Organizations

IMS - The IMS Global Learning Consortium is an independent organisation that is leading the way in developing learning technology specifications and is the most relevant to UKeU. As the direction IMS takes is membership driven it is crucial that UKeU is seen to be an active member both in its own right and supportive of the wider UK HE/FE involvement through JISC and CETIS.

ADL/SCORM - ADLNet (Advanced Distributed Learning Network) is US Government/military sponsored initiative. Its aim is to “accelerate large- scale development of dynamic and cost-effective learning software and to stimulate an efficient market for these products in order to meet the education and training needs of the military and the nation's workforce of the future.” The most significant output to date from ADL has been its Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), a specification for Reusable Learning Objects. Although developed within the US military community, SCORM is now being actively adopted by many training and education vendors, including UKeU.

CEN/ISSS - In 1999, the European Commission gave CEN/ISSS (the Centre de European Normalisation/ the Information Society Standardisation System) a remit to identify and define learning technology standards requirements to support their wider eEurope strategy.

Open Knowledge Initiative - (OKI) OKI is a collaborative project involving a number of prominent American universities. It is defining open architectural specifications to support the development of educational software. Its architecture will provide a modular and extensible development platform for building both traditional and innovative educational applications while helping institutions exploit existing infrastructure. OKI is designed for broad adoption in the university setting and will simplify the assembly, delivery and access to educational technology resources, while creating a large collaborative community.

IEEE LTSC - The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Learning Technology Sub-Committee (IEEE LTSC) consists of a number of individual working groups defining formal learning technology standards.

ISO - The International Standards Organisation (ISO) is a network of national standards institutes and works in partnership with international bodies, governments and industry to develop international learning technology standards.

BSI - The British Standards Institute is the UK's formal standards body and has set up a committee to look at UK specific requirements in the field of learning technology standards.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - (DCMI) The DCMI is an open user led forum that is developing a metadata standard for the common description of online information resources.

WAI and other accessibility initiatives There are a number of major initiatives currently addressing accessibility issues both in the US and Europe. In the US most accessibility work is around W3C's (WWW Consortium) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which is working on providing guidelines to make the WWW more accessible to people with disabilities. In Europe there is an ongoing program under the European Commission's eEurope programme that has adopted the W3C WAI guidelines. There is also a programme of work under CEN-ISSS called Design for Accessibility that is attempting to build a comprehensive information resource for accessibility practitioners. In addition IMS, which has been looking at accessibility as one of its specifications, is now working to ensure that accessibility issues are addressed in all specifications. for design and quality assurance. The result is high quality eCourseware which is well adapted for online learning, and which is delivered in a way that exploits the potential of the latest technology to create a more personal, exciting and involving learner experience.

Page content partially from: ets.berkeley.edu/etstandards/ukeu/ukeu_platform_architecture.pdf