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Suddenly many people are talking about learning technology standards. This may conjure up images of technology, enforced learning with thinking caps connected to voltmeters. Nothing could be further from the current movement's goal. Its quest is interoperability. Vendors, academics, government agencies, industry consortia are all collaborating to define ways that will enable learning technology products to inter-operate. Some are motivated by altruism, some by good business sense. Learners everywhere can expect to benefit.
Interoperability concerns are nothing new. Work began a decade ago in the commercial aviation industry where the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) forum pioneered many relevant specifications. The recent general enthusiasm has a familiar culprit -- the Web. Accompanying the transition of learning technology from LAN or CD-ROM onto the Web is the transition from a closed to an open environment. In a closed environment proprietary solutions were acceptable, on the Web they are not. It's as simple as that.
During the past year, a handful of learning technology initiatives have emerged as major stakeholders in developing open specifications and have established relations with each other. Each has its own special excellence to contribute and idiosyncratic challenges to working with others. Hanging over everyone's head is the shared predicament of uncertainty, rapid change, and the impossibility of solving the problem alone. In response, an overarching sense of community has emerged.
With community come norms. The cardinal norm is collaboration. There is a shared expectation that initiatives will seek out ways to collaborate with each other. A related norm is convergence. Often initiatives address similar problems in different ways. There is a shared expectation that these initiatives will negotiate a convergent solution rather than inflexibly adhering to their own approach. A final norm relates to the "s" word -- standardization.
Most learning technology initiatives have special membership requirements that enable them to quickly develop important specifications. Although frequently misunderstood, a specification is not a standard. Standards can only come from accredited standards bodies that follow a special, open process. The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (IEEE LTSC) is qualitatively different from other initiatives because it is an accredited standards body. There is a shared expectation that learning technology initiatives will submit mature specifications to the IEEE LTSC for standardization.
Here is an overview of the major initiatives.
AICC
The Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) is an open forum of training professionals that develops guidelines for interoperable learning technology. During the past five years the AICC's Computer-Managed Instruction (CMI) specification has become established as the most comprehensive CMI specification supported by products and in global operational use. The AICC has submitted its CMI specification to the IEEE LTSC for standardization.
AICC CMI defines the tracking data exchanged between management systems and interactive lessons. It also defines an interchange format for course structure so that entire courses can be exchanged between management systems made by different vendors.
The EDUCOM Instructional Management Systems Project (IMS) is a consortium of learning institutions and vendors defining a comprehensive architecture for online learning. The architecture encompasses platform independent interfaces for metadata, aggregated content, management services, user profiles and external services such as databases. The IMS architecture anticipates the widespread availability of emerging technologies such as XML and provides an excellent vision for the future of online learning. Recently IMS, in conjunction with the European ARIADNE project, submitted a metadata specification to the IEEE LTSC for standardization. Notable is the IMS metadata specification that appears to be ready to harvest. Metadata associates descriptive information, such as author, title or subject, with content so that it can be easily located and appropriately used.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) charts the future course of general purpose Web technologies such as HTML and XML. While the W3C does not focus on learning, it does define basic technologies that are assumed by many learning technology specifications.
The Computer Education Management Association is a forum whose members are education managers from companies manufacturing hardware or software products. CEdMA provides a forum to discuss training and business issues of common interest to technology vendors. It is well positioned to accelerate vendor awareness and adoption of learning technology standards.
ADL
The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative fosters collaborations between government, academia and industry to accelerate the advent of effective online learning. The initiative began in November 1997 under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Defense and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (IEEE LTSC) is an open, accredited standards body tasked to develop "real", de jure learning technology standards. Consortia such as IMS and the AICC increasingly acknowledge the IEEE LTSC as the single forum for turning specifications into standards.
Both the AICC and IMS initiatives are furthering their goals in the IEEE LTSC. The AICC has submitted its CMI specification and IMS has jointly submitted a metadata specification with the European ARIADNE Project.
The Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe (ARIADNE) is a research and technology development (RTD) project pertaining to the "Telematics for Education and Training" sector of the 4th Framework Program for R&D of the European Union. The project focuses on the development of tools and methodologies for producing, managing and reusing computer-based pedagogical elements and telematics supported training curricula. Validation of the project's concepts is currently taking place in various academic and corporate sites across Europe.
Since December 1997, ARIADNE has been involved in standardization activities performed under the auspices of the IEEE LTSC Committee. In this context, ARIADNE has agreed to collaborate with the US funded Educause IMS Project, in view of reaching as quickly as possible an Educational Metadata set that would be widely acceptable. ARIADNE is also active in the standardization activities initiated by the European Commission, scheduled to take place under the auspices of the CEN/CENELEC/ETSI. Work in this forum will initially concentrate on the "localization" of the mainly English language results obtained so far at the IEEE.
The Metadata for Multimedia Information Workshop provides an open forum for participation of representatives of interested industrial players and research projects, in order to generate recommendations on metadata for multimedia information for enterprises from both the commercial and public sectors. Specifically, MMI gathers information on metadata activities of European projects and industry, plus international activities; analyses current work including identification of overlaps, gaps and where re-use should be encouraged;to proactively disseminate information to European industry, projects and programmes; encourages the dissemination of information to international industry, projects and programmes; generates recommendations, advice and workshop agreements.
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/MMI/Default.htm
Most of the text here comes directly from a document entitled �The Emergence of Open Standards for Learning Technology� written by Tyde Richards. He wrote it for the Macromedia Interactive Learning Division on September 2, 1998. Click here to download original text in Microsoft Word format (34K).
�The quest for open learning technology standards is a global, communal effort. Macromedia welcomes the opportunity to educate their customers about this movement, to represent their interests, and to assist them in becoming involved.�
