Linking research & learning technologies through standards

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.

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As referred to in an earlier post, Link Affiliates is working this year on supporting the Digital Education Revolution, through the Technical Standards for Digital Education project. A large part of the activities includes the establishment of Focus Groups, which have been established for 6 of the 7 activities. Each Focus Group consists of representatives from various jurisdictions within the education sector – primarily schools-based representatives, but also including some representatives from the VET sector. Different groups may also include people from other relevant organisations including government organisations.

So far we have identified three main purposes for the Focus Groups:

1. Members bringing their own expertise and experience into the group to share
2. Members acting as conduits back into their own organisations for the information that comes out of the Focus Group meetings
3. Members utilising their own linkages (eg professional networks) to disseminate the information that comes out of group meetings, as well as utilising these linkages to bring further information into the group.

Each Focus Group operates a little differently from the others, based on the requirements of that activity. Initial meetings of most Focus Groups were held in August 2009, and regular meetings will continue to be held throughout the duration of the project until June 2010. The first meetings of the various Focus Groups have been very positive, and much discussion emerged on various topics. It also became apparent in a few of the groups that many of the members were delighted to have such a forum on which to discuss these pertinent matters with other members of their profession who, being in a variety of jurisdictions and organisations, were able to provide new perspectives. The Focus Groups are also making use of Edna groups in the form of wikis and forums to support group communication.

The Focus Groups are expected to help in providing a couple of important outputs for the Technical Standards for Digital Education project. Firstly, each Focus Group will provide input into a Briefing Paper which has initially been created in draft by Link Affiliates, but will eventually be an output of the whole group. This Briefing Paper will provide a snap shot of the state-of-play for each of the activities, and will benefit greatly from such a wide range of input from group members. In turn, it is hoped that the Briefing Papers will be of benefit to the education sector, providing resources for the sector as well The papers are a work-in-progress, and are expected to be completed by June 2010.

Secondly, the Focus Groups provide a medium for cross-jurisdictional and cross-organisational discussion regarding the various activities, ranging from the new WCAG2.0 guidelines and their impact upon content creation for the sector, to supporting schools in the use of ‘safe’ Web2.0 content, to looking at the interoperability challenges for e-portfolios in the Australian schools sector, to name just a few. It is expected that this melding of experiences from each group member will also result in members being able to take away something positive from their participation – something that can be taken back to each jurisdiction and organisation involved and assist in supporting the development of these key areas within the sector.