The preferred standards recommended in this Report generally comprise those developed by international telecommunications and information technology standards organisations, e.g., the WWW Consortium (W3C), ADRIANE, Dublin Core etc. This is in accordance with the Standards Policy approved in the 1997 Report.
The outcomes of this project are at the forefront of - but entirely consistent with - international standard setting in the education sector. Pertinent information concerning the work of consortia in the education sector, is cited below.
A key issue for the development of online content is the ability to use this content across a range of computing platforms. Australia has recently joined a cooperative of more than 30 other academic, commercial and government organisations based in countries like the United States, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Israel and Singapore which are participating in the development of a common technical framework (an Open Architecture for Learning) for online learning materials. The international Instructional Management System (IMS) project (http://www.imsproject.org) of which all Australian universities, colleges and schools are now members through Commonwealth funding, aims to develop sets of standards and protocols to insure inter-operability between varied online teaching and learning systems. The development of these standards will enable Australia's education and training sectors to develop applications, which are compatible internationally.
The IMS will release a technical specification and a proof of concept implementation that will enable the creation of quality learning environments and materials.
The IMS project has undertaken a broad scope of work. Building out from the requirement for interoperability of instructional content and management systems and from the requirement for working within complex educational enterprises, it has identified five main areas in which they are developing specifications and building prototype code:
Their scope includes any educational setting that can be reached by the Internet, which extends to on-the-job, at-home, as well as in the traditional classroom settings.
The IMS technical specification will provide the general guidelines and requirements to which developers must write, in order to create interoperable content and management systems. A prototype management system will be one example of a functional IMS compliant environment that utilises IMS compliant tools, materials, and external services.
The European Union has developed a Memorandum of Understanding, Multimedia Access to Education and Training in Europe - A Partnership for a Common Approach to the Production and Delivery of Learning Technologies, Content and Services, November 1998 (http://www2.echo.lu/telematics/education/en/news/mou.html).
The aspects of this MoU apply to all areas of lifelong learning and technological activity. The MoU also refers to building consensus around the standards that will underpin the development, location and distribution of educational content. Amongst other functions of the MoU co-operative framework, it is intended that the consensus to be developed here should, by defining user requirements, contribute to emerging standards in this domain - in order to produce genuinely international standards for learning technologies. Research, technological development and demonstration activities by European consortia such as ARIADNE and EUN, as well as individual contributions from authorities, institutions and companies, will bring significant benefits to the MoU co-operation. Worth noting is an intention to collaborate with consortia based outside the EU, such as IMS, to contribute to the emergence of a single set of world-wide standards that meet global learning needs and to the development of higher level standards in the future.
The University of Pennsylvania is conducting a Desktop Computer Standards Project (http://www.upenn.edu/computing/arch/standards/desktop.html). Information Systems and Computing (ISC), Penn's central computing organisation, in consultation with the Penn community, annually publishes recommendations for new desktop computers. The recommendations help hold training and support costs in check, make it possible for people across campus to work together, and ensure access to key administrative systems and tasks. They clarify buying decisions and help in planning equipment life cycles. They also help determine how ISC's efforts in these areas will be focused in support of campus providers of computing services. For "supported" desktops ISC provides specific training, documentation, and hardware and software problem diagnosis.
The Advisory Group on Computer Graphics for Multimedia Standards in the UK (http://www.agocg.ac.uk/AV/standards.shtml) provides a single national focus for computer graphics, visualisation, multimedia and virtual environments within the UK higher education community and is concerned with the handling and processing visual information in all its forms. The AGOCG WWW pages provide information about standards for Graphics, Multimedia, Visualisation and Virtual Environments.
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Last modified on June 28, 1999