Final Report: Integrated Learning Environments and 21st Century Learning


This is the final report for the Integrated Learning Environments and 21st Century Learning activity within the DER Technical Standards for Education project.



Table of Contents


© Copyright 2010 University of Southern Queensland


Introduction

As elsewhere in information technology, IT in schools is necessarily moving away from monolithic isolated systems, to smaller systems interoperating and sharing data. There is a growing requirement for integration of systems in the school sector: administrative systems within a jurisdiction; administrative systems with systems external to the jurisdiction (e.g. vertical reporting); collaboration systems (internal and external) with learning environments; learning environments with content systems (closed and open); and administrate systems with learning environments. Such integration is undertaken to achieve a variety of goals, including

  • vertical reporting to national bodies
  • efficient dissemination of common data
  • coordinating learning content from multiple systems (including the Open Web) into coherent learning experiences
  • supporting online collaborative and interactive experiences in learning environments
  • gathering information from the learning environments for administrative purposes

In line with this trend, standards and infrastructure such as SIF and IMS Common Cartridge now enable access for teachers and administrators to data and resources across multiple school sector systems. Standards and infrastructure is also now available which allows functionality in one learning environment to be integrated into another environment, such as Web 2.0. Promoting greater consistency in standards, and frameworks for exchanging data between sectors as well as individual systems, will enable greater efficiencies and more synergies. This will improve the learning experience for students as well as the management of schools and learning.

The drive to greater integration has the following business drives that need to be taken into consideration:

  1. Any sharing of learning or data between systems must be consistent, secure, and cheap
  2. Authenticated access to external systems should be possible with minimal disruption to user workflows
  3. Schools are increasingly seen not just as information consumers but also as information providers; workflows need to be in place for publishing learning content where appropriate - which involves integrating it with external systems

The following scenarios illustrate the gains in efficiency and improved access to information through integrating systems, in both the administrative and learning domains in education.


Integrated Administration Environments

Student Karen enrols in Swan Hill Primary School in Victoria; she was previously enrolled in another school in Victoria. The Swan Hill Primary systems are synchronised with the central Victorian jurisdiction systems, which hold data on academic performance, special needs, and custodial information. Swan Hill Primary can receive all the information it needs on Karen from the central systems on demand, through SIF, and can update the central systems with new information in the same way.

Swan Hill Primary needs to report aggregate, anonymised student performance information to the Commonwealth. Data on students’ academic performance, including Karen's, is gathered from Swan Hill’s assessment systems, and sent to the Victorian jurisdiction system through SIF. The jurisdiction aggregates all the performance data, anonymises it, and reports it upstream to the Commonwealth through SIF. The entire process is automated and efficient.


Integrated Learning Environments

Karen is choosing between projects she can work on online for her science course. The school Learning Management System has live access to the school Student Management System. The Student Management System has information on what learning outcomes Karen has already fulfilled. While Karen is choosing projects from the LMS, the LMS display communicates with the Student Management System, and lets her know which projects would help her satisfy an assessment task she has not yet been credited for.

Karen's science teacher Hiram is doing learning design through LAMS (Learning Activity Management System). LAMS sequences learning activities as a workflow. The learning activities are hosted on Moodle. Hiram uses his school login to access LAMS, without having to register separately for LAMS as a user, and having to use a separate password. Hiram can use LAMS to sequence learning activities on Moodle, and the two tools can access each other directly across the Web.

Karen and Jenny use the learning activities on Moodle in Hiram’s science course, as a basis for a collaborative assignment built through Google Wave (or some comparable Web 2.0 technology). The Web 2.0 technology is integrated with Moodle. This means LAMS creates a seamless interactive learner experience for the lesson: Karen does not have to jump between Moodle and LAMS, to experience the learning activities in the sequence Hiram has set up. The collaborative assignment is completed, and published on a class blog, where it can be accessed by students from other schools.


Activity Scope

The activity has two components undertaken as priorities to support greater integration between school systems:

  • Support the SIF Association AU data modelling work undertaken by the Data Standards Working Group (DSWG), to promote interoperability between jurisdiction and school administrative systems throughout Australia in the first instance.
  • Articulate Web 2.0 and service-oriented approached to integrating learning environments, to promote modern approaches to learning systems interoperability with external information environments in the classroom.

The two components are complementary, focusing respectively on the ongoing national effort to integrate schools administrative systems, and on the potential for integrating schools learning systems with each other and with external systems.

