Representatives from the most influential standards organizations in the e-Learning industry will meet September 7 and 8, 2010, to discuss harmonization issues of the various Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) specifications.
The groups are the Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC - http://www.aicc.org/dev/), the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL - http://www.adlnet.gov/Pages/Default.aspx), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Learning Technology Standards Committee (IEEE LTSC - http://www.ieeeltsc.org:8080/Plone), and the International Federation for Learning, Education, and Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI - http://www.letsi.org/). This is their first joint meeting to attempt to solve some of the challenges that e-Learning developers face.
The need to move forward
Explaining the impetus for this meeting, Ed Cohen, Chairman of the AICC Training Infrastructure Subcommittee, said, “There have been a lot of changes in the industry over the last few years and we really need to decisively move forward on the standards issue. E-Learning is no longer a novelty, it’s become the standard for courseware delivery and companies need the flexibility to mix courseware and systems from different vendors. Without a universal data standard, that flexibility is lost and the industry, as a whole, suffers.”
The ADL SCORM Harmonization page further notes:
The Web and Internet technologies have advanced at a pace that has now outstripped some of SCORM’s key features. “Web 2.0” and its ability to support collaboration and team-based training are highly-requested approaches that extend the instructional models directly supported by SCORM.
The model of SCORM delivery may be outdated given the ubiquity of cloud and distributed services. General availability to content can drive more just-in-time personalized learning than originally enabled. The SCORM Harmonization effort seeks to address these and other facets of use of content for learning, education, training, collaboration and performance support.
Agenda and registration
The summit meeting will take place at the ADL Hub Co-Laboratory, 1901 N. Bearegard St, Suite 600, Alexandria, VA 22311. There is no charge to attend and the meeting is open to the public, but attendees must pre-register. In addition, ADL will Webcast the meeting (link is on the registration page). The agenda and registration for the summit meeting, along with additional background information, are online.
For background information on the organizations involved in this meeting, and their relationship to the other e-Learning standards group, IMS Global Learning Consortium (which is not taking part in the summit), see Aaron Silvers’ July 13, 2009 article in Learning Solutions, “LETSI and the Past and Future of Interoperability Standards.”
