More Information

In the last two years IMS Global Learning Consortium has reinvented itself in response to the needs of the global learning and educational technology industry. During that time it has become crystal clear what is needed and where we are headed as an industry to deliver on interoperability, innovation, adoption, and learning impact. Rob Abel, CEO of IMS GLC, will provide a concise overview of the key mandates for IMS GLC, how IMS GLC is delivering, and what to expect at this year's Learning Impact conference. On the eve of the public release of Common Cartridge (already the most widely supported and industry-led learning technology standard) and the emergence of Learning Tools Interoperability and Learning Information Services (formerly known as Enterprise), a complete set of interoperability specifications for the next generation of web and enterprise learning is here. Hear about the latest developments, progress, and plans of IMS GLC as it works with over 115 global partners to support dramatic developments in learning technology around the globe.

David Ernst is the CIO for the California State University (CSU) system--the largest system of four year higher education in the nation. David will outline how the CSU has employed an inclusive, outcomes-oriented approach to identify and implement academic technologies to support the teaching and learning mission of the university.  He will focus on results achieved and next steps to further the CSU commitment to learning impact

Numerous new technologies have appeared in the past year enabling easier ways for an application to establish tight integration between the web and the desktop including: Adobe AIR, Google Gears, and Microsoft Silverlight. This presentation will consider the implications of these technologies on the LMS landscape. In particular, we'll look at a number of LMS usage scenarios not possible in a strictly browser-based implementation model. One such scenario involves Ucompass.com's offline QTI assessment engine that auto-submits test results to a remote LMS server upon re-establishment of an Internet connection.

From its inception, the mission of the Open University in the UK has been to be open to people, places, methods and ideas. In the last few years, the University has become a leading developer and user of open source software and a leading provider of open educational resources. These latter developments have been strategic decisions, driven by both business requirements and their synergy with the University’s core mission of openness. Underpinning this strategy is the use of interoperability standards to provide a flexible IT infrastructure which can respond quickly to changing business needs. The Open University is already a major publisher of open educational resources in the IMS Common Cartridge format and is working to deploy other IMS standards to help achieve its business objectives.

Peter Segall is the President, North America Higher Education and Operations for Blackboard.   Peter will discuss key trends in the development and use of learning technologies in higher education and Blackboard's vision for learning infrastructure and capabilities of the future.   The discussion will focus on the evolution of course management system from simple discrete tools for faculty to teach online to enterprise platforms for effective living and learning experiences for students.

Curtiss Barnes is Vice President of Industry Product Strategy for Oracle. As a major provider of enterprise technology and applications to the education industry, Oracle continues to advance its solutions’ capabilities and scope. Curtiss will discuss Oracle’s Academic Enterprise strategy and the goal of bridging the back-office with the classroom. Learning management is poised for a generational advancement to a solution that provides robust course management but also ties together the broader ecosystem of administrator, faculty, researcher, and student experiences through student information systems, collaborative workspaces, content management, synchronous and asynchronous online learning and other technologies in a seamless way. The discussion will focus on Oracle’s unique role as both a provider of software and a partner to many organizations that serve the industry.

This Executive Presentation provides a high-level summary of the upcoming Carnegie Foundation/MIT Press book “Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge” which addresses the significance of the open education movement in higher education.  As a collection of 30 reflective and generative essays by 38 international leaders and thinkers involved in open education initiatives, the volume explores the challenges to be addressed, the opportunities to be seized, and the potential synergies to be realized from the various efforts in the movement for enhancing educational quality and access.  The participants are directors of major open education projects, administrators, academic technology experts, faculty, researchers, leaders of professional organizations, and program officers and scholars from granting and research foundations who shared broad, diverse, and thought provoking perspectives, ideas, and visions for the future of education.

Presented by the CEO of the world’s leading brands for learning content management & distribution, Giunti Labs and HarvestRoad - now part of the same group - and chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), this speech will introduce vision, cases and needs for open and interoperable infrastructures in digital learning content marketplaces leading to a sustainable learning content economy for the 21st century.