The requirement for standards is incontrovertible. From baseballs to railroad tracks, standard dimensions and approaches to design are essential if the cogs of today’s technological world are to intermesh. When pieces fit, things work, progress is made and at times, disaster is even averted.
As a dramatic example of the importance of standards,
consider the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
In 1870
Shortly after the fire, the
National Bureau of Standards collected and analyzed over 600 samples of fire
hose couplings from around the country.
The next year, 1905, the National Fire Protection Association adopted a
standard hose coupling and an interchangeable coupling device for non-standard
hoses (Grant, 2002). As late as 1964
however, Baltimore officials “learned that firemen in an adjoining county were
requesting that fireplugs which did not fit hoses made to the national standard
be marked with fluorescent paint so firefighters could tell where special
adapters were needed” (Nesmith, 1985).
The development of standards for
railroad tracks is equally colorful and in some ways just as dramatic. In the
Making the transition from these
stories to standards in educational technology is not difficult. Just as shoppers don’t have to worry about
whether the cereal (content) they buy in the store today will be compatible
next week with the bowls and spoons (delivery system) they have in their
kitchens, it seems reasonable to assume that consumers of online learning
materials will be able to benefit from their investment in courseware
development, not only for their current delivery platforms but also for those
they will use in the near future.
Yes, the world of educational technology is rapidly moving toward standards, but is this movement the means for averting disaster or is it in fact a disaster waiting to happen? On the one hand we have the concern that technologists are leading the effort without appropriate concern for valid instructional design principles (Bunderson, 2002). On the other, we have predictions of the not-too-distant existence of a “learning ecology” (Brown, 1999) in which documents made up of multiple data types will be created and flow freely among producers and consumers of knowledge (Looi 2000), a scenario that is totally unrealistic without the existence of standards at some level.
Indeed, technology-assisted
learning has had a history built on varying and not always compatible
technologies, the list of which reads like a bowl of alphabet soup, a list
filled with the likes of IVD (interactive videodisc), CD Audio, CD-ROM, CD-I,
CD-ROM XA, and DVI. Multimedia technologies
in general and online learning technologies in particular have been moving for
some time now from one acronymic world to another, from mainframe-based
delivery systems to standalone interactive technologies to Web-based learning
with text files and graphics files, as well as streaming audio and video in
their various flavors: DOC, TXT, HTML, PDF, JPG, GIF, BMP, PIC, JPEG, MPEG-1,
WMA, AVI, MPEG-2, Motion JPEG, MP3, DV, WAV, AU, AIFF, PCM, just to name a few
file extensions and associated technologies.
To cap off the complexity, add to the mix: Internet-based conferencing,
QuickTime video, Media Player, Real Player, DVD, DVD-ROM, and Web DVD, not to
mention the multiplicity of operating systems that has always been a problem, a
few of which are still present (Mac OS, Windows, Unix, and most recently Linux)
with which we must include Web browsers in their various flavors: Netscape,
Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera.
Thus, it is not presently very
hard to imagine all of us who wish to inhabit this new, all-digital realm
standing around or pacing, or, as the case may be, wringing our hands, glancing
at each other, probably not too much unlike the erstwhile, guest fire fighters
in Baltimore. The exclamations of this
modern technological group are also similar to those most likely heard at that
dire event of 1904, “How much better off things would be if our pipes would
only connect!” Indeed, we seem to be
collectively worried about bandwidth, in other words, making our pipes bigger,
when the biggest problem is that what we send down the pipes might or might not
reach its destination in a form that will be usable by those for whom it is
intended.
Finally, we have the instructional
use of the content that is created and delivered in the above various
forms. Consider: CAI, CAL, CBI, TBT,
CBT, ITS, and CMI, conceived within a framework of instructionist or
constructivist tenets, designed with ID1 or ID2 and developed using an LCMS and delivered with a CMS or
LMS, with student records to be collected and stored by SQL Server, Oracle, or
DB2. Even if we are successful at
getting the content distributed to our users, what assurance do we have that we
will get back usable information on how the content was used? Without appropriate standards that guide how
we deliver the content and that report on how the content was used by our
learners, absolutely nothing is guaranteed.
