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Other Bodies - Overview
| This category includes organizations and initiatives working on e-learning standardization, but whose main purpose is not to produce standards. These groups are typically focused on specific topics and they usually contribute to the development or adoption of related standards. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee (AICTEC) official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee (AICTEC) official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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General
Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee
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The Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee (AICTEC) is a national, cross-sectoral committee responsible for providing advice to all Australian Ministers of Education and Training on the economic and effective utilisation of information and communications technologies in Australian education and training.
AICTEC has representation from the schools, vocational education and training and higher education sectors, and includes both public and private education and training sector interests. Through its broad membership, the Committee represents the information and communication technology interests of each State and Territory school and vocational, education and training (VET) system, the non-government school sector, higher education, and the Australian Government.
The AICTEC Secretariat is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations under the Framework for Open Learning Program (FOLP). |
Mission
AICTEC's role is to encourage the advancement of teaching and learning in Australia through the effective and efficient use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and online services and thereby to enable all sectors of education and training to contribute to the growth and vitality of Australia's society and economy.
AICTEC is uniquely placed to support information-sharing, shared use of information and communication technologies, joint development or other forms of coordination, in areas where it is agreed by its members to be advantageous. |
Outputs
AICTEC has produced the following outputs:- Student Data Transfer Note. Overall the report is designed to provide the impetus for further work to enhance student learning in transition across systems and jurisdictions. It also provides a rich description of the current technical, policy and operational issues within student data management.
- Interoperability Standards Across the Australian Education and Training Sector. The report focuses on cross sectoral collaboration on ICT interoperability in education and training and provides: a summary of current status, gaps and opportunities; a draft Collaborative Framework; Recommendations for Action.
- Learner Identity Management Framework Project. It is about the desirability, nature and options for the development of a national, cross-sectoral Learner Identity Management Framework (LIMF) for the education and training sectors. Specifically, the project was about developing protocols for a reliable and accountable system for jurisdictions and sectors to access and exchange the records, progress and characteristics of individual learners.
- Handbook for Metadata Usage. It is is designed to serve the needs of the education and training sector in Australia and New Zealand, including school, vocational training, higher education and research. It is oriented to clarify business requirements, help with decision-making, provide a wide range of relevant references and sound advice, and ultimately enhance sharing of resources across all educational sectors.
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EdNA
Education Network Australia (EdNA) (Australia's free online network for educators) is a network of the education and training community. It includes government and non-government schooling systems, early childhood, vocational and technical education, adult and community education and higher education.
EdNA acts as a repository maintaing a extensive collection of quality, evaluated education and training online resources. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the ARIADNE Foundation for the European Knowledge Pool official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the ARIADNE Foundation for the European Knowledge Pool official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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General
ARIADNE Foundation for the Knowledge Pool
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Ariadne (named for the figure from Greek mythology) is a European association for sharing knowledge and fostering international cooperation in teaching that is open to the world. The ARIADNE Foundation was created to exploit and further develop the results of the ARIADNE and ARIADNE II European Projects, which created tools and methodologies for producing, managing and reusing computer-based pedagogical elements and telematics supported training curricula. |
Benefits & Services to Members
- Users involved:
- Authors of pedagogical documents: Faculty, Education Managers, Students.
- Producers & admininistrators of training courses: Trainers, Training Managers, Ped. Engineers.
- End Users: Researchers; Students, Trainees, Open & Distance Learners.
- Technologies and/or approach used:
- Share & reuse of pedagogical components through indexing and storage in knowledge pools.
- Use of adequate telematics chanels according to situation; use of novel authoring & segmentation tools.
- Pedagogic components approach, structured curricula; individualized view of course.
- Expected benefits for the citizen:
- Better continuous formation schemes.
- Easier access to formation for a number of disandvantaged socio-geographic categories.
- Expected benefits for the users of the application:
- More effective and motivating learning scenarios (learners & trainees).
