The EdReNe Newsletter

February 25^th – 27^th 2009, Oegstgeest in the Netherlands

The first EdReNe workshop on standards and interoperability focused on

• Metadata standards:
  • LOM profiles
  • Automatic metadata generation
  • Strategies for vocabularies and curriculum mapping
• Standardized content
• LMS/VLE – repository integration.

New suggestions to the workshop in Oegstgeest were:

• Authentication / Identity management
• Statistics on repository use (dealt with in workshops on engagement of users)
• Mapping the landscape of standards (identifying current use; which standards help provide which functional requirements of educators/learners; best practise examples).
• A workshop on A&A, to share knowledge and best practices on the topic.
• Successful/less successful use of OpenID and other SSO standards.

Accordingly the present workshop focused on the above issues but mainly as seen from different user perspectives in combination with educational content value chain, which could simply be expressed as: create -> share -> search -> arrange -> use.

From the presentations and discussions during the workshop, it is clear that there are still a number of barriers to overcome when it comes to dealing with standards and interoperability in relation to educational repositories.

It seems evident that irrespective of the user perspective taken current educational standards often do not meet primary user needs. The reasons for this are very diverse depending on whether you want to find, use, produce or reuse digital content, but it underlines the importance of designing for humans first, machines second and reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards instead of developing new. The sheer number of existing standards and differences in their implementation by different providers of tools and content currently seems to have almost made it necessary in some cases to focus on the interoperability between the standards and specifications themselves instead of focusing on the original problem.

Nevertheless there was also (still) consensus on a growing need for ensuring interoperability. One of the important keys to this will undoubtedly be efficient authentication and authorization systems. Various national approaches were presented and discussed during the workshop. An interesting outcome of this discussion was that the success of such initiatives is often much more dependent on political decisions (such as mandatory use of specific solutions etc.) than the actual technical implementation.

During the workshop a number of user stories seen from the perspective of different types of stakeholders were collected in order to identify what is considered the most important user needs. These stories will be matched and correlated with existing standardization and interoperability initiatives in the forthcoming thematic synthesis report.

In the Netherland 4-5 major players facilitate the connection of 18 repositories by offering 8 different interfaces including a mobile interface. Among the standards that are currently in use are: OIA-PHM for harvesting, IEEE-LOM for metadata, SCORM for packaging and SRU/SRW for searching.

A teacher’s experiences with the use of ICT and digital content in upper secondary education over his career as a teacher included examples from the early days of computer assisted instruction to today where the school has a learning portal (VLE) where they put learning resources, organize activities, facilitate collaboration between the students and monitor their use. The importance of being able to adapt and remix content was emphasized – but many teachers seem to be perfectly happy to use the material without adapting it. And many of the most popular content resources are not standardized content packages but rather "just" embedded web pages etc.

Ger Thielemans, Lyceum Enschede, Stedelijk
Lyceum Enschede in Stedelijk, VLE (in Dutch): http://studiewijzerplus.nl/

The Dutch VLE provider TeleTOP works with their customers on facilitating e-learning through their VLE. They put emphasis on integration with other systems – and that was considered one of the main drivers for their adoption of standards. Standards have been adopted from a commercial point of view (necessary marketing argument) but also to improve the users’ value of the VLE and the included content. They also conform to non-content standards such as IMS Enterprise Services, IMS Tools Interoperability and IMS ePortfolio. One of the most challenging issues concerning standards right now – from the point of view of a VLE provider – is the necessity of dealing with multiple solutions to provide single sign on to customers.

Bart van Kimmenade, TeleTOP
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/605.pptx
TeleTOP: www.teletop.nl

As a national agency Kennisnet helps and facilitates the use of digital content in schools by providing the “connecting middle layer” of the Dutch content value chain. One of the prominent examples of this is the central metadata harvester EduRep, which at one end integrates (harvests metadata from) a number of collections from museums and teachers etc., and then allows (specific subsets of) the metadata to be searched from a number of different sites (VLEs, portals etc.). To be part of EDUREP you have to conform to the national LOM profile. A major goal of Kennisnet is to implement and facilitate a market model.