The payoff for adopting standards
thus seems obvious. Indeed, a new report
released in June 2002 by strategy and technology consultants, Booz Allen
Hamilton (BAH), projects “a resurgence in the e-learning market, expecting it
to reach the $12-14 billion range by 2004,” up from $5.3 billion in 2000 (Booz
Allen Hamilton, 2002). This range of
numbers is significantly different from the $23 billion forecast by IDC last
year, a level that an official of IDC recently stated it would now take “a year
or two longer” to reach than originally believed (Fisher, 2002). In either case, the numbers are not hard to
imagine, given for example that the US Department of Defense alone will spend
this year about $17 billion on training (DMDC, 2002), with an increasing amount
each year going to interactive technologies.
Just as military needs instigated development in railroad technologies,
it is safe to assume that they will also have a major effect on standards for
e-learning.
Even if the actual amount for
interactive training is at the lower end of the range outlined in the BAH and
IDC reports, it is difficult to imagine how such growth will be possible
without appropriate standards, or specifications as some would prefer they be
called[1]. Indeed, given such economic incentives, the
implementation of standards seems completely logical, at least at some
level. The key question is at what point
this level is to be found. We will
explore this area, but first it is important to understand how standards are
developing with respect to instructional technology.
Chronologically, any discussion of
e-learning standards will begin with the formation of the Aviation Industry CBT
Committee (AICC) in 1989 with its objectives “to standardized [sic] PC hardware
and promote system interoperability” (Costello, 2002, 3). This international association of
professionals who are connected to technology-based training transcends
multiple industries and has worked since its formation for the development of
guidelines that enable hardware and software alike to work together in the
delivery of computer-based training (CBT).
A key concept that came on the
scene early, shortly after AICC’s formation, is “learning object,” and
according to one writer its history “is easier to document than a formal
definition” (Jacobsen, 2001). Jacobsen
recounts how Wayne Hodgins of AutoDesk came up with the concept:
In 1992,
From that early point, groups not
only from the
This list[2] contains the names of
organizations from the
Expanded to Reusable Learning Objects
(RLO), this concept is now not only the target of development bodies around the
world, but it has also become the subject of scholarly publications,
dissertations, and books, such as Wiley’s (2000a) The Instructional Use of Learning Objects
that has been published on the Web [see http://reusability.org/read/] as well
as in text form by AECT. In the
introductory chapter of this volume, Wiley states that “Learning objects are
elements of a new type of computer-based instruction grounded in the object-oriented
paradigm of computer science” with which “instructional designers can build
small (relative to the size of an entire course) instructional components that
can be reused a number of times in different learning contexts” (2000a).
The movement toward standards for learning objects had been underway several years by 1997 when the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) co-sponsored the kick-off meeting for the Advanced Distributing Learning initiative (ADL) that was held in November. [See: http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=abtadl] The purpose of ADL was to “to develop a DoD-wide strategy for using learning and information technologies to modernize education and training and to promote cooperation between government, academia and business to develop e-learning standardization” (Dodds, 2001a, 1-3). Promoting DoD’s (Department of Defense) effort in this direction was its enormous and increasing annual investment in technology-based training, an incentive which motivated officials to find ways to make things move faster. Following this initial meeting and a subsequent investigation into developing standards for interactive learning materials, the effort to define the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORMTM) was initiated with support from many of the organizations listed above and development from entities such as IMS, AICC, ARIADNE, and IEEE LTSC.
Explaining this important technological direction The SCORM Overview lists four ultimate goals of the SCORM specification:
These are restated in The SCORM Overview as:
Other descriptive terms are often used to summarize efforts of the standards movement such as “manageability” (Norman, 2002; South & Monson 2000) or in other words the ability of a system to “track the appropriate information about the learner and the content” (Norman, 2002). There are still others: discoverability, extensibility, and affordability (South & Monson 2000).
Discoverability is in effect related to reusability and fundamentally has to do with metadata, probably the best known aspect of learning objects standards movement. Metadata can be compared to the card catalog in the library, providing a way to get at the objects that have been created (Griffin and Wason, 1997). SCORM uses the SCORM Content Aggregation Model that is based on the IMS Learning Resource Metadata Information Model that is in turn based on the IEEE LTSC Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) Specification. LOM is the product of collaboration between IEEE LTSC, IMS, and ARIADNE (Dodds, 2001a).
Extensibility is directly related to durability, meaning that work and investment will not be lost as progress is made in delivery systems. It also means that it will be possible to incorporate new technologies and have these co-exist with previous generations of capabilities.
