Hoping for a Year of Standards in 2004
There's a gift left unwrapped from the holidays. One that I have been waiting
to open for seven years, but I really hope I can open in 2004. Standards are
coming of age, and I am really looking forward to taking advantage of all the
work that is maturing. Inside my package are eLearning standards for Course
Management Systems.
Before proceeding, you need to know I am lumping specifications and standards
into one package. To help you out, think of specification as being the early
consensus of an approach to the solution for a problem. Think of a standard
as the peer-reviewed blessing of the solution.
For the past few years, there have been a number of consortia working on creating
standard solutions to key aspects of most course management systems. Until recently,
most groups have worked in isolation. However, for the past year or so, there
has been increased cooperation between groups and this has accelerated the progress
in the release of workable and implementable specifications. It appears that
we have reached the time to open the package.
The range of organizations working on these specifications is broad. It includes
the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the Open Knowledge Initiative, and the Advanced
Distributed Learning SCORM project. Others are contributing as well. Working
in cooperation, one by one, these group are defining and documenting specification
for key aspects of the underpinnings of eLearning.
Let's take a look at some examples of areas where standards are needed and
being defined. Typically, Course Management Systems include ways of packaging
course content, handling test and examination information interchange, or exchanging
information between the CMS and the campus administrative systems. Of course,
these functions are secondary to the delivery of course materials and other
course-related activities. The problem, however, has been that the vendors,
whether commercial or in-house, have taken different approaches these issues.
Consequently, we have a number of solutions to common problems. We have made
it more difficult to leverage fully the power of our course management system.
To illustrate a problem with the multiple solutions approach, imagine you for
a second that you just opened your holiday gift. It's an electronic gizmo. However
before you can use it you need to search for an adapter to plug it in. Then
you need to calibrate the gizmo to match the voltage in your house. I think
you would be less likely to be excited about your present, and far less likely
to use it. It is a wonderful advantage that we have standard plugs for our electricity,
and standard voltages behind the plug. These are key standards we rarely think
about in our daily lives.
Just like our standard solution for plugs and voltage, CMS administrators and
users should expect to find standard solutions in their CMS. eLearning standards
are important stepping stones to improved CMS functionality. Increasingly, we
are seeing more acceptance that key aspects of eLearning can have standard solutions
to free resources to extend the capabilities of course management systems.
An example of how specifying solutions can lead to progress can be seen in
the evolution of the work of the Open Knowledge Initiative from defining specifications
to the open source implementation efforts by a number of participating OKI universities
around the country.
While most specification and standards organization are not-for-profit, this
d'es not mean that the commercial sector has been sitting on the sideline. It
is true, that commercial vendors have not necessarily always had a strong commitment
to implementing standards. For a while, it was thought that implementing proprietary
solutions was a way of locking in the customer and locking out the competition.
What resulted was a diversion of vendor resources to reverse engineering the
competition's products to make it possible for the customer to be move from
one CMS solution to another. Most notably, this was found in a number of conversion
programs written to translate course packages.
Recently, the old strategies have begun to change. No longer are standards
an anathema to the interests of commercial vendors. Many significant vendors
are now active participants in the various specification efforts. If one thinks
about it, when vendors can agree upon the "plumbing" issues, then
they are free to spend more of their resources developing features that differentiate
their products in the marketplace. The result of this acceptance of standards
and the commitment to implement them means several things. First, customers
benefit with the addition of differentiating features. Secondly, everyone benefits
from the more active participation of the vendor community in the specification
effort because the developed specification will be richer and more robust. Finally,
standards can make campus implementations easier in multi-CMS environments.
So where d'es this leave my package? I'm hoping when I open it, my package
will contain a rich set of eLearning specifications. We are getting very close
to this wish. Then I am looking for implementations of these specifications
in open source and commercial products. I think we are getting close, and I
can't wait to open my present.
