Activity Plan: Curriculum Description

This paper provides a description and project plan for the Curriculum Description activity within the Technical Standards for Digital Education project.

This document is a work in progress: it will be updated in collaboration with the focus group for this activity.

Table of Contents

• 1.Activity summary
• 2.Expected outcomes
• 3.Deliverables and timeframes
• 4.Methodology
• 5.Related standards activities
• 6.Related projects
• 7.Communication and dissemination plan
• 8.Further information

© Copyright 2009 University of Southern Queensland

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1.Activity summary

Curriculum content comes from multiple sources (the web, publishers, jurisdiction content development projects, cultural agencies). Descriptions of this content are often not aligned to local or national curriculum; and alignment will become critical as the National Curriculum Board completes its work. Content providers need to easily describe their curriculum content with multiple local curriculum; this is already established practice in content packaging, e.g. IMS Common Cartridge. Well structured machine readable curriculum descriptions help teachers, parents, students, administrators and employers:

• discover content based on their local curriculum and the national curriculum
• see local tailoring of National Curriculum and understand the relationship of the local to the National Curriculum
• relate local curriculum to international curricula to allow greater access to international content
• chart progress with respect to a curriculum

This activity will support school sector uses of machine readable curriculum descriptions, by establishing standard approaches informed by recommended practice.

2.Expected outcomes

Support work on machine-readable curricula

This activity will support work promoting machine-readable approaches to curriculum and work on infrastructure supporting machine-readable curriculum. The aim is to achieve the benefits articulated above - particularly in light of the National Curriculum now under development. To do so, this activity will identify pertinent project work under way by other bodies, and will provide technical analysis and feedback to those projects. It will also support those projects building demonstrator and pilot applications for curriculum-driven resource discovery, by drawing on the recommended practices and standards intelligence described below.

Recommended practice, machine readable curricula

This activity will also gather intelligence from standards bodies, and recommended practice from e-learning practitioners, in machine-readable curricula, their applications, and their use in resource metadata. This will result in more efficient and effective use of machine readable curricula. Applications include the automated alignment of curricula to each other, alternate learning plans, progress reporting, and content discovery (which critically relies on using curriculum objectives as resource metadata). The project team will establish requirements in the Australian school sector in collaboration with the focus group, and will communicate those requirements to standards bodies.

3.Deliverables and timeframes

4.Methodology

• Identify sector requirements through consultation with key stakeholders and focus group.
• Analyse standards on curriculum use in content discovery (Common Cartridge, ISO SC36)
• Analyse current practice on use of machine readable curricula (ASN)
• Write progress report, capturing key findings (Deliverable 2)
• Provide feedback to ongoing projects on current practice, available standards, sector requirements and project scoping. (Contingent on project funding)
• Provide input and feedback for standards activities discovery (Common Cartridge, ISO SC36), representing Australian requirements and informed by sector consultation
• Communicate findings on benefits of machine-readable curricula
• Support projects in demonstrator implementation for curriculum-driven discovery (Contingent on project identification and funding)
• Write closure report (Deliverable 3)

Sector consultation plan

• Establish focus group through sector contacts, with at least three meetings, including one face-to-face. Focus group to stay in communication through EDNA Groups. (This will prove necessary only if projects on machine-readable curricula are not identified for support through the activity)
• Approval of nominees for focus group.
• Circulate background brief to focus group and key stakeholders. Integrate feedback.
• Ongoing consultation on requirements and current developments in machine readable curriculum.

5.Related standards activities

6.Related projects

7.Communication and dissemination plan

It is critical for this activity to achieve its goals that the information it gathers and produces is disseminated effectively to the appropriate audiences. The focus group will define the communication strategies it will employ, taking advantage of existing channels relevant to each member's organisation and jurisdiction. Communication to the sector generally may take advantage of wider dissemination methods such as web site postings, blog posts and sector-wide mailing lists and events.

8.Further information

Activity lead: Nick Nicholas

Project team members: Nigel Ward, Owen Oneill

Focus Group: TBA

Link Affiliates: http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/

The Technical Standards for Digital Education project is funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)