As an example of the impact that
the SCORM specification is having, the
Interest in e-learning standards
has also increased in recent months at
The receipt at BYU of a fairly significant Federal grant from the National Security Education Program (NSEP) to produce online learning materials in less commonly taught and strategic languages has increased the imperative for pursuing standards. Not only must the materials to be developed fit into BYU’s delivery infrastructure, they must also be engineered for broad dissemination, a standard principle for all institutional grants from NSEP, a program funded through the Department of Defense.
It was within this setting that we
began to investigate SCORM within the NSEP Project that I direct. One element that became obvious fairly
quickly was the apparent compatibility with our previous work on cost-effective
materials design methodologies at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA). In particular, in the 1980’s and early 1990’s
I had been involved in the development of a software system for the development
and delivery at USAFA of courseware for language learning.
We recognized in our work there
that materials development was more a data management problem than a
programming problem, a radical departure from development methodologies of the
time, and one that yielded significant improvements in productivity (Bush,
1988, 1989, 1992). Furthermore, we found
an interesting compatibility between our approach and the Transaction Shell
work of David Merrill and his team at
After reading through the SCORM
documentation, available at http://www.adlnet.org,
it became clear that (1) SCORM would provide a standard method for representing
content that was totally compatible with the way that we had been storing content
in our work at USAFA and (2) that work had not yet addressed the key issue of
how materials would be organized, or “sequenced,” to use the term “du
jour.” Indeed, the first versions of the
SCORM specification implied that further development would be necessary to
standardize how content objects are to be connected, or in other words, how
“branching” among objects would be represented.
In July of 2000 I queried Philip
Dodds, the editor of the SCORM documentation, to this effect. He responded that
work on SCORM had thus far been limited to a Course Structure Format, based on
AICC’s previous work, but would more than likely be expanded in the future
(Dodds, 2000). Indeed, areas of emphasis
to be targeted for SCORM 2.0 and beyond will address the design of “new
run-time and course data model architectures” (Dodds, 2001a).
I alerted David Merrill to our
investigations and asked how the ADL efforts might fit into his work at
This sentiment was echoed by Dodds
during a telephone conversation in the fall of 2001 in which he said that he
would like nothing better than to have their efforts with SCORM connect to
instructional design theorists like David Merrill and others (Dodds,
2001c). This led us to sponsor at
Brigham Young University in March 2002 a conference entitled, “Online
Instruction for the 21st Century: Connecting Instructional Design to
International Standards for Content Reusability” (ID2SCORM). The conference
drew a significant attendance as well as interesting and relevant speakers and
will be held again in 2003.
After speaking at the ID2SCORM
Conference, David Merrill commented to a reporter concerning his message to the
developers of standards, “I want them to develop standards that enable me to
build things that can be plugged into anybody’s system and have them be able to
operate, but I don’t necessarily want those standards to tell me what those
instructional things ought to be” (Baker, 2002). In his presentation at ID2SCORM, Bunderson
(2002) expressed concern that the goal of automated, on-demand assembly of
instruction as called for in the SCORM
Overview (Dodds, 2001a) is fantastic and unrealistic. He also expressed concern that standards thus
far constrain the best instructional, measurement, and cognitive theory
practices and suggested that “a more realistic goal may require fewer and less
burdensome mandatory specifications” (Bunderson, 2002). In his presentation at this same conference
Clifford stated that “not everyone is in agreement about what SCORM is, what
its benefits are, how advanced it is” and went on to say that “no one has yet
demonstrated a return on investment (ROI) for the hours spent adding metadata
coding to each object” (Clifford, 2002).
So what is needed to address the
apparent disconnect between the promise of standards and what some suppose is
their reality? There are at least four
categories of technical concerns that address this disconnect:
Concerning the lack of definition
of terms, probably the most salient example is the lack of consensus as to what
a learning object actually is (Wiley, 2000b; Gibbons et al, 2000). It is interesting to note that these two
authors in their articles in Wiley’s (2000a), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects: The Online Version, each use different terms, “learning objects” (Wiley) on
the one hand and “instructional objects” (Gibbons) on the other. Driving this point home, Clifford (2002)
provided a list of terms that includes these two and others, pointing out
additional inconsistencies:
|
|
|
Is a “learning object” different from
an “instructional object?” If so, what
is the difference? If they are the same,
then why not use the same term? How does
a “course object” differ from a “curriculum object?” How do “raw objects” differ from “content
objects?”
