1. A sustainable approach to developing e- learning technologies Howard Noble University of Oxford, Learning Technologies Group 16 th June 2004

4. E-learning: technologies for educational processes? Learning happens in a very broad range of contexts Technology can enhance the experience in some of these scenarios How can we develop and distribute this technology throughout the education system in the UK?

5. JISC frameworks for e-learning programme Moving away from the monolithic Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Towards developing smaller software components that can be plugged together Funding short projects that iterate between technical development, rollout and evaluation stages All projects must be Open source and comply with the relevant Interoperability Standards

7. What is a standard? Take the analogy with our natural languages: There are many effective vocabularies globally Cultures use different languages differently Sub-cultures use the same language differently But without standardisation we wouldn’t be able to communicate Interoperability standards facilitate communication between digital systems Officially a standard needs to be ratified by a body such as ISO, CEN, IEEE or BSI Specifications as produced by IMS can be seen as a ‘draft standard’ Implementations based on standards specifications will vary There will be local variants - standards need to evolve We can imagine an optimal balance between variation and standardisation

8. Who or what make educational standards happen? Local developments like OUNL Learning Design and MIT OKI IMS, NISO, W3C and OASIS write specifications then ISO, IEEE and BSI create standards Consortia like SPARC/ M25 and CETIS/JISC who encourage the adoption of standards More loosely standards also emerge through: Wildly successful companies like Microsoft and Sun Very clever people like Linus Torvalds Large well organised communities e.g. Perl.com and Apache We do by using software that is being developed to conform with standards e.g. uPortal

9. Why should you care about free or Open Source software? Just to clarify: Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement Has no secrets: the innards are available for anyone to inspect Is not privately controlled: so likely to promote open rather than proprietary formats Is typically maintained by communities rather than corporations: so bug fixes and enhancement are often frequent and free Is usually distributed free of charge (developers make their money from support, training, and specialist add-ons; not marketing) –Beware poorly written software that needs high levels of support!

10. Standard: IMS Content Packaging RELOAD: Open source and Open standards compliant reference implementation For packaging hierarchical content into a compressed file so that it can be used/ re-purposed Also implements SCORM and LOM with plans to allow creation of IMS Learning Designs

13. Standard: IMS Digital Repository Intrallect’s IntraLibrary: Closed Source and Open Standards Allows Learning Objects to be Published and Discovered in a virtual library using standard metadata

16. Standard: IMS Learning Design Macquarie University’s LAMS system: Soon to be open source and but not currently Learning Design standard compliant Allows authors to generate Learning Design sequences for multiple learners with comprehensive tools set.

22. STANDARDS The ‘whole’ University

23. Messages You should look to see how you can benefit from Open Source software that conforms to interoperability standards Help UK community develop and evaluate and these tools Tools should support the process of learning so be easily mapped to real learner needs

24. References Global Educational Standards Organisation where all the standards specifications can be downloaded for free: –IMS: http://www.imsglobal.org/specifications.cfmhttp://www.imsglobal.org/specifications.cfm Excellent articles that explain the whole spectrum of educational standards with a strong focus on UK community –CETIS: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/http://www.cetis.ac.uk/ Current Call from JISC that will develop open source and open standard software for UK community: –JISC e-learning programme: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elearning_framework.htmlhttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/elearning_framework.html Content packaging application available for free download: –RELOAD: http://www.reload.ac.ukhttp://www.reload.ac.uk Digital repository company with free trial access: –Intralibrary: http://www.intrallect.comhttp://www.intrallect.com Soon to be Open Source but not Learning Design open standard compliant Learning Activity Management System. Articles available here: –LAMS: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/lams04/LAMpostconf.htmhttp://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/lams04/LAMpostconf.htm Open Source and Learning Design compliant software available for free download: –CopperCore: http://coppercore.org/http://coppercore.org/ Excellent articles and presentations on everything you need to know about Open Source –Open Source Software Watch website: http://www.oss-watch.ac.ukhttp://www.oss-watch.ac.uk