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?
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As a member of the program committee and one of the organisers I am probably not the most unbiased person to reflect on the recent IDEA event. However I will just the same. IDEA has been running for about six years and although each event has seemed to be worthwhile, the general buzz about this one was it was the best ever.

As usual IDEA brought together practitioners from all sectors of education: schools, vocational education and higher education both in the presenters and in the participants. This creates the first good thing to note. There are not many venues where practitioners from across education can get together and interact. So IDEA is a great opportunity to facilitate cross sectoral conversations and to allow practitioners to gain knowledge and expertise from other sectors. This type of knowledge sharing across the educational sectors is vital for the well being of education as a whole.

While IDEA always tries to attract technology/IT people, policy makers and leading edge teaching practitioners, this time we created a program where a conversation was developed between the teaching and the technology practitioners. And it seemed to work. Another thing to note about the event structure was short sharp panel presentations with plenty of time for audience participation. There were a lot of very good panels, one of the most engaging was ” What Technology Do Teachers Want”  which featured presenters from Schools, Universities and Vocational Education. There were three great presentations , one can be found at http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/idea10/files/IDEA10_20100311_AndrewDouch.pdf

As has been the case over the last three occasions the IDEA event incorporated the Learning Impact Awards (LIAs). This offers the opportunity for implementations of technology to compete to be judged as to who has had the most learning impact. The top three Australian entires then get financial support to attend the world finals (organised by IMS Global), this year in Long Beach California . In previous years Australian entries have done very well at the world finals. As part of the judging event participants go on a “speed dating” session with each of the entries as do the judges. This year the top three in the people’s choice was the same as the top three from the judges, just the order was different.

2010 was the first time IDEA has had a formal Program Committee and worked with a professional conference organiser. Both added greatly to the value of the event.

Another innovation this year was to stream the event live and then have a video archive available for later viewing by event participants as well as those unable to attend the event itself. In truth we did not promote the live streaming enough (maybe we were nervous as it was our first foray into this), but at least we have captured the event for posterity.

Also in 2010 we managed to attract some more sponsors which allowed for a bit more sophistication with food and technology at the event.  At the same time the sponsors were able to engage with key practitioners across education in one  small venue. Presentations by Motorola  http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/idea10/files/IDEA10_20100312_RobArmstrong.pdf  and Lappset  http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/idea10/events/speakers.html#makela further enhanced this engagement.

You might wonder what could be improved. Well there are possibly a few things, although the program committee thought this was being obsessively self critical, including:

• We probably packed in too many speakers not leaving enough time for audience interactions
• We made the first day of the Open Form a bit too long so some people were too tired to fully participate in the speed dating (which for many was a highlight)
• There was probably too many presentations not enough action on the IDEALab day

But overall everyone seemed to get a heap out of the three days and there was a real buzz. The senior policy people present also remarked on how valuable the event was.

In terms of  the future there does seem a place for a cross sectoral event in this space and the Australian regional finals for the LIAs are a must for continuing to foster innovation and good practice for using technology for learning. Hopefully there will be a funding mechanism to allow investment for future IDEA events. March is not necessarily the best time for the event, in previous years it has run in October/November but it needs to be timed so that LIA winners can get organised to go to the world finals which are usually in May.

To see all the presentations, view the video clips and get a sense of the atmosphere of IDEA go to http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/idea10/ and watch that space for the next event!

The Learning Object Repository Network (LORN)  has been a long time in gestation, sensibly so. The Australian Flexible Learning Framework spawned LORN using a measured and standards based approach.

In 2003, the Framework began developing structures and standards for managing access to quality electronic learning resources across Australia’s VET sector. In 2004 the Framework established LORN to facilitate exchange of learning objects between states and territories, based on a model of trust, cooperation and interoperability. LORN currently enables the sharing and sale of learning resources that support flexible delivery across the VET sector.” (from LORN website)

 Much of what LORN has developed has leveraged another VET infrastructure service, AEShareNet , not least the standards based licensing approach.

So what is LORN?

The Learning Object Repository Network (LORN) is an easy to use portal that allows teachers and trainers to access quality resources for the VET sector.

LORN consists of:

• repository owner organisations that hold learning resources they are willing to share across the VET sector, and
• consumer access providers (CAPs) that use the LORN search to display results within their organisation’s website.

So basically anyone can access and download learning objects; but in order to “advertise” that you have objects available to share, you must conform to some standards and specification both technical and non technical.

Repository owners who participate in LORN have agreed to the following principles:

• Commitment to working with other members—in a spirit of cooperation—to advance the interests of the whole sector especially in relation to gaining efficiencies from sharing teaching and learning resources.
• Commitment to exposing a reasonable amount of content so that using OAI harvesting in the federation of repositories is a rewarding experience for the consumer.
• Agreement to adhere to a minimum set of business and technical specifications.
• Agreement to licence learning objects to users to be reusable within the terms of the associated digital rights. Learning objects in the repositories should correspond with the AEShareNet‑U (unrestricted), AEShareNet-S (share and return), AEShareNet –P (Preserve Content) and AEShareNet‑FfE (Free for Education purposes) licences.