To help resolve such questions, we
should be able to turn to the SCORM documentation for clarification. Indeed, the SCORM Content Aggregation Model (Dodds, 2001b) refers to “assets”
and “Sharable Content Object” (SCO).
Based on the description and examples provided, it seems that “assets”
are what people mean by the term “raw objects” from Clifford’s list. An SCO is trickier: “A Sharable Content
Object (SCO) represents a collection of one or more Assets that include a
specific launchable asset that utilizes the SCORM Run-Time Environment to
communicate with Learning Management Systems (LMSs)” (Dodds, 2001b, 2-4).
A problem arises with the rest of
the description of SCO, raising the second area of questions, that of
granularity. “A SCO represents the
lowest level of granularity of learning resources that can be tracked by an LMS
using the SCORM Run-Time Environment” (Dodds, 2001b, 2-4). This seems clear enough, but then the
description continues, “To be reusable, a SCO by itself should be independent
of learning context,” something that seems difficult or even impossible with
respect to designing objects with sound instructional design principles. How can a well-designed object not embody
principles of instructional design that are by definition dependent upon
context? Finally, “SCOs are intended to be subjectively small units, such that
potential reuse across multiple learning objectives is feasible” (Dodds, 2001b,
2-4). The challenge here derives from
the acceptability of the use of the word, “subjectively.” Subjective determination of any sort must be
based on some number of principles that have been previously enumerated,
something that apparently has not yet happened with SCORM and how it should be
informed with instructional design principles.
Illustrating the problem of
granularity, one hears the statement that a learning object can be “a drop in
the ocean or the ocean itself,” demonstrating not only the issue of lack of
definition of learning object as a concept, but also the importance of the
related issue of levels of granularity.
No one will dispute the value of the reusability of a single graphic
(asset) or perhaps even a whole course (SCO).
For example, it is obvious that a map of
The challenge lies with how to
standardize everything (or actually, anything useful) that is in the middle
between an individual media object on the one hand and a full course on the
other. As an example, Merrill in his
presentation at the ID2SCORM conference (2002) described “knowledge objects”
and how they are different from learning objects. He pointed out that knowledge objects do not
include instructional strategies where learning objects do, and any single
given knowledge object can be used in conjunction with a variety of different
instructional strategies.
With respect to connecting
instructional design to standards, it seems rather obvious that if standards
were derived for ways to represent knowledge objects as he described them, then
it would be possible to also create standard instructional interactions to be used
with each knowledge object of certain types, as described by Merrill, creating
various types of learning objects. The
problem with this scenario to date has been that “no instructional design
information was included in the metadata specified by the current version of
the Learning Objects Metadata Working Group standard” (Wiley, 2000b, 11). If this possibility is to become a reality,
then we need common definitions for specifying the instructional design
inherent in a particular learning object, an obvious potential contribution
from the instructional design community.
The final area of concern has to
with the development of models for incorporating instructional design into
standard approaches for determining and representing sequencing, or “sequencing
and navigation” as described by Dodds (2002).
Some work is already underway through the Simple Sequencing Team of IMS
with their first specification having been released in May (
From all indications, however, these efforts are currently
missing support from recognized instructional design theorists. It should be clear to anyone connected with
instructional design that involvement from the field is essential. In his presentation at the ID2SCORM
conference,
What are the incentives for the instructional design community to address the above challenges? Shapiro (2000) lists two benefits of standards. First, they enable a greater realization of network effects: the more people present in a particular network the greater the value for all participants. This attracts more players, encouraging competitive innovation and pricing. Success for any member of the network adds some measure of value for all in the network. Shapiro cites a second benefit as protection from stranding, a key concern for bleeding edge investment in systems like learning management systems. It is obviously important to any entity that chooses a particular system that they still be able to run their courseware should their supplier not be in business in the future.
Some assert that the potential economic advantages parallel those that accrued to the steel industry, and thus to consumers, with the adoption of standard methodologies for steel making (Gibbons, Nelson, & Richards, 2000). They write, “Standardization efforts related to object properties and indexing will open the floodgates for object manufacture and sharing, but without attention to design process, interoperability among all the necessary varieties of instructional objects and the favorable economics needed to sustain their use will not materialize” (Gibbons, Nelson, and Richards, 2000, 50).