The TSS (Take Shape Share) initiative has special emphasis on teachers as content producers. Teachers learn to produce digital content and register it in the repository. Students learn how to find content and store it in their portfolio. Teachers learn how to retrieve learning objects from the repository and place them inside a VLE, and teachers learn how to manage learning material within their own field. TSS is currently facing the challenge of establishing a sharing culture – responsibility is divided between management and teachers. Sharing is a very social thing and often only done upon request.

Frans Kamp,ROC Westerchelde, and Albert de Vos, ROC Zeeland
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/606.ppt
TSSEurope: www.tsseurope.eu

Teachers at Lyceum Enschede use their VLE to produce and share learning objects. Their mindset is that content has to be easy to produce and adapt, accessible at all times and “fit for purpose”.

Ger Thielemans, Lyceum Enschede in Stedelijk
www.deonderwijsvernieuwingscooperatie.nl/

The presentation generated a plenum discussion on issues such as: How do we overcome barriers of getting teachers to share? What? – A new standard …but now I just thought SCORM was the solution? Web 2.0 and social networking: How can (should?) these be blended into traditional repositories? Engaging teachers: How should we motivate the bulk part of teachers that are not motivated by the technology itself? Who should we encourage to publish – schools or individual teachers? And what would the consequences be?

ASPECT (Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content) is a new best practise network with experts from all major international standardisation bodies and consortia active in e-learning (CEN/ISSS, IEEE, ISO, IMS, ADL). The objective is to specify, develop and inform stakeholders in the educational community of best practice approaches to implementing standards for both educational content discovery and use. Experts and content providers from a range of European countries will work together on improving the use of standards and specifications relating to educational resources and repositories. Standards and specifications suggested by standardization bodies and experts will be put into practice by the content providers. In return they will provide feedback on advantages and disadvantages of the proposed standards and specifications seen from their point of view.

Frans van Assche, European Schoolnet (EUN)
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/607.ppt
ASPECT: http://aspect.eun.org/

The teachable.net organisation accepts material from any contributing teacher (also from small commercial publishers), moderate it for quality, and charge other users per file to download it. All content is made available under an adapted Creative Common license, allowing use within schools. A learning object should be enough for at least one learning lesson.

Edward Upton, teachable.net
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/599.ppt www.teachable.net

Over the past years UNI•C has developed a unified login for several web services in the Danish educational sector. More than 750.000 teachers, students and administrators now have a unique UNI-Login userid and password. The services UNI-Login provides access to include national tests from the Ministry of Education; online subscription based content services from private publishers; streaming video archive from a national broadcaster (DR); VLE/intranets at school level; local network access at schools and all online services behind login developed by UNI•C.

Michael Viskum, UNI•C
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/600.ppt

The Norwegian single sign on (SSO) solution Feide is an identity management system on a national level for the educational sector in Norway. It is managed by UNINETT and is based on SAML 2.0. Feide is based on the principle that every user in the educational sector - pupil, student or employee - receives a user name from their school, college or university, which can be used throughout the sector. Currently 75% of universities use Feide, while this number is only 50% for upper secondary schools. The roll-out to primary schools is still at an early stage.

Trond Hanssen, utdanning.no
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/601.pptx
Feide (English summary): http://feide.no/content.ap?thisId=1307

Kennisnet’s SSO solution (Entrée) is used in the Dutch educational system. The current goal of Entrée is to ensure that all VLE/LMS systems can and will be connected to Entrée using easy to implement webservices. Entrée is a cookie based federation model where the central part is an authentication engine (A-select). The solution provides a Single Sign On path directly from VLE/LMS to a service provider.

Pieter Bruring, Kennisnet
Presentation: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO4/602.ppt
Entrée (in Dutch): http://entree.kennisnet.nl/

Becta coordinates the development of a common file format for content used in interactive whiteboards (IWB), so that teachers can export and share materials and resources irrespective of the chosen IWB provider. The current status is that most of the major IWB suppliers have now agreed to support the new IWB common file format.

Will Ellis, Becta
http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=38729