The activity was led by Nick Nicholas, with Nigel Ward, Dennis Macnamara and Owen ONeill as project team members.


Methodology

The two components of the activity are complementary.

The SIF component engages with a nationwide initiative to pursue integration between school and jurisdiction systems; the SIF AU initiative has been led by a project team in the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, with extensive involvement from government and non-government schools authorities. The initiative is enabling integration by introducing a common transport (the SIF transport model) and data format (the SIF data model).

The DSWG task has been to make the SIF data model applicable to the Australian context as an exchange format, by localising data objects and controlled vocabularies. The SIF component of the activity has involved the technical standards project team reviewing the data modelling and vocabularies on an ongoing basis as expert observers on the DSWG, providing feedback and suggestions as requested for improving the vocabularies, the objects, and the processes for implementing improvements. The activity has engaged with SIF from November 2008 up to June 2010.

The Web 2.0 component is more open-ended, and it has involved a focus group of school sector contacts, working to establish the current priorities and requirements for learning systems integration through Web 2.0 technologies. The component has been underway from October 2009 through June 2010, and undertook the following tasks:

  • Write progress report, capturing key findings. (Dec 2009)
  • Establish sector requirements and priorities through meetings of focus group and key stakeholders.
  • Analyse emerging practice on learning tools interoperability (IMS)
  • Provide input and feedback for standards activities discovery (IMS), representing Australian requirements and informed by sector consultation
  • Write guidelines on how best to realise Web 2.0-based learning content interoperability in Australian school sector (attached)
  • Circulate findings on learning and administrative systems interoperability (ITinteroperability newsletter, Link Affiliates blog)
  • Write closure report.

The focus group had the following members:

  • Preety Agarwal (The Le@rning Federation, ESA)
  • Peter Albion (University of Southern Queensland)
  • Greg Curtis (Dept of Education, Tasmania)
  • Jeffrey Gunn (Catholic Education Office, Melbourne)
  • Geoff Hendrick (Education.au)
  • Alan Herbert (DET NSW)
  • Dan Ingvarson (SIF-AU)
  • Lorence Issa (DET NSW)
  • Sandy Philips (Dept of Education, Victoria)
  • Representatives of DEEWR: Graham Reynolds, Toby Jarrett, Nicole Catto, Gary Compton, David Holmes

The focus group met on:

  • November 26, 2009 (face-to-face)
  • February 17, 2010 (teleconference)
  • May 18, 2010 (teleconference)

There was also a face-to-face meeting of all the DER Technical Standards focus groups on March 9, 2010, in the lead-up to the IDEA 10 event, and a concluding teleconference for all focus groups on June 17, 2010. These teleconferences included reports on the focus group’s activities to members of the other focus groups, and provided the opportunity for feedback from other groups.

The minutes of the three focus group meetings are attached.


Challenges


Technical

  • Jurisdiction systems have disparate data models needing to be reconciled.
  • Learning systems have traditionally been designed for use in isolation.
  • There are disparities in schools over networking and computing infrastructure.
  • Different systems have different authentication protocols, and identity usually has scope only within school or jurisdiction.

Non-Technical

  • There is diversity in practice between jurisdictions, which makes common data models harder to realise.
  • Integrating administrative and learning systems will require culture change.
  • There are major concerns over data privacy, and over extending sharing student data outside the jurisdiction.
  • There are duty-of-care concerns over student privacy, over the risk of students exposed to inappropriate information, and over cyber-bullying.
  • Integration of new technologies is disruptive to existing practices and workflows; teachers are time-poor and will resist imposition on their time and retraining.

Outcome: SIF DSWG engagement

Link Affiliates contributed to the establishment of an Australian profile of the SIF data model through its involvement with the SIF AU DSWG as an observer and expert reviewer. This engagement included:


Outcome: Web 2.0 integration

Through the deliberations of the focus group, the following findings were reached.


Systems Ecology

Thinking about integration should be contextualised in a more general model of the ecology of systems in learning - with a core of managed enterprise architecture, and a flexible edge of applications. Various initiatives are underway to look at how systems integrate with each other. Fig. 1 contributed by Dan Ingvarson is an example of how a systems ecology can be modelled for the current state of learning systems in Australia, and the protocols through which they interact 1.

