Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

17 – E-learning Standards
all of the standards recommended by these organizations.
In many cases regulatory bodies reference a set or
sub-set of each other’s standards. Others list only specifications
and guidelines rather than standards, as the
development and/or adoption of what will become a
standard will continue. The following provides a brief
background on each organization. The References section
at the end of the chapter lists additional organizations
and websites that may be of interest.
AVIATION INDUSTRY CBT COMMITTEE (AICC)
The Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) is an
international association of technology-based training
professionals. The AICC develops guidelines for the
aviation industry in the development, delivery, and
evaluation of CBT and related training technologies.
The AICC has developed methods that allow learning
management systems to exchange information and track
the results of contents.
Although AICC primarily attends to the aviation
industry, their focus has led to very well developed
specifications for learning, and particularly for computer-managed
instruction. As a result, a wide range of
learning consortiums and accredited standards groups
adapt the AICC guidelines to their suit their own industries.
The main link for the AICC is http://www.aicc.org
/index.html.
SHAREABLE COURSEWARE OBJECT REFERENCE
MODEL (SCORM)
The Department of Defense and the White House Office
of Science and Technology Policy launched the Advanced
Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative in 1997 to
develop an open architecture for online learning. Its
purpose was to support access to quality education and
training resources tailored to individual learner needs
and available as required.
The ADL Shareable Courseware Object Reference
Model (SCORM) specification provides a common
technical framework for computer and web-based
learning that attempts to foster the creation of reusable
learning content as "instructional objects". SCORM is
based on AICC and the IMS Global Learning Consortium
specifications. The ADL provides interoperability
testing laboratories and intends to establish a certification
program. The main website for SCORM is:
http://www.adlnet.org/.
IMS GLOBAL LEARNING CONSORTIUM
The IMS Global Learning Consortium represents a
number of large and small educational institutions,
training organizations, government and software vendors
interested in incorporating learning resource metadata
into their software products. IMS is developing and
promoting open specifications for facilitating online
distributed learning activities such as locating and using
educational content, tracking learner progress, reporting
learner performance, and exchanging learner records
between administrative systems. The IMS Project is funded
solely by membership (the highest level of participation
is the contributing member, with an annual fee of
$50,000). The main link for IMS is http://www.ims
project.org/.
INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC
ENGINEERS LEARNING TECHNOLOGY
STANDARDS COMMITTEE (IEEE—LTSC)
The Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC),
part of IEEE, is a formal standards body that produces
standards with legal standing. The formal standardization
process is generally based on existing process; in the
case of the LTSC, the other organizations listed here
provide input. The LTSC itself comprises several working
groups that are developing technical standards, recommended
practices, and guidelines for software
components, tools, and technologies. They also design
methods that facilitate the development, deployment,
maintenance, and interoperation of computer implementations
of education and training components and
systems. The URL for the LTSC is http://ieeeltsc.org/.
CANADIAN CORE LEARNING RESOURCE
METADATA APPLICATION RESOURCE (CANCORE)
CanCore interprets and simplifies the IMS metadata
specification, which is a subset of the SCORM specifications.
SCORM has been developed in the context of
military and training applications, whereas CanCore’s
authors and audience have been the public and educators.
CanCore enhances the ability of educators, researchers,
and students in Canada and around the world
to search and locate material from online collections of
educational resources. CanCore is based on, and fully
compatible with, the IEEE Learning Object Metadata
standard and the IMS Learning Resource Meta-data
specification. However, the IMS and IEEE are global
consortia of educational, industry, and government
bodies and the standards they produce are cumbersome
and complicated. (Some standards require support of a
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