[FYI] Educom Issues Model for Labeling Educational Material on
Web
Terry Kuny
Terry.Kuny at xist.com
Thu Mar 26 13:41:19 EST 1998
Other information about Educom's Instructional Management Systems
IMS Metadata project, including the specification refered to below,
can be found at:
URL: http://www.imsproject.org/metadata/index.html
To answer one of the inevitable questions: the IMS Metadata Dictionary
incorporates the Dublin Core metadata fields and adds about 21 new
ones.
Regards,
-terry
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For Release Monday, March 23, 1998
INFORMATION CONTACT:
Denis Newman
Director of Market Development
IMS Project
(650) 852-9204
denis at cdl.edu
For contact information for the other organizations, see:
http://www.imsproject.org/press_contacts.html
Industry Consensus Reached on Labeling of Education Materials on the
Internet
Educom's IMS Project "Metadata" Specification to be Used in Software
Tools and Content
San Jose, CA. March 23, 1998. Educom released today the specification for
the technology that software companies and publishers can use to label
educational resources on the Internet. The "metadata" technology makes it
easier for people to find educational resources, to individualize
learning experiences, and to manage the resources within an electronic
marketplace. Educom's Instructional Management Systems (IMS) project, an
industry, academic and government cooperative, has been working with
experts in software, publishing, digital libraries, teaching, training,
and all phases of learning to refine the specification. The work of the
IMS project is being presented today and tomorrow at the Software
Publishers Association conference in San Jose.
The Educom announcement represents a significant consensus on a common
set of metadata for educational materials. The IMS metadata specification
is endorsed by courseware authoring and management product vendors, Allen
Communication, Asymetrix Learning Systems, Inc., Macromedia, and Pathlore
Software Corporation, who provided IMS technical staff with input to the
final version released today. The authoring tool vendors are all
participants in the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) which
maintains an important computer-based training industry standard.
The IMS is coordinating its metadata work with the AICC. The two groups
recently signed a memorandum of understanding to address emerging
computer-managed instruction technologies. They are working together to
identify convergence opportunities that ensure that existing AICC-based
content and IMS-based content can interoperate on the Internet. Oracle
Corporation, which recently joined the IMS cooperative, is assisting in
this convergence. "Our customers want standards-based solutions that
ensure interoperability when selecting content," said Rob Abel, director
of Oracle Learning Architecture (OLA) development. "Oracle will support
AICC course interchange formats and IMS metadata in an upcoming release
of the OLA and is working to assure convergence and compatibility with
the IMS standard."
"In the future, we will use online learning resources the way we now
use libraries and bookstores. The IMS specification for metadata is an
important first step in providing customers the flexibility they need
to make this a reality." - John Kellum, Vice President of Products
Asymetrix
"Macromedia has been working with many of the early participants to
ensure a common set of metadata. Metadata is a key enhancement to the
AICC standard by bringing a common set of descriptions that enable the
rapid location and reuse of content objects. We intend to support this
metadata in future versions of our products." - Jim White, VP and
General Manager of the Learning Division, Macromedia
"Allen Communication is very much in support of standards that will
help us, as an industry, to achieve interoperability and reuse of
training courses, components, and structures across tools and across
companies. This IMS standard is a very important step in helping us
realize this tremendous goal. We will immediately support it across our
entire product line." - Steve Allen, CEO Allen Communication
"The IMS metadata standard has made a huge step forward towards
reality. The IMS community's requirements were matched with the
engineering ‘know how’ of the major tool vendors in the training
industry. The result is a standard that can and will be implemented. It
is a credit to the IMS that this practical approach was taken." -
Leonard A. Greenberg, Chief Technology Officer, Pathlore Software
Metadata will be used by the next generation of search engines to make
searches for content, courses, assessment tools, educational simulations,
and other learning materials much more efficient. Metadata labels will
also facilitate management of educational materials by specifying
information such as learning level and format. Since metadata will also
encode business information such as licensing requirements and price,
they will be the key to electronic commerce and an essential basis for
the greatly expanded market for digital materials. Elizabeth W. King,
General Manager Education Customer Unit at Microsoft, said, "The IMS
metadata specs announced today are a critical element in an overall plan
for an industry standard for Internet-based education."
The specification includes a small set of required labels, lists of
optional labels, and a process for extending the lists of metadata based
on academic discipline and industry needs. Tom Wason, Director of
Research and Evaluation at the University of North Carolina's Institute
for Academic Technology, who leads the IMS metadata effort, explained,
"It is the intention of the IMS project to follow an evolutionary model.
We will start with a minimal set of fields and vocabulary and create a
circumstance that allows managed evolution." The National Institute for
Standards and Technology (NIST) is co-sponsoring with Educom a repository
from which the IMS metadata labels and extensions will be accessible via
the World Wide Web. The repository will support reuse of common metadata
labels by authors, educators, trainers and students around the world.