Fig 1: An Australian learning systems ecology

Fig 1: An Australian learning systems ecology

Integration of different systems involves particular choices of integration technologies. There are a variety of technologies; SIF has emerged as a popular method in the Australian school sector for systems integration. Web 2.0 technologies and emerging practice, such as widgets, also need to be considered as mechanisms of integration. Web 2.0 approaches are of particular interest in paedagogy, since they promote collaboration in learning, as well as a more interactive learning experience. Platforms like Scootle are already using Web 2.0 technologies effectively to engage students, and allow them to publish content.

Web 2.0 should not be seen as an application layer, which can simply be bolted on over existing systems. Web 2.0 is itself an integration technology, with a rather different approach to integration compared with many existing technologies: this different approach is what has made its integrations (mash-ups) so easy to deploy and widespread. Integrating Web 2.0 with existing tools forces a rethinking of how those tools offer integration.

There is a broad and changing range of Web 2.0 tools; rather than recommend specific tools, it is more useful to consider how different categories of tools can be integrated for particular purposes. (Tools routinely belong to multiple categories.)

  • Education
    • Authoring tools - including multimedia (blogging, YouTube, wikis): writing, reflective learning, integrated with learning and assessment. Collaborative authoring poses more integration challenges (wikis, Google Wave).
    • Networking tools (Facebook, Twitter, chat, blogging): sustaining virtual communities (for both students and educators), sharing information and ideas.
    • Content sharing tools (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter for hyperlinks): triggers and context for learning activity.
  • Generic infrastructure
    • Notification/alerting tools and aggregators (Messaging, RSS, calendars): information and workflow management
    • Virtual Storage (dropboxes, noteboxes): manage information assets - cf. traditional role of school servers

There are several other ways of classifying Web 2.0 tools, including classifications aligned to paedagogy (Bloom’s taxonomy); some of these are linked to in the focus group’s Guidelines for Web 2.0 Integration in the Classroom.


The Challenge of the Cloud

Generic Web 2.0 infrastructure challenges organizations as the primary provider of IT infrastructure in the workplace; there are already some steps in this direction in the school sector (e.g. NSW DET and Google). Many organizations already effectively outsource their infrastructure to the cloud for efficiency and ubiquitous access, though this poses risks of security and reliability.

There is a related tension on whether to store copies of data locally, which makes it easier to access and report on, but harder to keep in sync, versus storing it on one place and accessing it remotely through services - which assures a notion of master data, but presupposes reliable service infrastructure. Several considerations are in play here: data needs to be readily available versus data needs to be authoritative, data has single versus multiple owners, the complexity of update workflows required, and the frequency with which the data would need to traverse trust boundaries.


Monitoring Access

The challenge of the Cloud is complicated in the school sector by duty of care considerations and bandwidth cost. The extent to which school systems should be opened to the Open Web is a long-running controversy, and the Guidelines document sketches the debate, and offers some ways of moving forward with it.

Duty of care considerations also mean there need to be explicit policy applied to how students share data with each other in online collaboration, and that such collaboration can be monitored by the school. By preference, teachers should be enabled to do such monitoring, as the professional with the best understanding of the students and their learning needs.


Standards and Identity

Integration requires shared models of the data to be exchanged between the systems; the disparity of systems means the semantics of the shared data models should be broadly understood, and the data values should follow generic standards where applicable. No one data standard or data model will be applicable to all contexts, but there are several organizations that provide usable models and protocols for different aspects of integration, including SIF, IMS, IEEE (LOM), and W3C. Standard codesets and vocabularies should be used where practical; this can include vocabularies from SIF-AU, ABS, ACARA, and ESA.

Integration also requires shared identity infrastructure: users should establish their identity only once before accessing authorised external resources. Possible mechanisms to that end include access federations, for highly secure transfers under formal agreement (e.g. between jurisdictions), and more open authentication standards for less formal arrangements (such as OpenID). Jurisdictions are by default the primary identity providers in the sector; the scaling and appropriateness of more open protocols for students needs to be investigated. There is some interest in an Access Federation for Schools in the longer term, but that will need to wait for frameworks for further collaboration between jurisdictions.

Choices in both data models and technologies for system integration are driven by particular business requirements. We do not anticipate that a single data model or technology will satisfy all requirements for all systems in the sector. Once the requirements are established, implementers can look at which technologies and data models provide the best fit for particular requirements. Considerations include:

  • What sort of data exchange will advance pedagogical objectives most?
  • Which integration technologies and modes of integration are most productive pedagogically in learning environments?
  • What data from learning environments is important to gather for administrative purposes?
  • What technologies can facilitate such data exchanges best, under which circumstances?
  • How should new Web 2.0-based integration technologies best be harnessed in the classroom?

