The Who, What, Why, and How of e-Learning Standards

Nina Pasini
Senior Instructional Systems Designer
Learning Systems Architecture Lab
Carnegie Mellon

The List Goes On and On

If you are new to e-learning, you may feel overwhelmed by the shear volume of terms and theories you hear bandied about . . . WBT, CBT, customized learning, learner profiles, learning management systems, blended-learning . . . the list goes on and on. Even if you’ve been around the e-learning industry for a while, you’ve probably been party to some discussions about learning standards and learning specifications, and conforming or complying with those standards and specifications.

What exactly are learning standards? Why are they important? Who develops these standards? Which ones are the best? Where can I learn more about them? If you’ve been asking yourself questions like these, this article will attempt to answer them, and refer you to additional resources if you are interested in learning more.

What are Standards?

Competing Standards: Betamax versus VHS

Many of you should remember one of the big decisions your household had to make in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s: should we purchase a VHS player or a Sony Betamax? The debates were often long and fruitless. In the end, price was usually the determining factor. While Beta was, with little disagreement, the superior technology of the period, the willingness of JVC (the company that created VHS) to share their VHS specification with their competitors sped production of VHS players and facilitated adoption of VHS among consumers because prices for VHS players/recorders were lower.

Legacy issues

VHS became the industry standard for video players for nearly twenty years until the DVD came along. And, you can still find VHS players at any electronics store today, right beside the new DVD players. Why would anyone still purchase a VHS player? Well, if you are like many people, you have lots of legacy content on VHS that you still want to view. Replacing all those movies with DVDs can get pretty expensive, so it may pay to keep the VHS tapes around for a few more years.

Advantages of standards

So what do VHS players have to do with standards for learning content? Webster’s dictionary provides a particularly relevant definition of a standard as "something that is established by authority, custom or general consent as a model or example to be followed." In the VHS example, one company (JVC) created a product specification, allowed others to follow the specification, and revolutionized the home entertainment industry. Not only did those companies make more money for themselves, but they also created entirely new industries for video rentals and video distribution. Anyone who had a VHS tape could use it in any VHS player, so it was easy to stop by a Blockbuster video rental store near the mall to pick up a movie when the neighborhood video rental store didn’t have a copy of your favorite flick. The same concept applies to learning content.

Why are e-Learning Standards Important?

Impact on the bottom line

Various groups in the e-learning industry realized that by creating and sharing standards for the delivery of content and the functionality of learning technology systems, they could grow the entire industry, thereby resulting in new industries and revenue streams for everyone involved. It sounds novel in an industry where learning has always been considered a noble, unquantifiable pursuit, but if you are a very large corporate or government entity who purchased a Betamax when everyone else purchased VHS, you can understand how saving money on your learning and training budget impacts your bottom line.

With the development of learning standards that enable content to be reusable, interoperable, durable and accessible, e-learning content is becoming more affordable and more pervasive. Specifically, this means e-learning standards are important for a variety of reasons from a number of different perspectives.

Authoring perspective

When standards are applied, the output of the authoring tool should work on any delivery system. From the content development standpoint, the tools used to author content become less relevant. You could conceivably have a single team of developers each using a different authoring tool. Furthermore, content that is designed to be reused will provide greater flexibility for content developers, instructional designers, and instructors who want to reconfigure, recompile, re-sequence, revise, or update learning materials. Savings will result when there is a sufficient amount of content to create entirely new learning experiences from individual pieces of existing content. Does this mean that content developers and instructional designers will lose their jobs? Absolutely not, it means their jobs will become more challenging and rewarding, because they will have to be able to create these new, instructionally-sound learning experiences from content they may or may not have developed while still ensuring it contains enough context to be meaningful to their intended audience.

Content management view

The management of learning content also becomes easier when standards are applied. The vocabulary used to describe items, components, systems, and requirements will be similar. A single system may fulfill multiple content and learner reporting requirements across a large organization for all learning content. Much like the investment you may have made in VHS tapes that you don’t want to replace with DVDs, organizations that make a significant and long-term investment in their learning content and learning technology systems cannot replace content or systems every time something changes. Standards specify the formats and protocols required for individual pieces of content and how the system should read, render, and track that content, so if a content provider or system vendor upgrades a product, or leaves the industry as the result of a merger, acquisition, or divestiture, a new standard-compliant vendor can easily provide a compatible product or replacement system.

