content". Finally, it is important to ensure that a change in the Norwegian text of a document is accompanied by a corresponding change in the English text, or vise versa.

As observed by many who has worked on the subject, representing change tracking in XML documents is a considerable technical challenge (see for example [La Fontaine 2014] or [Nordström 2014]). This was therefore also expected to be a particular difficulty with the UnderDok project, especially as there would be a need for representing changes in a format which was suitable for use also by readers without any knowledge of XML. Work was started to find suitable XML file comparison or change tracking tools, but halted when it was observed that change tracking on the XML documents was not really required.

The documents which are actually authorized in the institutions' work with course descriptions are not the XML document instances, but the XHTML versions as they appear on paper or on the screens of various kinds of devices. The XML versions contain no information which is relevant to the revision and authorization process which is not also available in the XHTML output. And since that output contains only standard and very basic, static XHTML without scripts or other factors which might complicate issues, it is considered stable enough to serve as an archival format.

Tools for comparing XHTML files are readily available. Even so, a customized file comparison tool was developed in order to cater for the more specialized needs of this project, such as distinguishing between differences in particular parts of the documents, and aligning changes in different language versions of the same document.

Note on the metaphysics of course descriptions

It is sometimes claimed that one of the virtues of generalized declarative markup is that it makes the underlying structure and meaning of documents explicit. Presentational markup is claimed to be more prone to ambiguity and less suited for rigorous text processing because it merely represents visual cues tied to typographical conventions, the understanding of which is contextually and culturally determined.

Can the observations above, which lead to the adoption of XHTML rather than XML as the archival format for authorized versions of documents, be taken as evidence that XHTML is a more adequate representation of the structure and contents of documents? Yes and no.

Consider the following snippet from Appendix A:

Figure 5

The UnderDok XHTML representation looks like this:
<h3>Contact Information</h3>
<p>Department of Philosophy</p>
<p>Email: studierettleiar@fof.uib.no</p>
while the UnderDok XML representation looks like this:
<Kontaktinfo Er="FoF-kontakt"/>

The relationship between the snippet and the XHTML representation should, even without natural language documentation, not be too hard to figure out. In order to figure out the relationship to the UnderDok representation, however, one would need to consult, pace extensive natural language documentation, at least the following resources:

From System.dtd:

<!ELEMENT InnholdsElement (#PCDATA) >
<!ATTLIST InnholdsElement GI CDATA #REQUIRED >
from DtdKilde.xml:
<InnholdsElement GI="Kontaktinfo">(Norsk | English | (Norsk,English))? </InnholdsElement>
from UUI-dok.dtd:
  <!ELEMENT Kontaktinfo  (Norsk | English | (Norsk,English))?  >
  <!ENTITY % Kontaktinfo-verdier " ( FoF-kontakt | Anna | Ingen ) " >   
  <!ATTLIST Kontktinfo Er %Kontaktinfo-verdier; #REQUIRED >
from AttOver.xml:
    <Element id="Kontaktinfo">
        <Overskrift>
            <Nor>Kontaktinformasjon</Nor>
            <Eng>Contact Information</Eng>
        </Overskrift>
        <Attributter>
            <SpesialAttributter>
                <Verdi id="FoF-kontakt">
                    <Norsk>
                        <Avsnitt>Institutt for filosofi og førstesemesterstudier</Avsnitt>
                        <Avsnitt>E-post: studierettleiar@fof.uib.no</Avsnitt>
                    </Norsk>
                    <English>
                        <Avsnitt>Department of Philosophy</Avsnitt>
                        <Avsnitt>Email: studierettleiar@fof.uib.no</Avsnitt>
                    </English>
                    <Kort/>
                </Verdi>
            </SpesialAttributter>
        </Attributter>
    </Element>
and finally from Generelt.xsl (imported by Std.xsl):
    <xsl:template name="Overskrift-tekst">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="document('AttOver.xml')//*[@id=(name(current()))]/Overskrift"/>
    </xsl:template>
.
.
.
    <xsl:template name="Attributt">
        <xsl:if test="not((@Er='Ingen') or (@Er='Anna'))">
            <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="((@Er='Anna') and ($Språk='Kort'))">
                <xsl:text>[...]</xsl:text>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:apply-templates select="document('AttOver.xml')
                    //*/Element[@id=(name(current()))]             //*[@id=(current()/@Er)]"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>

Compared to the UnderDok XML representation, the XHTML representation certainly seems to be at a lower level of indirection. Even so, they may clearly be said to represent the same document.

In view of this, the UnderDok XML and XHTML representations may look most of all like parts of equivalent tools for the production of the object that users of the document relate to.

The authoritative version of a document in the pre-digital age consisted in a written or printed document, which is an easily identifiable and (relatively) stable unique physical object which does not rely on sophisticated technology for consultation. Its authority was granted by its role in cultural and social practices, which to a large extent relied on its properties as a physical object.