Advocacy

Buy-in to new approaches like Web 2.0 is difficult, because of the conservatism of practitioners, and the exposure to high-profile risk for schools and jurisdictions. Technologies are often promoted by technologists and the enthusiasm of early adopters, but convincing the bulk of practitioners to adopt new approaches has long been a problem. The reasons why practitioners would benefit from new technologies needs to be articulated to them. Likewise funding agencies need to be convinced of the return on investment - noting that the transition will impose an upfront cost on existing systems that needs to be recovered. Both quantitative and qualitative arguments are needed: funders are concerned over the bottom line, but the benefits to the business are primarily more effective teaching, and more efficient use of resources.

The MCEETYA Learning in the Online World document and the Melbourne Declaration provide the policy directions for such advocacy; the SIF Business model and the VET sector’s Trust Federation proposals are examples of how integration can be effectively argued for.


Outcome: Learning Tools Interoperability

The project team presented the IMS LTI specification to the focus group as a technology for dealing with authentication between learning systems and other sites on the Web. It is driven by the trend towards hosting licensed learning content externally at publishers’ sites, as well as on local Learning Management Systems.

The specification has not yet been ratified, but is already in wide use in the US tertiary sector, and has promise for dealing with authentication for Web 2.0 integration - an area where Web 2.0 have been lagging. The feeling of the group was that the Australian school sector was currently rather different in how it disseminated content, and there was still much uncertainty in how content distribution would take place in the future because of the upheaval in content providers like ESA. Therefore the Australian sector was not ready to engage with LTI, although its usefulness down the road was noted.

ESA is currently trialling LTI. The project team has provided feedback to the development of the LTI specification, including feedback from ESA.


Conclusion

The SIF component of the activity has been a success: it has taken place in the context of an active project identified as a priority by the school sector, and which has prioritised standards and interoperability. The project team was able to contribute towards a more cogent standard, in a receptive environment, with well-defined outcomes, and with partners that appreciated the importance of the task. Any necessary advocacy had already taken place externally, and there already was a mandate to pursue exploratory work (pilots, standards research, modelling). While not all jurisdictions are equally committed to a national SIF-based infrastructure, the utility of a common data model for systems exchange is universally acknowledged.

The Web 2.0 component was rather more tentative. Web 2.0 integration presupposes access to the Open Web, although much can be done on local intranets. There is high-profile mistrust of student access to the Open Web, which has translated to jurisdiction policy, and there is ongoing debate, both nationally and internationally, on whether and how to allow students open access. To compound this, there is uncertainty on the direction that content distribution and service infrastructure will take in Australia, with the merger of TLF and education.au, the flux in jurisdiction-based providers and their business models (FUSE in Victoria, CLI in NSW), and the ongoing review of DER initiatives.

The focus group members were eager to see further work on Web 2.0 integration; the successful ongoing work with Scootle (both in SIF authentication pilots and in its inclusion of Web 2.0 technologies) shows that the sector appreciates the potential of these technologies. However the current uncertainty over future directions and investment has limited the focus group’s ability to make definite recommendations. This report, and the accompanying guidelines document, should be taken as only the start of a necessary conversation.


Appendix: Major Technical Approaches


Architectures for systems integration

  • SOA: Architecture for integrating functionality across systems through loosely coupled services, exposing both new functionality and functionality of existing systems
  • SIF: Well-establlshed standard approach for data exchange and interoperability in school sector
  • Web 2.0: Approach to web design emphasising interactivity, user control of data, and integration of data from multiple sources
  • W3C Widgets: Emerging standard for packaging of software applications for inclusion in web content, to support Web 2.0 interactivity
  • Google Wave: For more on the possibilities of such use of Google Wave in structured LMS-like contexts, see e.g. http://mfeldstein.com/does-google-wave-mean-the-end-of-the-lms

Data Standards for communications between systems

  • SIF-AU: Australian profile of SIF-AU, adapting SIF data model and vocabulary to Australian School environment
  • ABS: Australian Bureau of Statistics, source of standards for data exchange in Australia, especially at government level
  • MCEETYA: Source of standards used for data values in Australian school sector, especially in reporting
  • NCES: National Center for Education Statistics, Source of most of SIF-US' data standards
  • IMS Learning Information Services: Standards to support interactions and data exchange between learning systems and administrative, student, or human resource systems

