Standard
Definition
- The goal of standardization is to improve efficiency of actions and interactions.
There are various degrees of technical standards:
- "Real standards" of very high formal quality adopted by bodies such as ISO, IEE, IEC, ITU, etc.
- Standards like the W3C "Recommendations" or the IETF "Requests for Comments" (RFCs) or the OASIS document standards.
- De facto standards (usually no formalization at all) like Microsoft products.
- Standards can be open or propriety. Open means publicly available, not necessarily free.
Standards in educational technology
See also educational modeling language that deals in more depth with the question of modeling learning materials and activities
Pedagogical standards
There are no real general standards, but the closet things are
- Rather formal Instructional design methods like MISA who do make a few minimal assuptions about good pedagogy
- Data standards like IMS Learning Design or IMS Simple Sequencing do rely or support some classes of instructional design models. Even IMS Content Packaging default organisation section can be considered a pedagogical standard if one considers that "shovelware" or "page turners" are a standard pedagogical design ;)
- In some countries there are quite precise curricula standards, e.g.
- American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS, 1993) Benchmarks for Science Literacy
- National Research Council’s (NRC, 1996) National Science Education Standards,
Pedagogical data standards
- IMS Content Packaging, a standard for assembly of resources, metadata and sequencing information into a learning object
- IEEE Learning Object Metadata Standard (LOM), a standard to describe artifacts
- IMS Learning Design and IMS Simple Sequencing, to describe pedagogical scenarios
- IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI), a test and testing data standard
- There are more IMS Global Learning Consortium standards, e.g. some related to student data.
- The SCORM 1.2 profile extends IMS Content Packaging with more sophisticated sequencing and Contents-to-LMS communication
- The SCORM 2004 profile includes IMS Simple Sequencing
Systems standards
- The SCORM specifications define some java-script bindings to insure interroperability of simple interactive contents (that is BTW one of the areas where a lot of systems are not Scorm compatible, even if they claim so ...)
- IMS General Web Services to allow for interoperability of various systems. This is a fairly new standard (Jan 2006) and is an interesting initiative.
Overview table
- needs some additions and fixes - DSchneider 12:39, 21 December 2006 (MET)
Name | Version | Description |
Status | Origin | Standards Body |
Part of / adopted by |
Integrates with |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Comments/ explanations |
Not all are shown | Contents are more or less copied from relevant web sites | Is it really used ? and where | Who worked on the spec. | Who is the final authority | Is it part of a collection / profile ? | Can it contain others or is it containable ? |
Content
Packaging (overall structure of a reusable learning object and minimal sequencing) |
|||||||
[[IMS Content Packaging]] | 1.1.2 (8/2001) |
The IMS Content Packaging Specification
provides the functionality to describe and package learning materials, such as an individual course or a collection of courses, into interoperable, distributable packages. Content Packaging addresses the description, structure, and location of online learning materials and the definition of some particular content types. |
? | IMS | SCORM 1.2 | Can contain: |
|
1.1.3 (7/2003) |
Minor change of 1.1.2 | IMS | IMS | ||||
1.1.4 (2004) |
A maintenance release of 1.1.2 (17 precisions meaning that badly written 1.1.3 files should be fixed) | Imports in most LMS (if it can handle the organizations part ...) | IMS | IMS | SCORM 1.2 SCORM 1.4 |
Can contain: IEEE LOM |
|
AICC Course Structure Format | (see below) | AICC | AICC | ||||
SCORM Content Structure Format (CSF) | This format is deprecated (replaced by IMS CP + Scorm extensions that integrate CFS functionality) | AICC | ADL | SCORM 1.1 | |||
Meta Data (description of an overall learning object or parts of it) | |||||||
IMS Meta-Data (MD) | 1.2 (2001) 1.2.1 (2001) |
Outdated now, but older "profiles" require one of these versions. Differences among subversions are minor | Elements from Ariadne, Dublin Core, AICC | IMS | |||
[[Learning Object Metadata
Standard]] (LOM) |
IEEE Std 1484.12.1 - 2002 (IMS 1.3) |
