As a general definition, paradata are usage data about learning resources that include not just quantitative metrics (e.g., how many times a piece of content was accessed), but also pedagogic context, as inferred through the actions of educators and learners.
Paradata may be operationalized as a specific type of metadata, however the construct differs from traditional descriptive metadata that classify the properties of the learning resource itself, and instead involves the capture—and open resharing—of in situ information about online users’ actions related to the resource.
Paradata may include individual or aggregate user interactions such as viewing, downloading, sharing to other users, favoriting, and embedding reusable content into derivative works, as well as contextualizing activities such as aligning content to educational standards, adding tags, and incorporating resources into curriculum.
[9] In February 2011, NSDL released an open source XML paradata framework versioned as NSDL comm_para1.0,[10] the structure of which parallels similar schemas for metadata so that it can interoperate with Dublin Core based schemas including nsdl-dc.
As an example, OpenEd, Google, Microsoft and others would push data on how many times an educational video was used by teachers, to help rank them by popularity.