Paul Lefrere, co-director of the UK's new IMS Center, welcomes the IMS
metadata specification as "a major contribution to international exchange
of materials and the move to a more knowledge-based society". The IMS
Center is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, a recent IMS
investment member, which represents all higher education institutions in
the UK.
The IMS specifications build on current industry standards and support
multiple platforms. The labels include those proposed as the Dublin Core
by a working group of the Online Computer Library Center, Inc., located
in Dublin, OH. The IMS metadata specification identifies two means of
exchanging metadata among computers on the Internet. The first uses
XML/RDF which are the emerging standards developed by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C). The second uses IMS metadata objects that can be easily
exchanged with Java-based and Microsoft ActiveX-based programs via RMI,
Corba, or DCOM. Educom has submitted the metadata specifications to the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to begin the
process of establishing a formal international standard. The IMS project
has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the European
Union-sponsored ARIADNE project to further internationalization in the
context of IEEE. ARIADNE Director, Eddy Forte, said: "With IMS and
ARIADNE joining forces, educational communities in Europe as well as the
US will benefit from common metadata specifications."
The IMS project will release specifications in four other areas over the
next two months. These include a specification for how to create
interoperable content which is described by metadata, the specification
of the student profile information, how to create management systems that
can use interoperable content, and external interfaces to services such
as student record systems and electronic commerce. IMS is also planning
to release next month the first version of its prototype instructional
management system which is an implementation of the IMS specifications
and is currently in early adopter use within IMS-supported international
testbed sites. The prototype is being developed under contract by
Blackboard Inc. in collaboration with other project members. All IMS
specifications and prototype components will be made freely available
once they are released.
The IMS project is part of Educom's National Learning Infrastructure
Initiative. Its goal is the widespread adoption of a set of open
standards for Internet-based education. The project is funded through
investments and in-kind contributions by the following members: Apple
Computer, Buena Vista University, California State University, COLLEGIS,
COLLEGIS Research Institute, Committee on Institutional Cooperation
(CIC), Educational Testing Service, Empower Corporation, Farance Inc.,
George Mason University, IBM Education, International Thomson Publishing,
KPMG Peat Marwick, @Learning, Miami-Dade Community College, Microsoft,
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Oracle, Sun
Microsystems, Unisys, University of California, University of Michigan,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UK Joint Information Systems
Committee, and the U.S. Department of Defense. IMS works with the Defense
Department's Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative providing
technical specifications to support their guidelines for distributed
training systems. Project staff are drawn from California State
University's Center for Distributed Learning, from the COLLEGIS Research
Institute, and from other member organizations. Additional information on
the IMS project can be found at http://www.imsproject.org .
Educom http://www.educom.edu , based in Washington, DC, is a non-profit
consortium of 600 colleges and universities and 100 Corporate Associates
that facilitates the introduction, use and access to, and management of
information resources in teaching, learning, scholarship, and research.
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>From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Wednesday, March 25, 1998
Academic-Technology Group Issues Model
for Labeling Educational Material on Web
By LISA GUERNSEY
EDUCOM announced Monday that it had finalized a set of digital labels
-- known as metatags -- that will make finding educational materials on
the World-Wide Web easier.
Officials at EDUCOM, a nationwide consortium of university and
corporate technology users, have posted specifications for the metatags
on a Web site. The specifications outline what information should be
embedded in the computer code behind educational Web pages and
Web-based computer programs.
A Web page that complies with the specifications will have metatags
that provide information about the page's contents, who published it,
what it is titled, and when it became available on line, among other
details. The metatags could also include additional information, such as
descriptions of how interactive a Web site is, or whether a license is
required to use a particular computer program.
The tags will be invisible to Web users. But they are designed to be read
by advanced search engines so that when people look for educational
materials on line, the search engines will assemble lists of resources that
better match the users' needs. The tags will also enable computer
companies to build software for courses around a common labeling
standard, EDUCOM officials said.
The effort to create the metatags, called the Instructional Management
Systems project, drew on the expertise of representatives from
universities, libraries, computer software and hardware companies,
associations devoted to creating standards, and the U.S. Department of
Defense. A draft set of metatags was released for review last fall. Several
software companies endorsed the final draft before it was announced
this week, at a Software Publishers Association symposium.
Background story from The Chronicle:
"Consortium Unveils System to Ease Finding
Educational Material on the Web," 9/19/97
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Mr. Terry Kuny Home Office: 819-776-6602
XIST Inc./ Email: terry.kuny at xist.com
Global Village Research URL: http://xist.com/kuny/
Snail: Box 1141, St. B, Hull, Quebec, Canada, J8X 3Y1
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