Standards and initiatives for shared identity


Appendix: Focus Group Meetings


Meeting #1, 2009–11–26


Attendees

  • Preety Agarwal (The Le@rning Federation)
  • Peter Albion (University of Southern Queensland)
  • Nicole Catto (DEEWR)
  • Garry Compton (DEEWR)
  • Greg Curtis (Dept of Education, Tasmania)
  • Jeffrey Gunn (Catholic Education Office, Melbourne)
  • Alan Herbert (DET NSW)
  • Lorence Issa (DET NSW)
  • Toby Jarrett (DEEWR)
  • Dan Ingvarson (SIF-AU)
  • Nick Nicholas (Link Affiliates)
  • Owen ONeill (Link Affiliates)
  • Sandy Phillips (Dept of Education, Victoria)
  • Nigel Ward (Link Affiliates)
  • Absent: Geoff Hendrick (Education.au)

Attendees listed the reasons they were interested in engaging with the focus group; these included:

  • Identifying issues of concern in the sector. (DEEWR)
  • Learning what new developments should be considered in teacher education to prepare teachers for ICT (PA)
  • Understanding needs in the sector, and scoping what a learning environment is (DI)
  • Identifying convergences of learning technologies (GC)
  • Identifying novel kinds of learning experiernces (SP)

Activity Plan

After an overview of the Technical Standards for Digital Education project, the Activity Plan for the activity was presented for discussion. SP raised the question of whether the content in scope of this activity was restricted to traditional learning content produced for teachers, or whether it included learner-generated content. OON indicated that this issue is also being considered in the 21st Century Learning focus group. It was agreed that it would represent a missed opportunity if the activity did not include learner-generated content - given the change in educational culture brought about by the web, and that teachers are already broadly encouraging students to generate content. (SP gave examples of this happening.) It was also acknowledged that duty of care concerns needed to be addressed if content is to be shared between children safely; it is not yet clear how to do this.

No other feedback was given on the Activity Plan.


Briefing Paper

The activity Briefing Paper was also presented for feedback.

The Briefing Paper highlights Google Wave as a disruptive technology. The group discussed the mixed feedback that has been received on Google Wave so far, and the difficulty of groups in engaging with it; PAg noted that provided there is an established community of use behind it, Google Wave is highly engaging, and helps quantify the individual's contribution to collaborative work: Scootle is attempting to emulate Google Wave in its ease of collaborative authoring.

It was noted that whatever the ultimate fate of Google Wave as a platform, the model of collaboration it introduces is enough of a challenge to existing models that the focus group should consider it; even if Google Wave does not succeed, something like it may well. That said, it is important that the focus group not get sidetracked into considering only one technology, and SP suggested that the group explicitly nominate a range of Web 2.0 technologies to evaluate (e.g. Ning), in order to avoid that risk.


Goals and Outputs

The goals of the activity were outlined: the activity is intended to provide a forum for practitioners from various jurisdictions, organisations and sectors in education to exchange views and news on systems integration. It is hoped that the forum would continue to exist in some form after the conclusion of the current activity.


Demonstration: Scootle

PAg present screenshots from Scootle as it is being enhanced to encourage students to engage with in a more interactive and collaborative fashion. The screenshots are available on EdNA Groups. The new functionality added to Scootle includes the ability to see what other practitioners are using the same content; discovery of resources based on geospatial data and timelines, as well as through alphabetically ordered ScOT thesaurus terms; and the ability to share learning paths and invite students to use them.

Scootle now has a collaborative workspace, in which students interact through appropriate avatars. Students can chat with each other, and can collaboratively develop documents. (This is where enhancements in light of Google Wave would be particularly appropriate.) Scootle is currently investigating allowing the collaborative documents produced by students to be published as websites or PDF. Students can attach arbitrary resources discovered via Scootle to their documents, such as movies, audio, and pictures; the content they generated can also be aligned with geospatial and timeline-based discovery. The student interaction is controlled by teachers (including monitoring student activity and logging), and the interface aims to limit distractions to the students as they work, focussing them on the task at hand.

The resource discovery differentiates between content sourced directly from the TLF, teacher shared resources, and vetted content from the Web (particularly from cultural institutions). Scootle are interested in adding online formative assessment tools: they seek to enable assessment for learning (assessment drives the choice of learning pathway), rather than just assessment of learning. They are keen on establishing trailing as the next step in Scootle development.

