Linking research & learning technologies through standards

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?

 In part the work undertaken to ensure Australia’s interests were covered off in global specifications development was done “under the hood”. It was often funded as a by-product of other projects, and there was rarely enough funding to enable wide community consultation and engagement. Though work such as standards specifications and interoperability guidelines is never going to excite the masses, when it is not done it can be sorely missed. There is also sometimes a culture of “lets get in and do this now” in terms of technical infrastructure for education, and the longish term gestation period of specifications does not fit well with this approach. And perhaps standards analysts engaged in specification work may not be the best people to engage the slightly wider technical education community: they may get bogged down in the detail and they are not employed for their communications prowess necessarily.

 Nevertheless efforts have been made over the years to widen the engagement, not least through the excellent IDEA  series of events. These have not only lifted the veil on standards and interoperability, they have also facilitated a cross sectoral forum across education and information industries. IDEA has been running for six years, but for the last three years they have been combined with the IMS Learning Impact Awards, an excellent idea to showcase the impact of background standards work. Interestingly Australian winners have done very well in the global finals.

 But still standards and interoperability work was (and is?) regarded with perhaps suspicion by many educational people, including some important technical people.  Apparently even a previous federal minister of Education banned the word “interoperability” from public service usage. Is this then a problem of articulation or understanding?

 Case Study

The Australian Digital Education Revolution (DER)  is an interesting case study for this field. Even though DEEWR (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations) clearly factored in standards and interoperability activities into its game plan for the DER, it still runs the danger of the laptops in schools being rolled out not getting full value for money, because the interoperability angles were not all chased down. The DER was supposed to be about creating 21^st C learning environments, using the laptops almost as a Trojan horse.

 DEEWR did fund a group, Link Affiliates, to undertake continuing standards activities under the DER Technical Standards project. However there was no roll out of projects which the standards activities could contribute to (such as sorting out identities, repositories, searching for materials). At the same time DEEWR funded SIF work in parallel with the other standards work. They also commissioned a report by Peter Croger to map out directions for interoperability in Australian Education. So DEEWR do take standards seriously. However somewhere between the policy and the operation there can be slips.

One fundamental issue was the funding model that kept resulting in DEEWR officers quite correctly insisting that the work must be “school focused only”, when by its very nature the work was cross-sectoral and cannot achieve real benefits unless it is pursued cross-sectorally. There was also a travel cringe factor that thwarted full international engagement in specification development. For Australia, as a small country, either you engage ( i.e. show up and work)  in global developments to try and influence the agenda, or you just accept whatever others come up with, which may or may not suit Australia. Finally there was a disjunct between “we want outcomes now” and “but specifications need a bit of time to be developed”. This was and is a time consuming negotiation. While DEEWR do understand at the policy level that R&D is vital, operationally they can be driven by the moment.

 Nevertheless one important aspect of the technical standards project work was the formation of focus groups for community engagement. While they were in one sense a default ( because there were no projects in place for the standards work to support), and they probably at best could be seen as trialling a community engagement model for interoperability approaches, they did provide a valuable experience and platform for future engagement. There was no real forum before these focus groups, and those engaged in standards work over previous years had never been funded to engage the community, so it was a real step forward.

 Whither standards work

So it is agreed the work is important but….

 Without gaining community engagement and take up, without increasing the understanding of the value of the work, without balancing the short term project needs and the long term R&D (and you need both for improved learning outcomes  to be achieved efficiently), this work might flounder. Without it you might get little interoperability between systems and sectors, and global standards may not meet Australia’s needs.

 Another key factor is funding models. Should it be government led or market driven?  The education industry market cannot really afford to invest in the R&D for standards, and it needs to come from either venture capitalists or governments. The reality though  is that involvement in global specifications work needs a central funding and coordination point for a small place like Australia, and one that can fund a cross sectoral engagement. This seems especially challenging in the current Australian educational environment. It needs funding that spans getting in and getting dirty with specifications development, and getting out and about in the education community adapting and implementing those specifications. More than anything it needs sponsors who understand the value of the enterprise.

 One further complication, in a web 2.0, or is it 3.0, world some have argued that the time for standards and interoperability has gone. It is a free for all and who needs specifications (similar to who needs centrally developed curriculum content).  This though is perhaps a superficial surface view. The seeming chaos model still relies on underlying protocols (WC3). So despite this emerging world I suspect the arcane work of standards and interoperability will only be missed once it has gone, and then it will be too late. For in truth this arcane art is only practised by the few for the use of the many. While there will still be standards, if Australia does not play they may not meet our requirements.