To appear in proceedings of ED-Media 2000 published by the Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education, edited by Jacqueline Bourdeau and Rachelle Heller. Do not reproduce or distribute without permission.
Report on Learning Technology Standards Robby Robson Department of Mathematics Oregon State University United States
[email protected]
Abstract. Metadata and interoperability standards are essential to support the educational and commercial effectiveness of learning technology. A number of related and cooperating organizations are working to develop such standards. This paper briefly explains why such standards are important, who is involved in their development, and what standards are being developed. The penultimate section discusses the standards process in general and points out that learning technology standards are attempting to create new infrastructure rather than codify or standardize existing practice.
Introduction This paper reports on activities in two areas: metadata and interoperability standards. Its purpose is to give a snapshot of the players and recent developments in these areas and to make some general comments on the standardization process. Its focus is work being done by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC, 2000) and related efforts.
Metadata and Interoperability Standards Metadata is data about data. In this paper metadata refers specifically to relatively small amounts of descriptive data that capture essential aspects of a learning resource. An example from the print world is the information in a library card catalogue. The title, author, publisher, publication data, copyright, subject classification, and call number are metadata that cover important aspects of a book or document, although pedagogical information is largely missing. The most prominent examples of metadata standards in the educational arena are Dublin Core metadata and the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) that is being developed by the IEEE learning technology standards committee. Dublin Core metadata consists of fifteen core elements that as yet do not address educational issues. This paper will concentrate on developments in LOM and standards related to it. Interoperability standards are standards that permit different systems or different parts of the same system to work together. Protocols such as Internet Protocol (IP) and standards such as Postscript may be thought of as interoperability standards. IP allows diverse systems to exchange information by standardizing its encoding for transmission. Postscript provides an abstract and device-independent language for describing twodimensional print and graphics; documents described in Postscript can be rendered on any device that can interpret the language. An analogous effort in learning technology is a standardized scheme for describing the quizzes and tests commonly used by learning management systems and other online testing software. A quiz described in this fashion could be exported and imported by any compliant systems. Metadata can in many instances play the role of interoperability standards. The MIME type (Hood, 1998) is a piece of metadata associated with data delivered over the Internet that tells the recipient the general nature of the data and what software is needed to process it. As such, the MIME type enables interoperability. Descriptions of the subject matter, intended grade level, student learning outcomes, and other educationally relevant data associated with a learning resource also serve as interoperability standards since they can potentially assist in assembling a collection of resources into a single cohesive unit such as a lesson or course.
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To appear in proceedings of ED-Media 2000 published by the Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education, edited by Jacqueline Bourdeau and Rachelle Heller. Do not reproduce or distribute without permission.
Organizations Involved in Learning Technology Standards A number of organizations are involved in producing metadata and interoperability standards specifically for instructional technology. A list of the major ones includes: •
ADL: The Advanced Distributed Learning Network was formed in 1997 by the United States Department of Defense and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to enable anywhere/anytime access to quality learning.
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AICC. The Airline Industry CBT Consortium was formed in 1988 to standardize hardware used for training in the airline industry. Since that time it moved into the standardization of Learning Management Systems as well. (AICC, 2000)
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ARIADNE. The Alliance for Remote Instructional and Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe started in January of 1996 and focuses on the development of tools and protocols that support the production, storage, delivery, and reuse of curricular components used in educational training (ARIADNE, 2000).
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CEN/ISSS WS-LT. The CEN (European commission for standardization) Information Society Standardization System started a Learning Technologies Workshop in March, 1999, with the goal of supporting the learning technology market and ultimately the European information society with standards-oriented services and products (CEN/ISSS, 2000).
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DUBLIN CORE: The Dublin Core metadata initiative began in May, 1995, as a metadata workshop sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Dublin, Ohio (Weibel et. al., 1995). The Dublin core has produced a stable set of 15 elements that support the storage and retrieval of general online resources. An education working group was started in August, 1999, to investigate extensions for pedagogic resources (Dublin Core, 2000).
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GESTALT: Getting Educational Systems Talking Across Leading Edge Technologies is a European Community project involving eight academic and corporate partners. Projects include metadata and architectures for learning technologies.
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IEEE LTSC: The Learning Technology Standards Committee of the IEEE was formed in 1996 and is in the process of developing standards for a variety of aspects of learning technology divided into five groups: General, Learner-related, Content-related, Data and Metadata, and Management Systems and Applications. Participation is open to any individual or organization.
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IMS: The IMS project is a coalition of corporate, academic, and government partners that grew out of the EduCom National Learning Infrastructure Initiative in 1997. Originally entitled the “Instructional Management System project,” IMS has the vision of creating a comprehensive open architecture and infrastructure for learning technologies (IMS, 2000).