This analysis is
similar to one of the desired outcomes cited by ADL for its efforts, fostering
an “instructional object economy” (Dodds, 2001a). Speaking in this same vein, Ed Walker, CEO of the IMS
Global Learning Consortium stated, “I think that available content and ways to
use it are going to increase; the average instructor is going to have more
material to choose from and probably, over time, higher quality material. I
believe faculty will be able to develop educational materials, be they short
episodes of learning or full courses, with less effort. The result will be that
more material and courses will be available. Hopefully, learners around the
world will find resources more available, at lower costs” (Syllabus, 2002).
Just like standards that enable
the connection of rail lines or connections among various types of fire
fighting equipment, the value of connecting instructional design to standards
for learning objects at some level seems intuitively obvious. Supporting this notion, one of the speakers
at the ID2SCORM conference summarized characteristics of the setting within
which standards are being developed:
Recognizing this challenging
situation, at least one group claims that “the Learning Object has the
potential to revolutionize the paradigm for organizational learning” (S3
Working Group, 2002). Even if one does
not go quite that far, it is not difficult to realize that standards of some
sort are essential. If that is true,
what will it take to make them not only a reality, but a reality at a level
that makes them useful for creating and delivering good (read well-designed)
e-learning opportunities at affordable prices?
Speaking at ID2SCORM,
List of References
Anderson, T. (2002). Where’s the learning in eLearning
standards? Presentation at a conference held at
Baker, E. (2002).
Interviews for press release for a conference held at
Booz Allen Hamilton. (2002). http://www.boozallen.com/publications/article/658884?lpid=827904
Brown, J. S. (1999). Learning, working, and playing in the digital age. Address to the AAHE 1999 Conference on Higher Education. http://www.ntlf.com/html/sf/jsbrown.pdf
Bunderson, C. V.
(2002). Challenging the standards to accommodate nested elaboration
sequences and domain theory-based measurement: A friendly challenge to the
standards developers. Presentation at a conference held at
Bush, M. D. (1988). Cost-effective interactive videodisc
courseware design. Presentation at the SALT 10th Annual Conference: Interactive
Videodisc in Education and Training,
-- (1989, November). Will the interactive videodisc industry do windows?” Videodisc Monitor, VII:11. http://beauvoir.byu.edu/digital/windows.html
-- (1992, June) Reflections on multimedia development and delivery systems: Hardware, software, and politics. Multimedia and Videodisc Monitor, 10(6), 22-26. http://beauvoir.byu.edu/digital/reflect.html
Clifford, R. T.
(2002). Adding a pedagogical dimension to SCORM. Presentation at a conference held at
Costello, D. (2002, February 28) Overview of AICC and SCORM Standards, Prepared for NASA E-Learning. http://nasapeople.nasa.gov/training/elearning/AICC-SCORM_standards.pdf
DMDC (2002). Military Manpower Training Report. Prepared by Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) for Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense; Department of the Army, Training and Doctrine Command; Department of the Navy, Chief of Naval Education and Training; U.S. Marine Corps, Training and Education Command; Department of the Air Force, Air Education and Training Command.
Dodds, P. (2000). Personal E-mail exchange, July 14.
-- (2001a) The SCORM Overview. Advanced Distributed Learning Network, Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Version 1.2. http://www.adlnet.org/
-- (2001b The SCORM Content Aggregation Model. Advanced Distributed Learning Network,
Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Version 1.2. http://www.adlnet.org/
-- (2001c).
Telephone conversation, October 19.
-- (2002).
Demystifying SCORM. Presentation at a
conference held at
Fisher, A. (2002, March 21). Understanding e-learning - April 2002: A better way to learn. Financial Times. http://specials.ft.com/elearning/FT3W67AL2ZC.html
Gibbons, A. S., Nelson, J. & Richards, R. (2000). The nature and origin of instructional
objects. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The
Instructional Use of Learning Objects: Online Version. Retrieved
Grant, C. C. (2002). Putting Safety First: A Look from Yesterday to Tomorrow on the Building of Our Safety Infrastructure. In M. J. DiBernardo, B. L. Collins, W. G. Leight, (Eds.), Proceedings of the NIST Centennial Standards Symposium, Standards in the Global Economy: Past, Present, and Future. NIST Special Publication 974. http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/210/gsig/sp974-pdf/14-gran-071.pdf
Jacobsen, P. (2001, November 1). Reusable Learning Objects: What does the future hold? e-learning Magazine. http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=5043
Jarvis, S. (2002). Bridging the past with the future:
Surviving the SCORM storm. Presentation
at a conference held at
Looi, C. K. (2000, May-June). A learning ecology for the Internet. Educational Technology, 40(3), 55-60.
