Linking research & learning technologies through standards

I recently attended the 2010 EIFEL e-portfolio conference called “Learning Forum London 2010“. Naturally, this conference was of particular relevance to the recently completed Digital Education Revolution (DER) e-portfolio activity, but also covered topics including trusted access to personal information and access and identity management. These topics are also of direct relevance to the work of two other recent activities; Century Curriculum Content and Learning Content Discovery and Exchange activities (all of these activities are part of the Technical Standards for Digital Education project).

There were numerous discussions at the conference on how to empower individuals to maintain control over their personal information. A parallel forum focused on the evolution of an “Internet of Subjects” (meaning an internet of/for people, rather than content).

I also presented a paper on privacy and e-portfolios which discussed some recent work in the Australian VET sector on this topic.

There were interesting updates on a number of European projects of relevance to Australian education including TAS3 (Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services) which is developing and testing an architecture and related infrastructure for faciltating trusted communication, access and exchange of information online.

Another project called ASPECT is looking at a number of learning technology standards/specifications. This includes for example evaluating software tool support for specifications such as IMS Common Cartridge and SCORM 2004. The ASPECT project is producing some really useful information about e-learning standards/specifications and has been mentioned on this blog previously.

XCRI (eXchanging Course Related Information) is a UK standard for describing University/college course information using a standardised format. It can be used to help match people to courses courses that meet their requirements (including for example study area, study mode and location), as in this project in the English Midlands.

The conference also confirmed in my mind that the leap2A specification for e-portfolios is fast becoming the de facto standard for e-portfolio interoperability. There seems to be a lot of activity around the specification at the moment and more e-portfolio software tools are starting to support it or consider supporting it.

You can find more information about the Learning Forum London 2010 on the conference website.

Can learners benefit from access to their qualifications data? Can learner controlled, electronic access to attainment data improve learner transition in and out of the vocational training sector?

Link Affiliates examined these questions in a report prepared for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s e-Portfolio business activity. The Verifying VET Learner Attainment Data report (PDF) was based on an investigation of existing learner verification services and a survey of possible consumers of verified learner information in the Australian VET sector. While the report found that accessing verified learner information is in its infancy in many ways, there is a cohort of information consumers who would find this information useful, and a number of possible models that could be investigated further.
Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our recent wrap-up of a bunch of projects, Link Affiliates has been reflecting on the impact of technical standards on education. One measure of success is when educators and learners do not know that the standards are there – what they are doing just works. A side-effect of this measure is that it is sometimes hard to establish new technical standards projects: it is difficult to justify spending time and money on things which nobody sees. For these reasons, we recently wrote a brief article providing examples of how technical standards have been directly beneficial to Australian digital education initiatives.

Scenario

The article takes a look at what educators are able to do now compared to just a few years ago and examines how that has been achieved using technical standards. It uses a scenario where a teacher wishes to find content for use in a class, adapt it to meet local needs and share that content with peers. The teacher creates and shares assessments relevant to the learning activity. Students produce content as part of the learning activity and share the content as evidence of their capability using e-portfolios.

Read the rest of this entry »

Background

There are a number of pesky things that can thwart improved educational outcomes. Some of them can seem a bit arcane. Not getting on top of stuff like copyright and intellectual property (IP) and standards and interoperability can not only blow the budget, they can also just stop good things happening. This reflection is just about the interoperability and standards angles, and is written by someone who has been involved in these things for a few years, but who is not down at the technical detail level of standards work.

 Australia has been at the forefront of global standards specifications for a number of years, actively participating in or leading various working groups in IMS, OASIS, IEEE,  NISO,  and the international e-framework. However the work has not been well understood or connected across the education technical community. This has led to a fracture in communications and endorsement. So why is this so?
Read the rest of this entry »

The Technical Standards for Digital Education project’s accessibility activity was primarily focused on investigating the potential impact of new web accessibility guidelines on schools sector e-learning content.  In December 2008, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released a new version of the de facto international standard for web accessibility called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). In response, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in consultation with The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) undertook a consultation process with government departments during 2009 in preparation for a transition to WCAG 2.0 as a government requirement for web content. A transition timetable was released in 2010.

The implementation of the new accessibility requirements should bring benefits for learners accessing web and e-learning content in schools. However, there will need to be support provided to web content developers, teachers and IT staff in order to facilitate the transition.

Within this context, the aim of our accessibility work was as follows:

• Build capability and assist the schools sector to understand the potential impact, challenges and opportunities WCAG 2.0 could present for the Australian schools sector
• Provide advice to DEEWR relating to AGIMO WCAG 2.0 consultations

In collaboration with a dedicated focus group, we investigated potential implications, current trends and barriers to accessibility of web content. In addition, the activity converted some existing e-learning content to comply to WCAG 2.0 requirements to gain a practical understanding of the potential challenges. All of these findings as well as recommendations for further action for Australian governments have been documented in the final report.

An activity considering “21 Century curriculum content” has recently concluded as part of the DEEWR funded Technical Standards for Digital Education project.

This work focused on two specific aspects of incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into learning and teaching; the nexus between Web 2.0 collaborative functionality and the e-learning content that is already widely used in Australian schools, and the issue of safe use of Web 2.0 functionality.

