Linking research & learning technologies through standards

We have discussed in the previous post SRU as a remote search protocol, and how it seeks to be broadly applicable by abstracting search indexes away from their native metadata formats. The new OASIS SWS (Search Web Services) standard, which is intended as the successor to SRU, goes further: it also abstracts search parameters away from the search protocol. SWS pursues interoperability between different search protocols, by abstracting to a common protocol model, of which actual search protocols are treated as bindings.
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We have mentioned in previous posts that our work with IMS LODE, among other goals, sought to profile search across different e-learning repositories, so as to be interoperable. But there is a diversity of schemas for educational metadata which such search needs to traverse (at a minimum, IEEE LOM, Dublin Core for Education, and ISO MLR), and an even greater diversity of profiles for those schemas. If different repositories use different schemas, how can search across multiple different repositories remain interoperable?

The solution we have adopted is to use a search protocol, SRU, which abstracts away from the specific schemas used in a domain, to the search terms of interest across the domain.
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We have already presented the People Australia and the Register My Data initiatives, and their different approaches to encoding information about parties and their identity. We elsewhere walk through a comparison of their schemata, which consists of a walkthrough the schemata, and a discussion of points of disparity. We first compare People Australia with ISO 2146 proper, before comparing ISO 2146 with RIF-CS.

Our comparison is motivated by the fact that ANDS will be using People Australia as a primary resource for researcher identity. The comparison is specific to the process of importing People Australia metadata into the format required for Register My Data.
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We have seen in a previous post that different representations of identity are possible, because there are different business motivations for knowing a party’s identity. Depending on the use we put the identity to, different kinds of detail need to be gathered about a party.

There are two major initiatives for identifying parties being considered at the moment in Australian e-research. Register My Data aims to improve the discovery of research data through the Australian Research Data Commons, and People Australia aims to improve the discovery of resources by and about people and organisations generally. The initiatives do not address exactly the same business concerns, so the metadata they gather are different.
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In the vocational education and training sector each year, a group called the E-standards Expert Group reviews and agrees on the recommended national e-standards for VET e-learning content. This group is endorsed by the National Senior Officials Committee.

The E-standards Expert Group comprises representatives from each state and territory plus a number of key VET stakeholders. In its final meeting for 2009 in Adelaide, the group reached agreement on the recommended 2010 VET e-standards, which is a minimum set of specifications for developing and testing e-learning content against. In other words, content can be optimised for other hardware and software specifications, but it must be tested and work with the agreed e-standards.

An important consideration is compatibility with existing e-learning content and systems, so usually the review process is evolutionary. New versions of software and hardware are not always compatible with older versions, however not everyone is willing or able to upgrade to the latest version, so a balance needs to be struck. The group also aims to harmonise standards and specifications with the work of other organisation such as The Learning Federation in the Schools sector as much as possible.

While discussing the 2010 standards, there was much debate over which browser versions should be supported, particularly for the Internet Explorer (IE) browser. Research based on usage statistics for a number of key VET websites showed around 20% using IE8 (the latest version), and a similar amount were still using IE6. There are major differences between IE6 and IE8 which can cause complications for developers of web content. After much deliberation, an agreement was reached that VET e-learning content produced in 2010 should be tested with IE6, 7 and 8, with IE6 being deprecated from 2011.

Another topical area of discussion was web accessibility, as the Australian Government Information Office and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission currently evaluating the relatively new WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) specification. After some earlier research into WCAG 2.0, it was agreed that VET web accessibility guidelines for 2010 will continue to require WCAG 1.0 (the current Australian government requirement) with additional checkpoints to facilitate a smoother anticipated transition to WCAG 2.0 when it becomes endorsed by the Australian Government.

The 2010 VET e-standards will be published in early January 2010.
More information on VET e-standards and the E-standards Expert Group: E-standards for Training website