NW pointed out, through feedback received from the LCDE focus group, that teachers tend not to distinguish where they source the content from. The Scootle interface accordingly should not emphasise the distinction between origins of resources as strongly.


Update: SIF Pilots & Integration

DI outlined his perspective on the foregoing discussion, and of the role of Web 2.0 in systems integration. He emphasised that, so long as applications are still clearly differentiated from integration, Web 2.0 is still properly regarded as an application layer rather than an integration technology in itself. There is still not sufficient clarity about how to link Web 2.0 applications with other systems. Integration itself deals with the issue of what data to to communicate from what sources in order to achieve a business goal.

Any discussion of integration therefore needs to be contextualised through an e-Learning business model currently in development. The business model differentiates between a hard core of formally managed enterprise architecture, and a flexible edge of applications, which is more teacher- and student-focussed, and less tightly connected to the core. (The connection may be limited to conveying a login and some student metadata, as distinct from the tight integration between core systems.) DI has been working on a learning ecosystem diagram, which describes how various systems in the school sector interact and integrate; NN and JG requested that DI circulate this to the group, as it would provide a starting point for thinking on integration priorities. DI also noted that various groups are being formed globally, to look at both the disparate pieces of the e-Learning eco-system, and how they integrate.

DI then presented the six pilot projects underway in Phase #2 of SIF-AU. The pilots all address sharing information and context between jurisdictions; whereas the Phase #1 pilots demonstrated the technical feasibility of various levels of integration, the Phase #2 pilots explore policy issues in more wide-ranging integration, and have already highlighted issues such as privacy and resourcing.

Of the pilots,

  • The Triborders pilot involves sharing attendance information for itinerant students between WA, NT and SA.
  • The Student Data Transfer Note pilot aims to simplify the process of transferring students between states, by exchanging student records. The pilot does not implement all recommendations of the report prepared last year by Link Affiliates, but is a demonstration of how the transfer could work.
  • Three pilots address extending jurisdiction capabilities through integration with a centralised service. These are: transfer of identity information from Tasmanian Education systems into Scootle; from Catholic Education into me.edu.au (with Education.au); and from ACT Education systems into LAMS (with MELCOE). These pilots are testing single sign-on to remote systems from jurisdiction systems, with SIF used for provisioning of identity.
  • One pilot involves accessing data directly from one jurisdiction to another through a firewall, and highlights issues in overcoming trust boundaries.

Discussion

GC pointed out the tension between replicating data in local systems, which makes it easier to report on, and storing data in situ with remote access via a web service. Much of this is driven by the challenges of treating identity as an underlying infrastructure for schools systems: systems need to get the balance right, especially if they will be sharing identity information across borders. There are different contexts in which it is appropriate to do one or the other, and it is worth documenting those circumstances. The same applies for when to use SIF, and when to use Web 2.0 technologies.

AH raised the question of how to get business buy-in to commit to standards and technology, such as the integration technologies considered under this activity. This is a challenge that the group needs to address: the Digital Education Revolution is still being pushed by technologists, rather than being taken up by practitioners, and it is difficult for technologists to do the needed advocacy. The reasons why practitioners would benefit from the technologies need to be articulated for them. DI suggested looking at the SIF Business Case that was recently put to AEEYSOC, and which incorporates such advocacy. JG highlighted the importance of building involvement with contemporary learning groups. The MCEETYA Learning in the Online World document and the Melbourne Declaration provide the policy directions against which advocacy can happen. The goal is to get teaching and learning practitioners to ask for integration between systems themselves.


Where to Next?

The next focus group meeting is proposed to take place on Wednesday 3 Feb as a teleconference. Discussions will take place in the interim on the EdNA groups discussion forum, and will be kicked off next week. Discussions will include the questions posed in the briefing paper (currently being updated); the briefing paper itself will be submitted to further review by the group.

It is proving important for the various focus groups under the Technical Standards project to exchange ideas with each other. Reports will be drawn up on each sub-project's activities at the end of the year, and will be circulated to the members of all focus groups. There will also be a face-to-face meeting of all focus groups on March 9, the day before the IDEA10 event, in Melbourne.


Meeting #2, 2010–02–17


Attendees

  • Nicole, Toby, Gary - DEEWR
  • Peter Albion, USQ
  • Greg Curtis, Dept Ed Tasmania
  • Alan Herbert, Lorence Issa, DET NSW
  • Nick, Dennis, Nigel - Link Affiliates
  • Absent: Geoff Hendrick, Education.au ; Preety Agarwal, The Le@rning Federation; Jeffrey Gunn, Catholic Education; Dan Ingvarson, SIF-AU; Sandra Phillips, Dept Ed Victoria.

