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.