e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: IMS

  • Opening Up the IMS

    In general, I am a fan of the IMS. I believe that we need interoperability standards in education, and I think that the IMS’s recent work such as the released Common Cartridge standard, the in-progress Enterprise Services v2 (now called Learning Information Services, or LIS) and Learning Tool Interoperability standards, and the foundational requirements work happening within the Learning Technology Advisory Council (LTAC) are going to prove to be important drivers of learning impact over the next several years. That said, I am also highly sympathetic to complaints about the IMS’s policy of members-only access to specifications under development. There’s something fundamentally contradictory about open standards being developed behind closed doors.

    Over the past 18 months, I have had the privilege of participating in the IMS work on a regular basis. During that time, I have mostly kept my mouth shut about the openness issue. Out of respect for the staff and the board, I wanted to experience the process from the inside and see how it works today before advocating change. But at the Learning Impact conference last month, I decided to speak out.

    I didn’t mince words. At one point I said, “I know plenty of people in the ed tech community–good people, exactly the kind of people that we need to participate–who think that the IMS is some kind of secret society.” I got a fair few “amens” from other participants, both publicly and privately. To his credit, IMS CEO Rob Abel responded positively and non-defensively. (I expected nothing less.) In the spirit of that dialog, I am going to articulate my case for the further opening of the IMS specification development process here.

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  • Common Cartridge: e-Learning Made Easy

    This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.

    On September 4, 2007, a summer morning in Adelphi, Maryland, the workgroup, breakfast in hand, slowly assembled into in a large conference room at the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC). The tables were assembled in a U-shape with twelve places on each of the three sides. A digital projector on a stand in the center became the symbolic altar of digital technology. A large screen at the open side of the U illuminated knowledge with multicolored four-line outlines, charts, graphs, “screen captures” and illustrations.

    Heads down behind black or sliver laptop screens, eleven representatives of publishers, software suppliers, higher education organizations, and colleges and universities sat scattered among the conference tables. As part of the IMS Global Learning Consortium Common Cartridge Test Fest, they had been considering how this technology could be used to transfer digital content from publishers and authors to learning management systems for use by faculty and students.

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  • Thoughts on "Analytics" and Privacy

    Last week at the IMS conference, the LTAC (Learning Technology Advisory Council) had an interesting and, I think, fruitful discussion about “analytics.” In this context, the term umbrella term covers various types of data analysis that would be useful in helping ensure that more students learn more and better. One example that came up a couple of times in the discussion was some work done by John Campbell at Purdue University showing that analysis of some basic stats out the LMS (e.g., how recently and frequently a student has logged on) will predict the likelihood that the student will persist in the class and pass it with a very high degree of accuracy. The idea is that if you could get an early warning that a student is at risk, you can intervene and hopefully help that student get through a rough spot.

    Of course, developing this kind of tool raises all sorts of interesting problems, not the least of which is privacy.

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  • What Really Happened at SUNY

    I was doing a bit of research on the IMS Tool Interoperability effort and I ran across this post by Chuck Severence. He was enthusing about the need for the developing standard–a sentiment which I wholeheartedly support (although I don’t know enough about TI yet to know how I feel about the way they propose to meet the need).

    At any rate, this bit caught my eye:

    This is like a holy grail – like a quest – and some have tried and come up short – SUNY is a good example where they insisted that hte [sic] “future is now” and ultimately ran out of steam and “lived in the present” and went with Angel (a good choice by the way).

    Chuck probably has no way of knowing this, but his characterization of how things went at SUNY isn’t entirely accurate. While I have generally avoided blogging on this topic to-date, I have decided to break my silence and make just a few comments.

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  • A New Article Out

    I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to post notice that I have a new article published in ALT-N. I’ve been having conversations on and off with Rob Abel about ways to ensure that educational technology standards (and, of course, the educational technologies themselves) are more effectively informed by our developing understanding of best practices in online teaching and learning. More recently, I’ve been having somewhat similar conversations with Seb Schmoller, except in the context of ALT rather than IMS. Coincidentally, Seb sent me an issue of ALT-J that talks about the use of pattern languages to make sure that accepted best practices in online learning are more effectively informed by various cognitive and learning theories, and vice versa. (Longtime readers know that I have a fondness for notion of pattern languages and have even created a category on my blog about applying the concept to education.) As I read the article, it occurred to me that use cases serve a similar bridging function between software users/practitioners and software developers. If you could form a bridge between a pattern language of educational best practices and a body of use cases that describe how software could support those best practices, then you might really have something. Hence, the article.