Technical specifications include:

• Maintaining a repository of learning objects relevant to the VET sector
• Providing a harvest file that includes descriptions of all learning objects and other resources using Vetadata (agreed VET specific metadata)
• Using the AEShareNet instant licences (FfE, U, S & P) and the immediate C licences
• Providing a pricing file in the approved format as required for the purpose of transacting immediate C licences.

I have been a member of various LORN references groups since its inception in 2003 as part of different roles and contracts I have held. It has been fascinating to be involved in its slow (sometimes frustratingly slow) and steady progress.  

So what are the upsides and where are the issues and where is it going?

The approach is basically driven by a bottom up agreement to cooperate and share. There is a small amount of national infrastructure funding that has enabled the development so far. But really the commitment put in by the repository owners has been the key to its growth and sustainability. And it is amazing that there has been so much agreement albeit hard won. The end result is a whole heap of learning objects accessible by teachers and trainers across the VET sector, which might otherwise have remained hidden within one institution or one jurisdiction. At the same time there has been a strenuous effort to keep it simple for the teachers or learning object seekers. The repositories do the hard yards behind the scenes to keep it simple and consistent for those looking to access learning resources. 

But with any such service there are issues.

One fundamental challenge has been the need to allow repositories to charge for learning objects. Basically only a relatively small number of objects would be released across the VET sector if only “free to access and use” resources were allowed. Models do not really exist across the VET sector for freely sharing resources across public and private training organisations, especially when there is both stiff competition between training providers, and fully commercial exploitation of resources in terms of both course provision and publishing. So a simple thing like charging for a resource sets up a huge challenge for LORN, in terms of providing simple and immediate access via micro payments.

Other emerging issues include:

• The desire from repository owners to make non-downloadable learning resources accessible via LORN
• The need to develop a sustainable business model in terms of who pays for the ongoing maintenance and further development of the LORN infrastructure (at present it is project funded)
• The need to provide access to a larger variety of repositories including commercial publishers
• The need to cater for (smaller) repository owners who might struggle to meet the technical specifications entry requirements

So does the LORN model have any relevance to other sectors? 

Well first of all in order to develop and deliver the service, LORN has had to tackle key challenges that any resource sharing approach would need to tackle, including:

• Agreed metadata standards
• Agreed and consistent licensing
• Agreed federated harvesting/search protocols
• Persistent identifiers for materials
• Authentication for users
• Also it provides a model for collaborative governance, especially across the public VET jurisdictions.

In designing a pay-per-access option LORN has provided a methodology for ensuring that learning resources can be “shared”, albeit with money changing hands sometime. This sharing can occur across public and private and between private institutions. Mind you this is not non-contestable. There is a school of thought that says the teachers accessing learning resources should not be faced with barriers of “pay before access” . This should be sorted at the macro rather than the micro level. In other words, jurisdiction or institutions or repository publishers provide access to any individual teacher based on a bulk arrangement, either pre or post facto for particular institutions or jurisdictions. (A simple Trust Federation may help in this regard.)

For 2010 LORN has a few key  tasks to drive things forward including: finalising the implementation of persistent identifiers, moving towards a smoother authentication approach, and incorporating non-downloadable learning resources into the network.

At the same time AEEYSOC (Australian Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs Senior Officials Committee) is apparently grappling  with the importance of a national eLearning architecture plan for digital resource discovery, development, storage and sharing  in the school sector. LORN might just have paved the way for such an approach with its hard won successes over the last six years. If nothing else it demonstrates that sharing learning resources was not meant to be easy.

In 2008, the Link Affiliates team carried out a project for DEEWR, the Department of Education Employment and Work Place Relations, to investigate the use of learner identities especially in the school sector. All states and territories, were consulted at the school level including government and non government school jurisdictions, as well as vocational education and higher education representatives.
The report from this work can be found at the Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee, AICTEC website at http://www.aictec.edu.au/aictec/go/home/about/pid/289     It is a hefty report and not one for the faint hearted. It uses an e- framework http://www.e-framework.org/ approach to analyse the possibilities for using a learner identity management framework, LIMF for assisting in the smooth transition of students between jurisdictions and systems. More than 180,000 students transfer between systems/jurisdictions each year and the current manual system of transferring information to assist in a smooth learning transition is not well utlised. 

The report made a number of recommendations on how to progress the use of learner identities in Australia especialy with regard to student transfer. These recommendations are now under consideration by a sub committee of AICTEC.
At the same time the vocational education sector is revisting the report to assist in the establishment of e-portfolio approaches.

This was a tight contained project carried out within a short time frame. While it was concerned to report on the specific issue of school student transfer, it is suggested that it is a useful document for consideration of learner identity issues in general. Other perspectives would be most welcome.