Learners benefit too

For learners, using standards-compliant learning can make e-learning easier to use and more efficient. Common instructional patterns and navigation themes will reduce the time required for each learner to get up to speed on “how to learn” for each new course or product they use. Having these consistent patterns also reinforces learning. This means learners spend less time away from their normal duties and learn new content faster. To recap, learning standards can expedite the content development phase, simplify the content management phase, and enhance learning – sounds like standards can be a win-win-win e-learning solution!

Who is responsible for the development of e-learning standards?

Specification developers start the ball rolling. The development of e-learning standards is a complicated, time-consuming, and challenging process. In fact, there are a number of things that happen before a document can officially be considered a standard. In the case of e-learning, groups like the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC), IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS), MedBiquitous, and the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) spend many months writing technical specifications that recommend how content should be developed, delivered, tracked, managed, stored, accessed, customized, etc. Representatives of different organizations, content providers, system providers and end users, work together to develop specifications to which they all agree to adhere. This is probably the most interesting aspect of standards development: that competitors can agree that, for the good of the industry, they will collaborate to create a mutually workable solution.

Transformation into standards

Once a variety of specifications are created to address the different aspects of learning, practitioners begin using collections of them to develop their content. As the individual specifications are “proven” to be valuable and stable, they may evolve into accredited standards. The process required to evolve from specification to standard takes several years and yields many iterations of the documents. Numerous individuals from organization around the world must read and approval the documents, so by the time they are officially accredited standards, they are generally in widespread use and have been well-received by their respective communities. The following organizations are accredited developers of e-learning standards:

The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)
MedBiquitous (approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standards developer)
CEN/ISSS – European Committee for Standardization/Information Society Standardization System

Application profiles for user groups

Likewise, collections of specifications may become application profiles. Application profiles are sets of recommended practices for the implementation of a collection of specifications and / or standards for a single community of practice. A community of practice may develop an application profile for several reasons. If the community’s specific reporting, data collection, tracking, or data storage / accessibility needs vary slightly or significantly from existing application profiles, then they may want to customize or extend existing specifications or standards to meet their needs. They may also want to require the community to implement a given collection of specifications and standards in the same way to ensure reusability, interoperability, durability, and accessibility across the community of practice. Two familiar examples of application profiles are the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and MedBiquitous SCORM (MEDBIQ-SCORM).

SCORM was developed by the US Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative for e-learning solutions created by and for the US government. However, the worldwide adoption of SCORM by government, industry, and academic groups has led to its status, and prominence, as the de facto standard in e-learning. MEDBIQ-SCORM is an extension of the ADL SCORM documents, with customizations to metadata that are specific to the needs of the healthcare community.

How Do You Decide Which Standards Are Best for e-Learning?

Choosing standards to adopt

People typically ask which standard is the best for e-learning, but a better question would be which collection of standards would best meet the needs of my organization and my learners? It is essential to understand that not all learning standards or specifications will meet the needs of all learners or of all organizations. The more clearly you understand and define the needs of your organization and learners before you attempt to implement a standard, the happier you will be with the resulting selection. Application profiles are created to meet the specific needs of an organization or industry group, so you may also want to consider the feasibility of creating your own collection of standards.

One of the most widely used and stable application profiles is SCORM. SCORM is actually a combination of the following standards and specifications:

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee

CMI Data Model Standard

CMI API and Run Time Standards

Learning Object Metadata (LOM) and XML Binding Standard

IMS Global Learning Consortium

Content Packaging Specification

Simple Sequencing Specification

Global reach of SCORM

Numerous organizations from around the world have participated in the evolution of SCORM and the SCORM documents have also been translated into French by the Canadian Ministry of Defence and into Japanese by ALIC, the Advanced Learning Infrastructure Consortium. Since SCORM uses existing, stable specification and standards, and puts them together in a manner that provides a meaningful solution to enable reusability, interoperability, durability, and accessibility, it has been widely adopted around the world.

Evolving versions of SCORM

Many learning management systems now comply with SCORM Version 1.2. The latest version of SCORM, SCORM 2004, was released earlier this year. The most significant changes to the SCORM documents were the addition of simple sequencing (from the IMS Simple Sequencing Specification) and use of the official Learning Object Metadata Standard (from the IEEE LOM).