A slightly cleaned up version of IMS Meta Data 1.2 | Part of Content Profiles; Used by some learning object repository | IMS | IEEE | IMS Meta-Data 1.3; SCORM 1.2 |
Usually part of an IMS CP |
Dublin Core | Very popular with digital library, e.g. DSPACE | ||||||
Pedagogical contents and activities (see Educational modelling languages) | |||||||
IMS Content Packaging (CP) (default organization) |
See IMS Content Packaging |
SCORM 1.2 SCORM 2004 |
Part of: IMS CP 1.1.x |
||||
SCORM Content Structure Format (CSF) | See SCORM Content Structure Format above |
SCORM 1.1 | |||||
IMS Simple Sequencing (SS) | |||||||
IMS Learning Design (LD) | |||||||
IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) |
1.2 1.2 Lite |
The IMS Question & Test
Interoperability (QTI) specification describes a data model for the representation of question (assessmentItem) and test (assessmentTest) data and their corresponding results reports |
IMS CP | ||||
2.0 2.1 |
This version adds many features. | IMS CP IMS LD |
|||||
Run-Time environment specifications and data models | |||||||
Run-Time Environment (RTE) | The RTE specifies how content should behave once it has been launched by the LMS | ADL | SCORM 1.2 | ||||
AICC CMI Data Model | This data model makes sure that
a defined set of |
AICC (also IEEE?) |
SCORM 1.2 (RTE); AICC Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) |
||||
Profiles (collections of one or more specifications / standards) | |||||||
AICC Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) specifications | Contains: ICC Course Structure Format; |
||||||
SCORM Content Aggregation Model (CAM) |
The CAM specifies how you should package your content so that it can be imported into an LMS | ADL | SCORM 1.2 | IMS CP IMS MD |
|||
SCORM | 1.0 | Rarely used | ADL | ||||
1.1 | Not well supported (most systems support 1.2) | ADL | |||||
1.2 | This is still the most popular profile (2006)On dec 18 2006, there were 71 certified systems. | Elements from IMS, AICC, ARIADNE, IEEE LTSC | ADL | IMS CP IMS MD |
|||
2004 (1st, 2nd, 3rd edition) | On dec 18, 2006 there were 32 certified products, but no major players. | ADL | IEEE LOM IMS CP |
Some technical standards of interest
There are various standardization bodies and procedures:
- For the moment, see the Wikipedia:Internet standard entry for details
Standardization bodies
This is a list of bodies that create "real" or "de facto" standards
In education
- IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee
- IMS Global Learning Consortium
- IMS Global Learning Consortium
- ADL - Advanced Distributed Learning (SCORM)
- AICC - Aviation Industry CBT Committee
- ARIADNE - Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe
Specialized ICT
- W3C - World Wide Web Consortium (Web standards)
- The Internet Engineering Task Force (part of the Internet Society
- RFC - Requests for comments (Informal Internet standards, sometimes standardized by an "official body" sometimes not. The most important source for Internet standards.)
General
(including ICT standards)
- ISO - International Organization of Standardization (many very formal ICT standards).
- CEN - European Committe for Standardization ,featuring a not standards-compliant webpage ;)
- ECMA (e.g. JavaScript)
- NIST US National Institute of Standards and Technology
Links
- Webstandards.org, a grassroots organization promoting use of standards
- CETIS - the centre for educational technology interoperability standards A British consortium that is the best overall resource on standards related to our field.
- Resource-Base - Standards, Architectures and Open Source in Education. Large index (backended with delious so get nice tag clouds).
References
(see also the entries for various standards !)
- AICC/CMI CMI001 Guidelines for Interoperability Version 3.4. October 23, 2000. Includes: AICC Course Structure Format, AICC CMI Data Model
Available at: http://www.aicc.org/.
- IMS Content Packaging Specification Version 1.1.2
Available at: http://www.imsglobal.org/
- IMS Learning Resource Meta-data Specification Version 1.2.
Includes: IMS Learning Resource Meta-data Information Model, IMS Learning Resource Meta-data XML Binding Specification, and IMS Learning Resource Meta- data Best Practice and Implementation Guide Available at: http://www.imsglobal.org
- IEEE Information Technology - Learning Technology - Learning Objects Metadata
LOM: Available at: http://ltsc.ieee.org/.
- Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), Sharable Content Object Reference
Model (SCORM)® 2004 3rd Edition, Available at: http://www.adlnet.gov/