The course descriptions discussed here, however, which institutions produce and convey to their students and which both parties are legally bound by, are neither paper documents, nor XML or XHTML representations. They are the transient visual objects occurring under specific conditions, in certain situations and contexts. These objects too can only be granted authority by cultural and social practices, which will naturally favour considerations of ease of identification and reidentification.

So the reason for choosing XHTML as an archival format is not that XHTML constitutes a more faithful representation of the documents than XML, but simply that XHTML is regarded as the format that is easiest to access, which is most likely to give sufficiently similar presentations across different hardware and software platforms, and which is also assumed to have acceptable archival life. All these assumptions (perhaps especially the latter) may of course be wrong.

Appendix A. English Version of a Course Description

This appendix presents the full English version of the course description FIL124.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Appendix B. XML Source for a Course Description

This appendix presents the XML source for the course description FIL124.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../System/Std.xsl"?>
<!DOCTYPE Emne
  SYSTEM "../System/UUI-dok.dtd">
<Emne>
 <Emneansvarleg>Skilleås</Emneansvarleg>
 <Emnenamn>
  <Nynorsk>Introduksjon til praktisk filosofi</Nynorsk>
  <Bokmål>Introduksjon til praktisk filosofi</Bokmål>
  <Engelsk>Introduction to practical philosophy</Engelsk>
  <KortNamn>Praktisk filosofi</KortNamn>
 </Emnenamn>
 <Studiepoeng Er="10"/>
 <Kode>
  <E id="FIL124"/>
 </Kode>
 <Studienivå Er="Bachelor-nivå"/>
 <Institutt Er="FoF"/>
 <Studierett Er="Ope"/>
 <Undervisningsspråk Er="Norsk-eller-engelsk"/>
 <MålOgInnhald>
  <Norsk>
   <Avsnitt>Filosofi blir ofte delt inn i på den eine sida praktisk og den andre
    sida teoretisk filosofi. Til praktisk filosofi reknar ein gjerne slike
    område som etikk, estetikk, politisk og sosial filosofi, rettsfilosofi,
    religionsfilosofi, feministisk filosofi, handlingsteori og verditeori. Men
    skiljet mellom praktisk og teoretisk filosofi er ikkje alltid skarpt, det er
    heller ikkje uomstritt, og problemstillingar innanfor praktisk filosofi er
    ofte relevante for spørsmål i teoretisk filosofi. Difor er det viktig for
    alle som studerer filosofi å ha kjennskap til praktisk filosofi, også om dei
    i det vidare studiet vel å konsentrere seg om teoretisk filosofi. </Avsnitt>
   <Avsnitt><E id="FIL124"/> skal gje studentane eit oversyn over viktige
    grunnomgrep, argument og posisjonar i praktisk filosofi. Hovudvekta ligg på
    tema i samtidsfilosofien, men det vil ofte være aktuelt å ta utgangspunkt i
    filosofiske verk og posisjonar frå eldre tider. Etter fullført emne skal
    studentane vere i stand til å formidle sentrale teoriar og problemstillingar
    innanfor praktisk filosofi og sjå relevansen av desse i andre samanhengar.
    Emnet skal gi grunnlag for vidare studiar i filosofi på
    bachelornivå.</Avsnitt>
  </Norsk>
  <English>
   <Avsnitt>Philosophy is often divided into practical philosophy and
    theoretical philosophy. Practical philosophy includes such areas as ethics,
    aesthetics, political and social philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy
    of religion, feminist philosophy, action theory and value theory. The
    distinction between practical philosophy and theoretical philosophy is,
    however, not always clear and is a matter of debate, and problems within
    practical philosophy are often relevant for questions in theoretical
    philosophy. It is therefore important that all who study philosophy have a
    solid knowledge of practical philosophy, even if they in their advanced
    studies choose to concentrate on theoretical philosophy.</Avsnitt>
   <Avsnitt><E id="FIL124"/> aims to give students an overview of important
    basic concepts, arguments and positions in practical philosophy. Although
    the main emphasis is on subjects from contemporary philosophy, it will often
    be appropriate to start with philosophical works and positions from previous
    time periods. After completion of the course, the students should be able to
    demonstrate insight into central theories and problems from within practical
    philosophy and to see their relevance and applicability for other contexts.
    The course provides a foundation for further studies in philosophy at the
    Bachelor level.</Avsnitt>
  </English>
 </MålOgInnhald>
 <Utbyte>
  <Kunnskap>
   <Norsk>
