Abstract

The key theme of this paper is the role of technical standards in assisting the evolution of the rapidly emerging global e-learning industry. The aim is to provide some historical context to the development of standards for online learning environments, to identify key challenges facing all stakeholders over the next five years and to make a case for more concerted action between various standards-making bodies at the international level.

Introduction

The 1990’s can be characterised as the “cottage industry” phase of the online learning and training industry. The rapid growth of communication technologies through the Internet, together with the emergence of Web technologies encouraged a richer diversity of approaches to online learning and training that were primarily driven by a few enthusiasts within each academic institution or company. The main features of this “cottage industry” phase can be summarised as follows:

· A tendency to replicate existing practices using online transmissions;

· A mechanical approach to the use of emerging technologies;

· Spasmodic support for institutional technological infrastructure;

· Little, or no interaction with information providers such as libraries;

· No conceptual debate about the transformational capacity of online learning;

· The emergence of a new range of systems mostly known as learning management systems;

· An increasing interest in the development by commercial vendors of online educational content; and,

· An awareness of the need for increased levels of technical interoperability but a heavy reliance on proprietary solutions.

At both the conceptual and practical level there were many interpretations of what constituted an online learning or training environment. Communities within and across countries developed their own terminologies to describe the phenomena and the debates were dominated by technologists.

A range of standards-making bodies started to take an interest in the whole area of online learning and training but most of the outcomes were limited in scope and in functionality. International agreement on the scope and nature of the required levels of technical interoperability remained (and still are) elusive.

Emergence of functional and technical architectures

Over the past five years, a more holistic view of both functional and technical infrastructure to support online learning and training has begun to emerge. The purpose of this section of the paper is to provide some context to these developments.

From the mid 1990’s onward there has been a growing preoccupation with the need to achieve some level of interoperability between the emerging learning management systems, such as Blackboard and WebCT, and institutional student information systems. Some early consensus amongst major systems vendors and within the consumer market place recognised that standards were required to ensure, at least, minimum levels of interaction between online learning and administrative systems. The initial debate was highly technical in nature and of necessity limited in terms of interoperability goals. The primary goal was to achieve a reasonable level of messaging interaction between the two systems environments. Meanwhile a growing array of learning content management systems began to emerge, particularly in the US, and the management and transmission of content for learning and training purposes became established in the interoperability arena. This has proved to be a much more challenging area for standards-making bodies because of the huge diversity of content providers and the varying intents of their products and services.

The term “learning object” is now common parlance across international communities, but it is primarily an umbrella term for a range of activities associated with the aggregation and integration of content for use in online learning environments. It is not the purpose of this paper to explore the intricacies of this particular debate, other than to observe that labels are often deployed for new and little understood areas of online activity in any domain.

The initial debate on learning objects was mainly content-focused, as was the associated metadata debate on how to manage learning object repositories. In the last year or so there is a gradual growth in understanding of the need to place learning objects in the context of learning activity and this is a much more challenging concept both at the functional and technical levels.

This marks a major conceptual shift in the standards-making process because it demands input from educators who have traditionally been somewhat aloof from the technical interoperability agendas. The shift from techno-centric to learner-centric architectures marks a growing maturity in the e-learning industry but there will be no “quick wins” in terms of standards because new forums, new players, and new conceptual frameworks are required to develop the learner-centric framework.

There has been a growing realisation over the past year that successful online learning environments are dependent on high levels of access management and identity management, which together effectively match people, resources and services in a variety of distributed environments. The major challenge in working through the functional requirements in these areas is to bring together educators, IT managers and library managers to ensure better integration of services that have previously been managed and accessed as separate systems. The bringing together of these communities is not easy because they come with different cultural and technical views of service paradigms, and many semantic differences remain to be resolved prior to concerted joint programs of action. The most urgent priority is to find new ways of expressing service requirements that can then be translated into functional architectures capable of informing technical architectures and multi-platform technical solutions. In seeking increased levels of service convergence and technical interoperability, rigorous requirements -gathering processes are essential for attaining successful outcomes.

Open Systems and standards

Most systems development for online learning has been technology-driven simply because it is a new area, and the consumers have not been aware of the possibilities for transformational change in advance of using the first generation of technical systems. Technologies will continue to evolve and there is little point trying to “second-guess” the IT market place. It is now apparent that Web Services technologies will have a profound impact on the ability to offer improved service in all industries including education, but the way these technologies are deployed will be many and varied.

From the consumer viewpoint, the important point is to be able to operate in an open systems environment where migration and substitutability strategies are sustainable over reasonable time periods. Interoperability depends on open systems and open systems depend on international adherence to agreed technical standards.

The commercial IT industry is always somewhat ambivalent about the commitment to standards. The capacity to retain market share very often depends on the ability to lock in customers to solutions which may be very proprietary in nature. The standards making process is made complex by the constant jostling and positioning of major vendors as they seek to retain a competitive edge. Progress in agreeing on standards is often incremental and a great deal of persistence is required in reaching agreement on open systems architectures and protocols. The online learning environments are dependent on the coalescing of a range of standards from different agencies and bodies which makes the task even more difficult. Finding appropriate means to influence the international standards agendas remains a major challenge for education communities and potential points of engagement need to be clearly identified.

The way forward

Effective international collaboration between education communities in developing standards agendas is dependent on acceptance of a number of strategic assumptions including:

· Clear requirements gathering processes at the national level;

· National commitment to the funding of experts in the international standards making processes;

· A commitment by organisations such as the IMS Global Learning Consortium to engagement with a wide spectrum of interests in Europe and Asia;

· Improved exchange of standards agendas between peak agencies such as ISO, IEEE, IMS and CEN/ISSS;

· Large scale international collaborative projects to develop and test various aspects of the online learning interoperability agenda;

· International agreement on high-level functional architectures;

· Greater coordination of technical input to the development of particular areas such as metadata schemas;

· The development of national testbeds to provide a focal point for testing systems interoperability; and,

· The creation of new forums to engage educators in the task of defining transformational change in online learning environments.

Conclusion

The agendas outlined in this brief paper may seem rather imposing and the resultant timescales may seem rather long, given the pace of technological change and the rapid evolution of online learning.

The development of standards, however, is a dynamic process which is forever changing in response to new directions in operating environments. Agreement on standards does not come easily but the rewards are immense upon reaching agreement. It is essential therefore that the international education communities review their commitment to creating standards agendas that are likely to enhance interoperability in an orderly, viable way so that the dream of transforming online learning activity may become a reality.

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