e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: Interoperability

  • The Case for Learning Platform Grade Book

    The Case for Learning Platform Grade Book

    A little while back, I wrote a post reflecting on how close we are to getting a next-generation, modular learning platform and how the next steps in the IMS standards-making process can influence whether and when we might actually see this elusive beast in the wild. Today, I’d like to zero in on what I believe is the next logical step, given the current state of the ecosystem: namely, making LMS grade books fully interoperable with courseware and other ed tech tools.

    No, it isn’t sexy. No, it won’t revolutionize education. But I believe that it will benefit vendors and educators alike in a way that will shift relationships among ed tech tools, reduce wasted effort reinventing the wheel, and open up new design possibilities.

    (more…)

  • Digital Badges Are Gaining Traction

    Digital Badges Are Gaining Traction

    One trend that struck me as new at the recent IMS Global and ASU/GSV conferences was a ramping up of activity around digital badges. At the moment, they seem to be filling in cracks that more formal credentials don’t cover. While there are some efforts to convert formal certificates and (more rarely) degree programs into stackable micro-credentials, those activities are mostly happening around the edges at the moment.

    (more…)

  • A Flexible, Interoperable Digital Learning Platform: Are We There Yet?

    A Flexible, Interoperable Digital Learning Platform: Are We There Yet?

    In 2005, some colleagues and I had been tasked with identifying a single LMS that could serve the needs of all 64 campuses of the State University of New York—from Adirondack Community College to SUNY Stony Brook to the two medical schools. We came to the conclusion that no single LMS at the time could meet such diverse needs. We proposed instead that SUNY should build a modular system from which each campus, and indeed each educator, could create their own fit-for-purpose digital learning environment. We called this idea the Learning Management Operating System, or LMOS.

    We were neither the first nor the last group of people to propose such an idea. We had been preceded by e-Learning Framework, which had been put forth by the UK’s Joint Information Services Committee (Jisc) a year or two earlier. In 2012, Phil wrote about the idea of  Learning Platform here on e-Literate. In 2015, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) started promoting the idea of a Next-Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE).

    There are some conceptual and implementation differences among these different formulations, but they share two things in common. First, they all posited that contemporary learning environments were insufficiently flexible to meet a diverse range of teaching and learning needs. Second, none of them have been implemented. An upcoming issue of EDUCAUSE Review will focus on NGDLE, in part to try to build momentum for it. I have contributed an article.

    Nearly a decade and a half after the idea of some kind of modular learning environment surfaced, why hasn’t it happened yet? How close are we? What are the barriers? Having recently returned from IMS Global’s annual Learning Impact meeting, I am convinced that we are closer than ever. But how quickly the remaining barriers fall and how well the end result works will depend heavily on what happens next in the standards-making process.

    (more…)

  • Recommended Viewing: Learning Analytics Webinar on Caliper and xAPI

    If you follow learning analytics closely, you may be aware that there are two learning analytics standards—Caliper and xAPI—that appear competitive with each other at a casual glance. A webinar hosted by the Apereo Foundation between Anthony White, who is deeply involved with Caliper in the IMS working group on behalf of the University of Michigan, and Aaron Silvers, who works on xAPI through the Data Interoperability Standards Consortium (DISC), had an hour-long conversation about how the two standards relate to each other.

    The Apereo news page where I found the video gives a disclaimer about the views of the presenters being solely their own, which sounds like a standard thing but leapt out at me as being a little odd in this context. I’ve heard second-hand rumblings that the growth of these two standards has re-envigorated the periodic diplomatic negotiations between the two standards bodies about how they should be working together (some of which is actually confirmed in the video), so I suspect that more than the usual care is being taken to make the conversation officially unofficial. Still, it’s really helpful to hear two practitioners who are familiar with the respective specifications talk about the details, if you’re into that sort of thing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Y5oN9z6Z0&feature=youtu.be

  • The IMS Is More Important Than You Think It Is

    I have long argued that the development of technical interoperability standards for education are absolutely critical for enabling innovation and personalized learning environments. Note that I usually avoid those sorts of buzzwords—“innovation” and “personalized learning”—so when I use them here, I really mean them. If there are two fundamental lessons we have learned in the last several decades of educational technology development, they are these:

    1. Building monolithic learning environments generally results in building impoverished learning environments. Innovation and personalization happen at the edges of the system.
    2. There are tensions between enabling innovation at the edges and creating a holistic view of student learning and a usable learning environment. Integration does matter.

    To these two education-specific principles, I would add a general principle about software:

    • All software eventually grows old and dies. If you can’t get your data out easily, then everything you have done in the software will die with it (and quite possibly kill you in the process).

    Together, these lessons make the case for strong interoperability standards. But arriving at those standards often feels like what Max Weber referred to as “the strong and slow boring of hard boards.” It is painful, frustratingly slow, and often lacking a feeling of accomplishment. It’s easy to give up on the process.

    Having recently returned from the IMS Learning Impact Leadership Institute, I must say that the feeling was different this time. Some of this is undoubtedly because I no longer serve on any technical standards committees, so I am free to look at the big picture without getting caught up in the horrifying spectacle of the sausage making (to mix Germanic political metaphors). But it’s also because the IMS is just knocking the cover off the ball in terms of its current and near-term prospective impact. This is not your father’s standards body.

    (more…)

  • The IMS’s New “Caliper” Learning Analytics Interoperability Framework Is Deeply Interesting

    The IMS has announced the initial public release of something they call Caliper, which they characterize as a learning analytics interoperability framework. But it’s actually much, much more than that. In fact, it represents the functional core of something that my SUNY colleagues and I used to refer to as a Learning Management Operating System (LMOS), and is something that I have been hoping to see for eight years, because it promises to resolve the tension between the flexibility of lots of  separately developed, specialized learning tools and the value and convenience of an integrated system.

    Let’s take a peek at the framework to see why I’m so hopeful about this framework. But before we do that, you should fasten your seat belts and strap on your aviator goggles. It’s going to get geeky in here.

    (more…)