As with other Technical Standards project activities, this work was undertaken in collaboration with a focus group, which also helped to scope and define the purpose of the work. The term “safe” in particular required further elaboration, with the focus group considering this implied a reasonable level of safety, which addressed duty of care obligations and concerns around young learners online. However, variances in the interpretation of what this might mean in practice reflect the diversity of approaches to technology in schools between and within jurisdictions.

An associated piece of work resulted in the customisation of some existing schools sector focused e-learning content to more closely integrate Web 2.0 collaborative functionality. This activity investigated a relatively new IMS specification called Common Cartridge, as explained in a previous blog post. A survey was also undertaken with focus group members, and the following technical challenges were identified:

• Network and firewall barriers
• Professional development for teachers
• Assessing and selecting appropriate tools for use with learners
• Understanding and managing security and duty of care requirements
• Access and identity management.

The resulting report outlines the findings of activity, and also points to some useful resources for facilitating the integration of Web 2.0 collaborative tools with learners. A number of recommendations for further work have also been made in the report.

As part of the Technical Standards for the DER (TS-DER), Link Affiliates recently completed an investigation into the school sector’s requirements for the sharing of lesson plans.  As with other activities for the TS-DER project, a panel of experts from the school’s sector was drawn together to form a focus group to assist with the investigation.   The lesson plans activity had two broad objectives.

1. Identify requirements for the sector for the sharing of lesson plans.
2. Build a demonstrator showing how lesson plans can be shared between disparate environments.

Identifying requirements for sharing lesson plans

The focus group consisted of members with diverse backgrounds and experience.  This was reflected in the group’s definitions of what lesson plans are and the benefits obtainable from sharing them.  Lesson plans are a commonly used term and, like other forms of digital content such as e-portfolios and learning objects, mean different things to different people.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Technical standards for digital education project’s e-portfolio (electronic portfolio) activity is now complete and a final report has been published. There has been a growing interest in Australian schools and beyond in the potential for e-portfolios to support learning and teaching aims. The work of this particular project was defined by these initial aims:

• Develop a clearer understanding of current e-portfolio use in Australian schools
• Identify the key technical challenges for supporting e-portfolios in the Australian schools sector
• Inform future technical support requirements and activities.

The focus group that presided over this activity comprised a number of experienced and enthusiastic people, and also included representatives from tertiary education. The group identified a range of common uses for e-portfolios in Australian schools, including reflection on achievements and planning, supporting transitioning and pathways, and assessment.

The report illustrates this usage with examples of current e-portfolio usage in jurisdictions, including the Smart Classrooms initiative (QLD), the Future SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) and the Digital portfolio resources developed by the Victorian government. A number of technical challenges were identified based on focus group input. These challenges broadly fell into the following four categories:

• Usage: how e-portfolios are used (their purpose), and how this usage can change over time
• Portability: enabling e-portfolios to follow learners through learning pathways and transition points
• Longevity: ensuring the e-portfolio and associated content has longevity
• Access: controlling and managing appropriate access to learner information.

The report makes recommendations for further action based around these key technical challenges, including the need for national collaboration to identify solutions. Thanks to all the focus group members for the time and expertise they contributed to this work.

The Integrated Learning environments and 21st Century Learning activity within the Technical Standards for Digital Education project, led by Nick Nicholas, was set up to promote better integration of systems in the school sector. This includes both administrative systems and learning environments; it encompasses systems within the school and jurisdiction intranet, vertical reporting, and the Open Web (collaboration systems, content repositories).

There were two distinct components to this activity, addressing distinct initiatives to improve integration.

• One component involved participating in the SIF Association AU Data Standards Working Group. SIF AU was set up to promote interoperability throughout Australia between jurisdiction and school systems. While there is interest in extending its use to learning systems (SIF Instructional Services), the priority to date has been integrating administrative systems.
• The second component looked at integrating learning systems, and in particular the challenges of integration with Web 2.0 and Service-Oriented systems.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Curriculum Description activity within the Technical Standards for Digital Education project, led by Nick Nicholas, was set up to support school sector uses of standards-compliant, machine-readable curriculum descriptions. The need for curricula to be machine-readable is driven by the digital context in which the curriculum is now used: lessons and assessment are now planned, and learning resources discovered, online. The multiple sources and forms of learning resources, and the multiple markets adressed by learning content providers, present a challenge of mapping multiple jurisdictions’ curricula to multiple resources, to varying degrees of granularity: any machine-readable approach must be able to cope with this level of complexity. Teachers and admnistrators also expect to be able to map between curricula, as students are increasingly mobile, and to formulate alternate structures and pathways through curricula.

The activity was explicitly set up to support making the new Australian National Curriculum machine-readable, and to make it possible to map between the National Curriculum and the existing State curricula. Because of this specific focus, the activity was aligned with a pilot project undertaken by the Curriculum Corporation (now Education Services Australia) on making Australian curricula machine-readable. The activity provided technical analysis and feedback to the project. Because of the nature of the pilot and its well-defined scope, it was not appropriate to embark in separate requirements gathering outside the existing project; so this activity did not involve a focus group, unlike the other Technical Standards activities.
Read the rest of this entry »