Adopters

Organizations as different as Verizon, McDonalds, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Roche Diagnostics, Boeing, and NETg have embraced SCORM and are finding success in the implementation of SCORM-compliant content. SCORM is being used throughout projects in Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, and across Europe. While each of these organizations selected SCORM for their own specific reasons, the flexibility SCORM provides enables them to meet their requirements to create content that is reusable, interoperable, durable, or accessible – and in some cases, to meet all of those needs.

Where Can I Find More Information?

Additional information about e-learning and learning standards is available from a number of different sources. The lists below provide a starting point from which you will find links to and information about a number of other resources.

Standards Bodies and Organizations

Use these links to download more specific information or to learn about the adoption of the different specifications and standards:

Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative

The organization responsible for SCORM and related documents as well as for “Plugfests,” gatherings where SCORM content and systems can be interchanged. The website provides information about and links to SCORM adopters, third party tools, and user forums.
http://www.adlnet.org/

AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee)

An International organization that develops guidelines for the aviation industry specifying the development, delivery, and evaluation of CBT and related training technologies.
http://www.aicc.org

ARIADNE (Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe)

Develops tools and methodologies for the implementation of e-learning pedagogy and curricula in Europe.
http://www.ariadne-eu.org/

Dublin Core Meta-data Initiative (DCMI)

Develops metadata standards with its working groups.
http://dublincore.org/

EdNA (Education Network Australia)

Supports and promotes Internet-based learning in Australia.
http://www.edna.edu.au/

IEEE LTSC (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Learning Technology Standards Committee)

An international organization that develops accredited technical standards, recommended practices, and guides for learning technology.
http://ieeeltsc.org/

IMS Global Learning Consortium

Develops and promotes adoption of specifications for online distributed learning technologies.
http://www.imsglobal.org

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) JTC1/SC36

Develops standards for Information technology for learning, education and training.
http://www.iso.org

For Further Reading

Follow these links to find papers, presentations, articles and newsletters related to standards-based e-learning:

The E-Learning Guild

A member-driven online newsletter and resource center for e-learning designers, developers and managers. Offers interesting articles, presentations, and symposia by some of the best e-learning designers, developers in the business. Both free and fee subscriptions are available.
http://www.elearningguild.com/index.cfm

e-Learning Guru.com

An online newsletter and reference source for information about trends in the e-learning industry, content development and delivery. Includes an online glossary of terms and links to numerous websites with additional information.
http://www.e-learningguru.com

Learnativity.org

An online resource that provides experience-based research and resources related to learning and learning technologies. It includes members from some of the leading learning content developers, providers, and tool vendors.
http://www.learnativity.org

The Masie Center

An international e-lab and think tank that conducts and sponsors research, explores learning and learning technologies, and hosts conferences and symposia. The website includes links to reports, trends, articles, and conference proceedings.
http://www.masie.com/

Contentology

An online reference center for developers of all types of content. Provides useful links to other related sites as well.
http://www.contentology.com/

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, published, October 2002
Based on cognitive theories of learning and on scientifically valid research studies, the book explains and provides examples of effective approaches to e-learning, including the best ways to use text, graphics, and audio; use of practice exercises and examples.

Article Glossary

Accessible: Content can be identified and located when and as needed to meet learning requirements.
Affordable: Content increases learning effectiveness significantly while reducing time and costs.
Durable: Content does not require modification to operate as software systems and platforms are changed or upgraded.
Interoperable: Content functions in multiple applications, environments, and hardware and software configurations regardless of the tools used to create it and the platform on which it is delivered.
Reusable: Content is independent of learning context and applicable in numerous learning situations or for different learners.

Article Sources

Chyung, Jin. New Rules for Setting Standards in Today's Hi-Tech Market: Lessons Learned from the VHS - Betamax War. URL: http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/impact/f96/Projects/jchyung/ [Last accessed 08 October 2008].

Hodgins, Wayne. White paper for Making Sense of Standards for Distributed Learning, for publication in the 2003 Encyclopedia of Distributed Learning, January 2003.

Rehak, Daniel. e-Learning Standards: Questions, Decisions, Actions. Presented at the annual meeting of Technician Performance Improvement Council (TPIC) July 2003.

The Masie Center. Making Sense of Learning Specifications and Standards: A Decision Maker’s Guide to their Adoption, 2nd ed. e-Learning Consortium Industry Report, November 2003.