Review and discuss areas to update the group briefing paper (which will become the final report)

Peter stated the briefing paper makes a cogent case advocating the requirement of interoperability, which extends not only to connecting school systems with external systems, but also for connecting internal systems within a jurisdiction.

The briefing paper needs to pay more attention to issues in identity authentication and trust federations: this is a significant piece of infrastructure, which is a necessary condition for any attempt at interoperability with external systems. Several SIF pilots currently underway involve establishing authentication, including via OpenID. Greg is involved in one such pilot. The wording for the report can be taken from the SIF proposals. Underlying this is the concern that it is difficult to persuade jurisdictions to fund infrastructure for identity and trust, so the group needs to articulate the gains federated trust can help achieve.


Identify priority Web 2.0 applications/classes of applications which need to interoperate with existing schools systems

A concern was expressed at the briefing paper singling out a particular technology to illustrate Web 2.0 integration with school systems - especially given the rapid turnover and diversity of Web 2.0 tools. It was felt more useful to focus on classes of Web 2.0 technologies which are of priority usefulness in education. Peter has proposed a first cut of classes, which can be refined further. The classification should not be along rigidly pedagogical lines, given the diversity of tools and the flexibility with which they are used.

Certain classes of tools are nonetheless more suited to particular types of learning activity (e.g. blogs - reflective learning); the most useful contribution would be to present examples of successfully used tools, and the scenarios under which they can be used, in order to inform the sector of the possibilities that Web 2.0 opens up.

Some of the Web 2.0 tools do not have a direct pedagogical use at all, but are generic tools used to support information transfer and sharing. These tools pose a challenge to institutional IT support in general, as they offer an open alternative to the managed IT environment of organisations. (Dropboxes vs. institution servers, free email vs. institutional email). This challenge applies to the school sector as well, and there are issues with the alternative Web 2.0 infrastructure that should be presented (privacy, cost of bandwidth); but the change in usage patterns is clear and needs to be acknowledged.


Discuss ways of advocating for better systems integration with decision-makers in schools and jurisdictions; example of the start to the SIF business case to AEEYSOC

The SIF business case is a good start, with convincing narratives on the use cases for interoperability; but the bulk of its discussion, and its extrapolated cost savings in particular, are heavily geared towards SIF specifically. It was agreed that any case for interoperability to the jurisdictions should include concrete figures. Alan pointed out that any costing of benefits through interoperability must also include the costs of transitions, such as getting new systems to propose the required standards. The initial outlay can often be significant in setting up more interoperable systems (notoriously so for Service Oriented Architecture). DET NSW has had experience with this kind of transition.

Nigel pointed out that it is difficult to extrapolate the monetary value of novel functionality that interoperability makes possible, so that any business case for interoperability needs to be qualitative as well as quantitative.

ACARA's roll-out of the MySchools web site is agreed to have been largely successful, and Lorence asked whether it could be used to advance an interoperability narrative. We are uncertain as to whether SIF was used to gather information, although ACARA have been in consultation with UltraNet, and the DEEWR work on MySchool has made mention of interoperability in the past.

The VET's sector's Trust Federation proposal is another possible source for advocating for interoperability.


Move towards a statement of guidelines on online safety/duty of care, as a primary concern with students interacting with the open web

There are different perspectives about how best to articulate a response to this issue. On the one hand, as Peter has argued on the forum, managing risk and equipping students to deal with dangers as they encounter them is to their greater ultimate benefit. On the other hand, jurisdictions are legally liable to ensure safety as their duty of care, and for that reason favour governance approaches.

DET NSW has extensively deployed software in place to monitor student web and mail use; this was possible through the major rollout of IT infrastructure that NSW undertook. Alan has agreed to report back further to the group on lessons learned in the process; the DET NSW experience is worth including in the final report as a case study, and they will be asked to give a presentation on it in a future meeting.


Presentation on Learning Tools Interoperability

Nick and Nigel gave an overview of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability initiative, as an approach to establishing interoperability between learning management systems and external systems, that provides for authentication by student or by campus. (A 30 minute slide presentation on LTI is available.) LTI allows calls to an external website to be embedded within a Common Cartridge package: it promotes publishers hosting content externally, especially for large media or complex software such as simulations. The external site can be configured to send information back to the LMS (e.g. gradebook information).