    As usual, Stephen Downes as a few nits to pick.

    To begin with, he complains about the use of the word “praxis,” which he describes as “just the word ‘practice’ with an attitude.” It’s true that “praxis” is often incorrectly understood as and used interchangeably with “practice,” which is why I usually avoid using it. I chose to use it this time for two reasons. First, the authors of the article on pattern languages used it, so if I chose not to use it I would be creating an inconsistency in language which I would have to take significant word count to explain. More importantly, though, they had used it correctly. Praxis, properly understood, refers to the set of best practices that is empirically derived from practice (as opposed to being the practice itself). It is a kind of experiential-derived theory and is meant to be contrasted to more classical scientific theory. So principles of physics are theory while principles of engineering are (generally) praxis. Or, in this context, principles of education derived from cognitive psychology are theory while principles of education derived from teaching experience are praxis.

    His other complaint is…well…I’m not sure what it is. He writes,

    I’m uneasy with this – it’s hard to articulate why, exactly – but I don’t think software should be designed to ‘do things’ so much as it should be designed to ‘create capacity’. I know that’s not a very clear distinction. But it’s like the difference between ‘process’ and ‘creation’.

    He’s right about one thing. It’s not a very clear distinction. In fact, I have no idea what he’s talking about. The only thing I can think of regarding “creating capacity” is Don Norman’s concept of affordances. But affordances are entirely consistent with use cases. In fact, use cases are an excellent (and commonly used) way to ensure that your software is designed to “create capacity” in the way that users want.

    So I guess I’m still in the dark. If Stephen (or anyone else) wants to couch his criticism in concrete terms that are consistent with the…um…praxis of user-centered software design, then I’ll be happy to respond further.

  • Building Bridges To Nowhere

    Speaking of both standards compliance and Blackboard, IMS CEO Rob Abel has posted an interesting comment on the Wired Campus’ blurb regarding a Blackboard/SAP integration deal:

    It is important for the readers to understand that there are currently administrative system providers such as Oracle working within the nonprofit IMS Global Learning Consortium to create open standards for the type of integration mentioned between administrative (SAP) and course management (Blackboard) systems. SAP is not currently a member or participant in IMS and, as such, is not involved in this work. Buyers need to understand that proprietary integration schemes limit their choice and involve greater total cost of ownership. There has been quite a bit of “lip service” to standards and we are doing our best to change that. As such, IMS will be developing a certification and compliance program for the next generation of enterprise data exchange and I suggest that buyers look to the IMS web site (www.imsglobal.org) to see which vendors are participating members and which products are compliant.

    This is all of a piece with the Common Cartridge issue. If customers don’t demand standards compliance, then they will remain at the mercy of vendor lock-in. The last thing you want to hear is that you can’t change to a better LMS because the non-standard integration with your Student Information System (SIS) will break.

    Are these standards perfect solutions? Of course not. Standards specifications are rarely perfect and even more rarely perfect on the first try. For example, one LMS developer told me he had concerns that that the current Common Cartridge specification doesn’t give him very good tools for ensuring that his platform fully complies with it. So glitches will happen and the spec will need to be refined. But that won’t happen unless customers demand standards compliance first and then demand improvements to the standards as the needs are identified.

    Despite what some bloggers may tell you, there is plenty of evidence in this industry as well as others that customer demand can drive standards adoption. (SCORM is one good example off the top of my head.) So go ahead and be demanding. Tell the vendors that that you simply will not adopt a platform that locks you in by neglecting standards compliance.

  • Why Teachers' Unions Should Demand Support for the IMS Common Cartridge Standard

    I just got back from the EDUCAUSE conference and man, do I have a lot to write about. I’m going to start with the IMS’s announcement of the new Common Cartridge standard. Now, I know that technical standards aren’t always the stuff that gives you goosebumps. But if you are a teacher–particularly a unionized teacher–pay attention to this particular standard. This is a quality of workplace environment issue. (more…)