OASIS Education TC

Education XML TC

The original Call For Participation for this TC may be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200302/msg00013.html

Name

Education XML TC

Statement of Purpose

The international PK12 (pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade) community of practice is underrepresented in traditional eLearning standards organizations and its unique technical and functional requirements have not been well articulated. The rationale and motivation for the formation of an OASIS Technical Committee to better represent PK12 interests is to provide a new and more open collaborative environment for urgent standards conversations within the PK12 community of practice. Because of enlightened OASIS membership policies for non-profits and educational organizations, and the OASIS open, public, process of collaboration, many more PK12 organizations from around the world will be able to participate than has been possible in other eLearning standards communities.

The United Nations Education for All (EFA) initiative makes it imperative that eLearning technology standards be advanced in order to support the worldwide EFA activities during the next decade. The Education XML TC will prioritize its activities to support UN activities and other international initiatives and to provide leadership in development of PK12 specific XML Specifications, Implementation Guidelines and Best Practices. Recognizing the important role played by other eLearning standards communities from around the world, it will be our goal to coordinate and collaborate with them whenever possible.

The aims and purposes of the Education XML TC shall be as follows:

  1. XML requirements documentation for shared extensible user profiles, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and thesauri, and other needed specifications, not currently underway in OASIS or other standards communities will be undertaken by sub-groups of the Education XML Technical Committee.
  2. Translation and publication of a set of XML schema and specifications based on the authoritative Data Handbooks published by the US Education Department National Center for Educational Statistics for use in and by public education in the United States, as a service to the international PK12 community of practice
  3. Coordinate closely with, and establish liaison with, other OASIS Technical Committees whose work is directly related to PK12 requirements.
  4. Publish a series of Implementation Handbooks and Best Practice Guidelines for the PK12 community of practice, which document and illustrate the utilization and integration of OASIS XML specifications and other XML specifications and standards in the PK12 context. These Handbooks and Guidelines will be for the use of implementers, vendors, and early adopters.

Relationship to other activities

Where appropriate, the Education XML TC will foster collaborative relationships and liaisons with other activities.

List of Deliverables

The primary deliverables of the Education XML TC are the documentation of a coordinated set of PK12 requirements, which will enable the development of XML vocabularies, schema, and web services interfaces for implementation of eLearning infrastructure. These implementations will enable the PK12 community of practice to:

  1. Deliver eLearning applications and content to end users through a diversity of deployment channels; directly to a browser or mobile or handheld device, indirectly through a portal, or by embedding into web applications and devices; and
  2. create eLearning applications that can be easily modified, adapted, aggregated, integrated, coordinated, or synchronized by simple means to leverage worldwide eLearning application components.

The Education XML Technical Committee plans to begin its work in three phases:

PHASE I - Requirements Gathering

In this phase PK12 requirements will be gathered, and USED Data Handbook Translations will be initiated and first versions published.

PHASE II - Specification Development

In this phase we will identify the available set of XML specifications, which are useful for implementation of PK12 eLearning applications and will develop those XML specifications, which are needed. These may include specifications for identity management and authentication, pedagogical patterns and assessment patterns, federated PK12 content repositories, shared extensible profiles, individual competency profiles, PK12 directory schema, deep semantic classification of learning standards, link management and annotation strategies, web services middleware definitions, and other requirements of the PK12 community of practice.

PHASE III - Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and Best Practices

In the third phase of the Education XML TC's work we will develop Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and document Best Practices and encourage reference implementations and demonstrations of interoperability.

If the work takes place in these phases, it is estimated that the first phase will take approximately nine months, the second phase approximately one year, and the third phase another year. If phases can be combined or run in parallel, then it is estimated that the delivery of an initial set of specifications and implementation guidelines will take one to two years.

The Education XML TC Specifications will use implementation and language neutral XML formats defined in XML Schema where appropriate.

Standing Rules

The Education XML Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of OASIS.

 

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