LTI promotes a different model of content distribution to what has been usual in the American tertiary sector, whereby the bulk of content is hosted externally instead of on campus systems, and the campus LMS routinely refers out to different external providers. This is a development the group should be monitoring, as it can lead to new educational contexts of coordinating external systems. But it is not clear how applicable this model is to the Australian school sector: content has tended to be hosted centrally rather than at school systems already, and there has not been as much use of vendor-hosted content in the sector. The school sector is in flux with the development of the e-Learning Business Model, which is reviewing how content will be distributed to students. The question of whether the LTI model is relevant to Australian schools depends on what direction their work takes, and should be taken up with them.


Face-to-Face Meeting

The face-to-face meeting will be held in Melbourne on March 9, with teleconferencing provided. It will provide an opportunity for focus group members to be informed of what other focus groups have been up to, and provide feedback to each other. An overview presentation will be prepared for what the focus group has discussed so far, and will be circulated for review by members. There is no current provision for a breakout session; but because this focus group started later than others, it may be useful to have a half-hour discussion among the group on current issues during the day.


Meeting #3, 2010–05–18


Attendees

Peter Albion, Garry Compton, Geoff Hendricks, Nick Nicholas, Dan Ingvarson, Dennis Macnamara


Review the guidelines document

Feedback required, especially on duty of care.

Dan initiated a discussion on the necessary balance between official jurisdiction tools, and tools chosen and deployed by teachers. There are also different consequences and considerations for teachers' risk taking versus jurisdiction risk taking. Jurisdictions' default strategy is to block access to the Web, teachers keep wanting to unblock access. This can be seen as an opportunity to pursue provisioning of authorisation for students to access content in specific contexts, as a specific cohort. Can jurisdictions control identity and activity by an individual teacher/student? Guidelines might need to note that teachers tend to do things beyond the jurisdiction guidelines. Quote Oftsed report on internet savvyness of students and student monitoring.

These considerations are still linked to duty of care concerns; there was clear indication from Evan Arthur at IDEA event that unfettered access to the Open Web is not realistic. The guidelines should articulate the debate, instead of taking an advocacy position.

Geoff: Bandwidth an issue as well as duty of care in terms of blocking.

Next draft of guidelines to be circulated to group by Nick by 26 May. Final feedback from group on guidelines by 10 June.


Strawpoll of priority areas for further work

There was a brief discussion on what areas not already considered should be put in final report for future attention

Dan: What would solve problems of national significance? (E.g. digital curriculum) How can policy makers understand technical issues in integration enough to make informed decisions?

This needs to be raised as a focus Group legacy discussion for all participants in the final focus group meeting, as a discussion of Issues to be resolved for digital education. This should be an agenda item for the final meeting.


Contextualising integration in the language ecology work done by Dan Ingvarson

No comments were offered. The group was encouraged to review the work, and it will be part of the context for the final report.


Strategies for advocating takeup of Web 2.0 integration

This was an advocacy discussion building in particular on the SIF business case. We are considering incorporating some of that thinking in the final report. This discussion needs input from the jurisdiction, where the advocacy will take place; the jurisdictions were not adequately represented in the current meeting. Nick to remind group members to comment.


Typologies of e-Learning tools: Classes of Web 2.0 applications, and how they are used

Dan: The stitching together of tools into the practice of what teachers do is not supported by the centre. Dan noted that Scootle is most used and fastest growing online tool because teachers can just easily access a TLF resource as a hyperlink in Scootle - and can write that hyperlink down in their planning notes: Scootle is an incremental addition to their current workflows, rather than forcing a disruptive break in how they do teaching. Peter; Teachers need to be familiar with technology in their own lives so they can use it with students. Technology uptake also faces teacher conservatism and caution, and concern over different environments: what works on IT in the home may not work on school systems.


Hierarchies of education needs to which Web 2.0 tools are applied

The different hierarchies were briefly discussed; they will be incorporated in the guidelines paper, including the VET work.

Nick: The final report will be based on the briefing paper. A revised version of the briefing paper will be sent out in the next week. Any further comments on this needed in next two weeks


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


1 See also Ingvarson, Dan & Gaffney, Michael. 2008. Developing and Sustaining the Digital Education Ecosystem: The Value and Possibilities of Online Environments for Student Learning. In Lee, Mal & Gaffney, Michael (eds): Leading a Digital School. ACER Press.

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