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ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36: The International Standards Organization and International Engineering Consortium Joint Technology Committee (ISO/IEC JTC1) has started a Standards Committee (SC36) on Information Technology for Learning, Education, and Training. The first plenary session was held in March 2000 (JTC1/SC36, 2000).
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PROMETEUS: The PROMETEUS (PROmoting Multimedia Access to Education and Training in EUropean Society) initiative was started in late 1998 to assert Europe’s role in learning technologies and also to protect educational and multicultural values central to the European culture. PROMETEUS members sign a Memorandum of Understanding committing to the goals of PROMETEUS, among which is interoperability. PROMETEUS supports several study groups on metadata an interoperability standards. Members of PROMETEUS include a range of corporate and academic institutions.
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Learning Object Metadata Learning object metadata is important for the discovery and re-use of educational objects. One of the exciting developments of the last year and a half is the agreement among many groups developing learning object metadata (IMS, ARIADNE, GESTALT, AICC) that they would use the IEEE LTSC as the vehicle for standardization. All four of these organizations have actively participated in the development of LOM, as the IEEE LTSC metadata standard is called. Conversely, IMS meta-data Version 1.0 is based on LOM 3.5, which was the IEEE metadata working group document prior to September 1999, and similar statements apply to metadata implementations by ARIADNE and GESTALT.
The LOM Data Model The approach being taken to LOM is based on an extensible structured data model. Mathematically, this model is a tree. The object being described is the root. The leaves contain data. Every other node is labeled as an element. At any node in the tree, the path from the root to that node determines what is being described and the entire sub-tree descending from that node is the description.
FIGURE I. Part of a LOM Tree For example, in Figure I the path to the node [Contribute] proceeds from the root object through the path LifeCycle - Create - Contribute. This means that the node is describing a contribution to the creation of the object being described. The sub-tree emanating from Contribute has two elements, Person and Role and terminates in leaves containing the data Judy Jones and Author. Together (but not separately!) these specify that the contribution being described is that of an author named Judy Jones.
LOM Bindings As it stands, LOM specifies three things: • • •
A set of metadata elements and their meanings (semantics) Relationships among the elements (structure) The type and size of data permissible in each leaf (data types)
This is abstract and does not dictate how LOM should be implemented in a real learning environment or digital library. To do this, one needs a binding of LOM, meaning a concrete data structure that meets the LOM specifications. When existing projects, such as ARIADNE, GESTALT, or CMU Online (CMU, 2000) use learning object metadata, they must store, transmit, and receive the metadata. In doing so, they create bindings of LOM in the form of XML DTD’s or database designs. These bindings are not unique, which makes the bindings themselves candidates for standardization. A recent move on the part of the IEEE LTSC was to separate LOM as defined by the three bullet points above from any of its bindings and to view bindings as separate projects.
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Interoperability Standards From an interoperability perspective, it is important to have a standardized definition of the components and architecture of learning systems, as well as standardized interfaces among them. Having this would address at least three major frustrations: •
Content developed for one Learning Management System is not usable in another except to the extent that raw text, HTML, graphics, or applets can be extracted and uploaded.
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Large consumers of training and educational materials (e.g., the Department of Defense) are limited in their ability to specify compliance for procurement purposes.
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If content can be developed once and used many times, its value is greatly enhanced. This increases the incentive to develop educationally effective and professional quality learning materials and is a precondition for a thriving market – a precondition that has been lacking and that has contributed to the reluctance of content producers to commit large development budgets to online educational materials.
Work on interoperability standards is being done by the IEEE LTSC, the IMS project, ADL, the AICC, and various European groups. Many of the people and organizations involved are active in two or more organizations,. Each group is really part of a larger community effort but has its own emphasis. The AICC is focused on a single industry. The ADL is focused on broad applications and early on designated the IMS project as the means through which at least metadata specifications would be developed. The ADL has also set up a “CO-lab” program and is working closely with corporate and academic institutions. The IEEE LTSC is working towards official standardization, which is a difficult and often political process about which more will be said later. The ISO/IEC SC36 that has just started will also work towards standardization, while the various ARIADNE is focused on creating and maintaining a knowledge pool of learner resources, PROMETEUS is concerned with European social and political issues, GESTALT has developed a working implementation, and CEN/ISSS is concerned with standardization and dissemination in Europe.
Specific Interoperabi lity Projects Among the many pieces that comprise interoperability, the potentially easiest to handle is that for questions and tests. The IMS project has released a first version of a Question and Test Interoperability structure, together with and XML binding. The AICC has done a LTSC work on Computer Managed Instruction as well as SCORM – Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model – released on January 31, 2000, by the ADL. The people responsible for SCORM are from the DOD, the AICC, the IMS, and the IEEE LTSC Computer Managed Instruction working group. The press release (SCORM, 2000) indicates that the University of Wisconsin System, Wisconsin Technical College System and Carnegie Mellon University are academic partners. Another area in which progress is being made is that of learner profiling. This includes not only personal information about the user of a learning technology but might also reference competencies that a learner has demonstrated or that accrue to the learner as the result of a particular experience. Learner profiling is educationally important in that it is necessary to implement any sort of situated learning. In other words, the background, context, and goals of the learner can and should influence the choice and method of learning experience. Learner profiles also include electronic transcripts (Roberts & Robson, 1997). But learner profiling touches on numerous institutions external to technology and education – such as privacy protection and legal access to information. Identifying the learner in a typical academic or corporate training setting also begs for interoperability with information systems that handle student/employee data and records.