Lowell, S. (2001, August). Roman Chariots, Railroad Tracks, MilSpecs, and Urban Legends. Defense Standardization Program Journal. http://www.dsp.dla.mil/newsletters/journal/DSPJ-08-01.pdf, http://www.dnaco.net/~vogelke/articles/railroad.txt, http://standards.nasa.gov/documents/RomanChariots.pdf
MIT. (2002). OKI
Community. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Open Knowledge Initiative Web site.
(http://web.mit.edu/oki/comm/index.html)
Merrill, M. D., Li, Z. & Jones, M. K. (1990a). Limitations of first generation instructional design (ID1). Educational Technology, 30(1), 7-11; http://www.id2.usu.edu/Papers/ID1&ID2.PDF
-- (1990b). Second generation instructional design. Educational Technology, 30(2), 7-14.
-- (2000). Personal E-mail exchange, September 7.
-- (2002).
Mental models, knowledge objects & instructional design. Presentation at a conference held at
Nesmith, A. (1985, March). A Long, Arduous March towards Standardization. Smithsonian, 176-194. http://www.asme.org/history/nesmith.html
Papenfuse, Edward C. (2002, March 25). Quoted in “
S3 Working Group. (2002, March 8). Making
Sense of Learning Specifications & Standards: A Decision Maker's Guide to
their Adoption.
Shapiro, C. (2000) Setting Compatibility Standards:
Cooperation or Collusion? Paper
delivered at a Conference of the
South, J. B. & Monson, D. W. (2000). A university-wide
system for creating, capturing, and delivering learning objects. In D. A. Wiley
(Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning
Objects: Online Version. Retrieved
Syllabus Magazine (2002, April). Standards update: An interview with Ed Walker. Syllabus Magazine. http://campustechnology.com/article.asp?id=6239 .
Wiley, D. A. (2000a). (Ed) The Instructional Use of Learning Objects: Online Version.
Retrieved
-- (2000b). Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects: Online Version. Retrieved July 6, 2002, from the World Wide Web: http://reusability.org/read/chapters/wiley.doc
Wilson, S. (2002, May 17) IMS release simple sequencing specification. CETIS Web site. http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content/20020517124106
-- (2002, June
10). IMS Learning Design specification
clears first hurdle. CETIS Web
Site. http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content/20020610164418
Young, Jeffery R. (2002, January 21). Designer of free course-management software asks, what makes a good web site? Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/free/2002/01/2002012101u.htm
-- (2002, March
11). Research group to release technical standards for its free
course-management software. Chronicle
of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/free/2002/03/2002031101u.htm
Useful Web Links
Advanced Distributed Learning
Initiative (ADL)
ADL Co-Laboratory Network
(ADLCOLAB)
http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=colabovr&cfid=135990&cftoken=21456024
Advanced Learning Infrastructure
Consortium (ALIC)
http://www.alic.gr.jp/eng/index.htm
American Society for Training and
Development (ASTD)
Aviation Industry CBT Committee
(AICC)
Canadian Core Learning Resource
Metadata Application Profile (CANCORE)
CEN/ISSS Learning Technology
Workshop (LTWS)
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/lt/
Centre for Educational Technology
Interoperability Standards (CETIS)
Computer Education Management
Association (CedMA)
Education Network
IEEE Learning Technology Standards
Committee (LTSC)
IMS Global Learning Consortium
(IMS)
Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)
Standards for: Information Technology for Learning,
Education, and Training (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 )
Schools Interoperability Framework
(SIF)
[1] For many people who work in this area, standards imply some impetus for implementation and conformance, whereas specifications are recommendations that do not carry the weight of any standards-setting body such as the International Standards Organization (ISO).
[2] Web addresses for each organization are provided at the end of the article.