    <Avsnitt>Etter fullført emne skal studentane ha god kjennskap til viktige
     grunnomgrep, argument og posisjonar i praktisk filosofi. </Avsnitt>
   </Norsk>
   <English>
    <Avsnitt>After taking the course, the students should have a good knowledge
     of important basic concepts, arguments and positions in practical
     philosophy.</Avsnitt>
   </English>
  </Kunnskap>
  <Dugleik>
   <Norsk>
    <Avsnitt>Studentane skal kunne kjenne att og formidle innsikt i
     grunnleggjande problemstillingar og argument innan praktisk filosofi i
     ulike samanhengar.</Avsnitt>
   </Norsk>
   <English>
    <Avsnitt>After taking the course, the students should be able to recognize
     and demonstrate insight into basic problems and arguments within practical
     philosophy in different contexts. </Avsnitt>
   </English>
  </Dugleik>
  <Kompetanse>
   <Norsk>
    <Avsnitt>Emnet gir grunnlag for vidare studiar med sikte på bachelorgrad med
     spesialisering i filosofi. I kombinasjon med andre emne og fag kan det
     inngå i ei utdanning som kvalifiserer for undervisning i filosofi i
     ungdomsskule eller videregåande skule. Emnet kan også vere eigna som støtte
     til fordjuping i grunnlagsspørsmål i samband med studiet av andre fag.
    </Avsnitt>
   </Norsk>
   <English>
    <Avsnitt>The course provides a basis for further studies with the aim of
     attaining a B.A. in philosophy. In combination with other subjects and
     disciplines it can form part of an education which qualifies for teaching
     philosophy in high schools. The course can also serve as support for a
     deeper understanding of basic questions in connection with the study of
     other disciplines.</Avsnitt>
   </English>
  </Kompetanse>
 </Utbyte>
 <Overlapp/>
 <KravTilForkunnskapar Er="Ingen"/>
 <TilråddeForkunnskapar>
  <AnnaUtdanning Er="Førstesemester"/>
  <Framandspråk Er="Engelsk-kunnskapar"/>
  <Nor><E id="FIL124"/> bør takast i samband med eller etter <E id="FIL120"/> og
    <E id="FIL121"/></Nor>
  <Eng>Students are advised to take <E id="FIL124"/> in parallel with or after
    <E id="FIL120"/> and <E id="FIL121"/></Eng>
 </TilråddeForkunnskapar>
 <Undervisningsomfang>
  <Undervisningsform Er="Førelesingar-og-seminar-oppmøtekrav-100-nivå"/>
 </Undervisningsomfang>
 <Vurderingsform>
  <Eksamen Er="Heimeeksamen-4-dagar-3-5000-ord"/>
  <Eksamensemester Er="KvartSemester"/>
  <Godkjenning Er="Arbeidskrav-godkjende-før-eksamen"/>
  <SemesterForGodkjenning Er="Arbeidskrav-godkjende-i-semester-med-undervising"
  />
 </Vurderingsform>
 <Arbeidskrav>
  <MunnlegFramlegg Er="Munnleg-gruppe"/>
  <Deltaking Er="Delta-på-to-tredelar-av-seminara"/>
  <Generelt Er="Arbeidskrav-gyldige-tre-semester"/>
 </Arbeidskrav>
 <Læremiddel>
  <Norsk>
   <Avsnitt>Pensum er innføringsverk og utvalde tekstutdrag.</Avsnitt>
  </Norsk>
  <English>
   <Avsnitt>The reading list includes an introductory text book and selected
    excerpts from other texts.</Avsnitt>
  </English>
 </Læremiddel>
 <Karakterskala Er="A-F"/>
 <Undervisningssemester Er="Haust"/>
 <Undervisningstad Er="Bergen"/>
 <Emneevaluering Er="Jamne-mellomrom"/>
 <Kontaktinfo Er="FoF-kontakt"/>
</Emne>
  

References

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[1] Program descriptions describe entire study programs, for example bachelor or master programs. Course descriptions describe smaller units of study which are typically parts of such programs, variously referred to by different institutions as "courses", "modules", "units", "items" or the like. For short, I refer to both course descriptions and program descriptions as "course descriptions".

[2] This account describes the editing cycle at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bergen. Details may vary from institution to institution.

[3] Although course descriptions are standardized, details of implementation of the standard may vary between countries and institutions. In the following, I describe the documents' structure and editing cycle as I know them from my own institution.

[4] European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) is a standard for assigning credit points to studies. One year of full-time studies counts as 60 ECTS points.

Author's keywords for this paper:
Structured attributes; Change tracking; Document ontology

Claus Huitfeldt

Associate Professor

University of Bergen

Claus Huitfeldt is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bergen, Norway. He was founding Director (1990-2000) of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, for which he developed the text encoding system MECS as well as the editorial methods for the publication of Wittgenstein's Nachlass - The Bergen Electronic Edition (Oxford University Press, 2000).