Schools Interoperability Framework The combination of these external influences makes the standardization of learner profiling a high stakes and non-trivial matter. To underscore this, Microsoft Corporation started an initiative called the Schools
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Interoperability Framework (SIF) that has been taken over by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA, 2000) and is being developed there as an open standard. The SIF Web Page (SIF, 2000) explains SIF as The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is an industry initiative to develop an open specification for ensuring that K-12 instructional and administrative software applications work together more effectively. SIF is not a product, but rather an industry-supported technical blueprint for K-12 software that will enable diverse applications to interact and share data seamlessly; now and in the future.
The version 1.0 specification was released at the end of March 2000. Although SIF is intended for K12 use only, it should be observed that it is in some sense in competition with the work being done by IMS, of which Microsoft is a member. SIF is an XML application but is educationally very conservative and primarily codifies an American K-12 system based on letter grades and seat time, not content standards or outcomes. SIF also goes beyond the work of being discussed in this paper since it includes specifications for the food service, HR/financials, and transportation.
Comments on Standardization Until now an emphasis has been placed on what is to be gained by standardization. However, there are some negative sides as well. The industrial standardization process has traditionally been one of fossilization whereby established (and possibly competing) industry practices were made uniform. As the pace of change in technology has picked up, the time lag between the establishment and the institutionalization of practice through the standards process has perhaps lessened, but the standardization process has remained driven by that which exists as opposed to that which is envisioned. The process can be highly charged since choices made by standards bodies can pick winners and losers and affect billions of dollars worth of commerce, but having standards is also a condition for accelerated growth of an industry sector (Shapiro & Varian, 1998). In the educational arena, content standards have traditional been instruments of social change. This was true of Carnegie units and standardized tests and remains true of the current educational reform movement. Educational standards are typically developed in response to failures of existing institutions and in the hopes that the new institutions introduced by the standards will be meet with more success. Thus it may be said that educational and technology standards live on opposite sides of the line between fossilization and innovation. Learning technology standards have purposefully crossed over the line from fossilization to innovation. The goal of the IMS project, and indeed its parent, the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, was to develop non-existent infrastructure that its architects envisioned as being needed in the near future. The same applies to ADL. Although the IEEE LTSC is more constrained, its standards also have an anticipatory quality. This choice of modus operandi was made quite intentionally at the beginning of the work Learning technology standards are consequently a bold experiment in creating standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, 2000) has done much the same thing with the development of its recommendations (the equivalent of standards), but W3C recommendations operate for the most part on the level of communication protocols as opposed to applications. A clear danger with developing anticipatory standards for learning technology is that premature standardization can cut off desirable future development paths. If, for example, the model of learning systems being promoted by SCORM dictates industry practice, then new models will be harder to develop. Since pedagogic innovation is slower paced and much less of a science than technological innovation, premature standardization could lead to the tragic result that truly better ways to teach and learn are nipped in the bud because they were not anticipated. Another difficulty with the approach being taken by the standards community in learning technology is one illustrated by the emergence of SIF and the exaggerated claims made by academically oriented Learning Management System companies. In practice, formal standards do not carry as much weight as de facto standards, and the information industry is not in the habit of waiting for formal standards. However, for sales and marketing purposes it is often convenient, if not necessary, to claim conformance to formal standards. The learning management system vendors have been claiming IMS compliance for well over a year, despite the fact that there is no clear definition of what this compliance means. If this situation persists, it could devalue all formal learning technology standards and leave the industry with a set of competing de facto standards. The result would be a lack of interoperability and a lot of finger pointing.
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Conclusion Only time will adjudicate the success of learning technology standards. It seems clear that they are badly needed and that there is a hard-working community making good progress on their development. Anyone interested in developing learning technologies, especially online and networked learning technologies, should pay close attention and, if possible, participate in this process. This paper lists a number of references to relevant organizations and is meant to be a starting point for this type of involvement. It remains to be seen whether the attempt to use the standardization process as a means to anticipate and jump-start the learning technology industry will be successful. It could spur growth yet not find acceptance for the standards currently being produced and thus succeed by failing. But given the participation of the major technology companies, government agencies, and academic institutions, there is a good chance that the combination of the partners listed earlier will succeed in creating accepted standards and that the ultimate question will be how to adjust and revise these in response to innovative products and pedagogy.
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