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IMS Common Cartridge Specification

To fully support this important work join the non-profit Common Cartridge & Learning Tools Interoperability Alliance: http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/alliance.html

What is Common Cartridge?


Common Cartridge is the first of three major standards that comprise a new generation of Digital Learning Services standards to support a new generation of learning technology. These are: 

  • Organized and distributed digital learning content (Common Cartridge - CC)
  • Applications, systems, and mash-ups (Learning Tools Interoperability - LTI)
  • Learner information: privileges and outcomes (Learning Information Services – LIS)

 

Common Cartridge Benefits

 

  • Greater choice of content: Enables collections of learning resources of various types and sources.
  • Reduces vendor/platform lock-in: Establishes course cartridge native formats endorsed by educational publishers, and supports a wide variety of established content formats, eliminating platform lock-in.
  • Greater assessment options: Explicitly supports the most widely used standards for exchanging and tracking assessment items (IMS QTI) providing a standard scoring and tracking alternative that does not require the complexity or overhead of a CBT-like runtime interaction. 
  • Increases flexibility, sharing and reuse: Fits within the educational context of enabling instructors to assemble lesson plans of various resources and publish those as reusable and changeable packages that are easy to create, share, and improve.
  • Supports flexible packaging via URL references to web content: Based on an application profile of IMS Content Packaging v1.2, Common Cartridge manifests support "virtual content" organizations through URL references, thus reducing the size of cartridges while increasing flexibility.
  • Supports collaboration and web 2.0 mash-ups (via future provisioning of IMS LTI): Includes exchange standard for online discussion forums and has been designed to allow future incorporation of IMS Learning Tools Interoperability to enable web service launch and data exchange of distributing learning applications and systems from within Common Cartridges.
  • Supports content authorization via protected resources: Cartridges or portions of cartridges can be protected through a standard open authorization protocol.
  • Allows straightforward migration from SCORM 2004: Common Cartridge and SCORM 2004 are both based on IMS Content Packaging allowing use of tools to convert from SCORM to the advantages of Common Cartridge.
  • Backed by a vibrant community providing tools for implementation and conformance: The Common Cartridge & Learning Tools Interoperability Alliance provides open source and community source tools for automated conformance testing of cartridges, testing of learning platforms, a reference implementation of the authorization service, future incorporation of LTI, and much more.

 

The standard may be downloaded below. It includes at its root a readme.txt file which identifies the documents in the package and their locations. See a list of Common Cartridge Frequently Asked Questions.

Common Cartridge Demonstration Video - Video showing CC creation from SoftChalk authoring tool and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publisher content playing in ANGEL and Blackboard.

 

Version 1.2 - Final Specification

IMS has released the Common Cartridge version 1.2 Final Specification in October 2011. The changes in the revised version updates include:

 

  • Cartridge manifest metadata must refer to version ‘1.2.0’.
  • Cartridge, Resource, and Item metadata can now include curriculum standards.
  • Addition of another optional intendeduse attribute for Web Content Resources; initial attribute values introduced in CC v1.1 were: ‘lessonplan’, ‘syllabus’ and  ‘unspecified’.  Version 1.2 addes the value ‘assignment’.
  • New namespace locations for all schemas.
  • QTI items must include the cc_profile metadata.
  • QTI Fill-In-The_Blank response processing will allow OR in addition to AND and NOT.  This is not strictly something new, but rather OR was omitted incorrectly from CC v1.1.

 

Further information and test cartridges, as well as, guidance and support on conformance and implementation is provided through the Common Cartridge Alliance. Vendors are encouraged to support CC v1.2 and CC v1.2 and the import of CC v1.0 cartridges to leverage the large number of CC v1.0 cartridges already available. Feedback is welcome in the IMS Public Forums.

 

Note that IMS has a GUID Registry which allows for the registration of Curriculum Standard Provider information.

 

 

Version 1.2 -Final Specification and Schemas- PDF
Download the PDF documents and schemas

 

Version 1.2 - Namespaces

Namespace

Path

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/imscp_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_imscp_v1p2_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/imsccauth_v1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_imsccauth_v1p2.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/LOM/manifest

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/LOM/ccv1p2_lommanifest_v1p0.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/LOM/resource

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/LOM/ccv1p2_lomresource_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/ims_qtiasiv1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_qtiasiv1p2p1_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/imswl_v1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_imswl_v1p2.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/imsdt_v1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_imsdt_v1p2.xsd
http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p2/imscsmd_v1p0 http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p2/ccv1p2_imscsmd_v1p0.xsd
http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imslticc_v1p0 http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/lti/ltiv1p0/imslticc_v1p0p1.xsd
http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imslticp_v1p0 http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/lti/ltiv1p0/imslticp_v1p0p1.xsd
http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imslticm_v1p0 http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/lti/ltiv1p0/imslticm_v1p0.xsd
http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsbasiclti_v1p0 http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/lti/ltiv1p0/imsbasiclti_v1p0p1.xsd

 

 

 

Version 1.1 - Final Specification (revised May 10, 2011)

IMS has released the Common Cartridge version 1.1 Final Specification in February 2011 and the revised version in May 2011. The changes in the revised version updates include:

  • Correction made to the path locations of the schema files. ( In appendices and Implementation Guide)

Further information and test cartridges, as well as, guidance and support on conformance and implementation is provided through the Common Cartridge Alliance. Vendors are encouraged to support CC v1.1 and the import of CC v1.0 cartridges to leverage the large number of CC v1.0 cartridges already available. Feedback is welcome in the IMS Public Forums.

 

 

Version 1.1 -Final Specification and Schemas- PDF
Download the PDF documents and schemas

Version 1.1 - Namespaces (Updated 29 March 2011)

Namespace

Path

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/imscp_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/ccv1p1_imscp_v1p2_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/imsccauth_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/ccv1p1_imscp_v1p1_v1p0.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/LOM/manifest

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/LOM/ccv1p1_lommanifest_v1p0.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/LOM/resource

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/LOM/ccv1p1_lomresource_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/ims_qtiasiv1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/ccv1p1_qtiasiv1p2p1_v1p0.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/imswl_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/ccv1p1_imswl_v1p1.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccv1p1/imsdt_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p1/ccv1p1_imsdt_v1p1.xsd

Version 1.0 - Final Specification

Version 1.0 -Final Specification and Schemas- PDF
Download the PDF documents and schemas

Version 1.0 - IMS Common Cartridge WSDL
AuthorizationSyncSingle.wsdl

Version 1.0 -IMS Common Cartridge Final Namespaces to Schema Locations

Namespace

Path

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imscp_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/imscp_v1p2.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imscc/imscp_v1p1

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/imscp_v1p2_localised.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsccauth_v1p0

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_0/imsccauth_v1p0_localised.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imscc/LOM

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_1/lomLoose_localised.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imscc/LOM/unique

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_1/loose.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imscc/LOM/vocab

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_1/vocab/loose.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/imscc/LOM/extend

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_1/extend/custom.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/LOM

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_2/lomLoose_localised.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/LOM/unique

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_2/loose.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/LOM/vocab

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_2/vocab/loose.xsd

http://ltsc.ieee.org/xsd/LOM/extend

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_2/extend/custom.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imscp_extensionv1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_3/imscp_extensionv1p2_localised.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/ims_qtiasiv1p2

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_4/ims_qtiasiv1p2_localised.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imswl_v1p0

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_5/imswl_v1p0_localised.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsdt_v1p0

http://www.imsglobal.org/profile/cc/ccv1p0
/derived_schema/domainProfile_6/imsdt_v1p0_localised.xsd