Global consortium advances e-learning interoperability through adoption of specifications
IMS holds international working meetings to enhance current technical specifications, foster their adoption and address emerging needs in the field
SESTRI LEVANTE, Genoa, Italy - May 16, 2003 Major participants in the global e-learning marketplace gathered in Sestri Levante, Italy this week for working meetings conducted by the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS), the leading international consortium that develops and promotes interoperable technical specifications for online learning.
IMS members from the training, K-12, and higher education sectors, as well as from government organizations worldwide met to develop or expand IMS specifications, e.g. common ways of describing e-learning vocabularies, metadata, accessibility information about learners, and web service-based solutions for exchanging student and course data between systems.
Also in attendance were key governmental representatives from Australia, Canada, Italy, Norway, U.K. and the U.S. Representing the Italian Government Authority for Information Systems in the Public Sector (AIPA) was Professor Mirella Schaerf, Head of Education, who said, "We have recently set Italian guidelines for regulating eUniversities in our country and are now extending them for eLearning in our eGovernment framework. We have worked closely with IMS Italian members since we believe that IMS specs may help us define our application profile which will be based on XML and shared interoperability specs, possibly at a
Pan-European level."
Tore Hoel, project coordinator of the Norwegian Ministry of Education's eStandards project said, "Our National Network for Learning will facilitate the development, exchange and reuse of learning content and services to support lifelong learning. Interoperability standards are vital to this endeavor. We want to find out more about what's happening in the fora that are organizing the dialogue between the educational and the technological communities."
Emerging needs in online learning interoperability were addressed in Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which met to discuss next generation interactive content and runtime systems, ePortfolios, Mobile learning, and course resource sharing between digital repositories and eLearning systems.
Attending the Quarterly meeting for the first time were representatives from the European School Network (EUN) a new Contributing Member in IMS.
"We very much appreciate the participation and input that EUN is making in IMS. Their ideas for using existing schools-oriented specifications along with IMS specifications are very compelling," said Steve Griffin, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of IMS.
EUN is comprised of 26 Ministries of Education that foster innovative learning technologies and access to national and regional school networks for schools, teachers and pupils across all of Europe.
About IMS
The IMS Global Learning Consortium develops open technical specifications to support distributed learning. Its specifications are accessible to everyone at no charge from its website and require no licensing fees to implement. IMS is a non-profit organization supported by members of a worldwide consortium that includes 55 Contributing members and affiliates and 60 Developers Network subscribers. The IMS in Europe foundation supports activities among European members. Information about IMS specifications, on-going activities, and membership is available at the IMS website www.imsglobal.org.
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