- Better productivity and new philosophy of collaboration (authors of pedagogical material).
- Better communication and co-working schemes (researchers).
- Expected benefits for the European Industries:
- Better, faster and more economical entry-level or continuous training schemes.
- Contribution to EU-policies:
- Possible factor for harmonizing education & training policies throughout Europe. Important factor in promoting collaboration between European educators and comprehension between European learners.
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Outputs
Ariadne was initiated in 1996 by the European Commission's telematics for education and training program. Since then, an infrastructure has been developed in Belgium and Switzerland for the production of reusable learning content, including distributed storage and discovery, as well as its exploitation in structured courses. The core of this infrastructure is a distributed library of digital, reusable educational components called the Knowledge Pool System (KPS) now actively used in both academic and corporate contexts. End users interact with the KPS through client tools. Java and web applications allow users to insert documents and their associated metadata into the KPS, search for relevant documents, and download them from the KPS. Java applications interact with the KPS through the ARIADNE Web Services. The Ariadne Educational Metadata specification was one of the main ingredients in the creation of the IEEE LTSC LOM Standard.
The Ariadne Foundation also provides tools for producing, managing and reusing computer-based pedagogical elements:- Query and Indexation tool: Although Ariadne targets integration of services into third party applications, they provide query and indexation tool that allows for publishing and describing learning objects. This tool is available at http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder
- Federated Search Middleware: This middleware software enables transparent search into various repositories (GLOBE, ProLearn, MACE & MELT).
- Integrated Learning Management Systems: An experimental tool that queries the ARIADNE KPS is integrated in two LMS (INES, a LMS developed by the University of Amiens - France and MOODLE, one of the most popular LMS).
- Phoenix: This authoring tool allows indexing pedagogical material and inserting it into the Knowledge Pool System.
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Membership
Centres for Development and Support (CDS):
- Leuven (BE): The CDS in Leuven is hosted by KUL (Katholiek Universiteit Leuven). It is responsible for the support of all existing and future nodes of the Knowledge Pool System. On the technical side, it is charged with the maintenance and further development of the CKP (Central Knowledge Pool) and the Association's web services together with the matching indexation and query tools (SILO), and the continued upgrading of the ARIADNE meta-data system.
- Lausanne (CH): The CDS in Lausanne is hosted by UNIL (University of Lausanne). It oversees, as needed, the relations of the Association with new corporate members. On the technical side, it is charged with the maintenance and further development of the PHOENIX pedagogic hypertext authoring tool.
- Grenoble (FR): The CDS in Grenoble is hosted by UJF-CAFIM (Université Joseph Fourier's Centre d'Autoformation et d'Innovation Multimedia). With Toulouse, it is responsible for supporting Users in France, South-West Europe and North Africa.
- Toulouse (FR): The CDS in Toulouse is hosted by UPS-IRIT/CICT (Université Paul Sabatier's Informatics and Telecom Research Institute and the Toulouse Campus Computing Centre). It is responsible, together with Grenoble, for supporting Users in France, South-Western Europe and North Africa. On the technical side, it is charged with the maintenance of the Association's communication facilities (listservers) and web site, and for further development and maintenance of the integrated LMS APIs.
- Guayaquil (EC): The CDS in Guayaquil is hosted by ESPOL (Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral). It is responsible for supporting Users in Ecuador and South America. On the technical side, it is charged with the development and maintenance of core tools' migration towards open source software, together with the matching installation processes.
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the CEDEFOP official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the CEDEFOP official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
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CEDEFOP - the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, established in 1975, is a European agency that helps promote and develop vocational education and training in the European Union (EU). It is the EU's reference centre for Vocational Education and Training (VET).
Cedefop was one of the first specialised and decentralised agencies set up to provide scientific and technical know-how in specific fields and promote exchanges of ideas between different European partners. Originally based in Berlin, in 1995 CEDEFOP's head office was transferred to Thessaloniki. CEDEFOP has a liaison office in Brussels. |
Mission
CEDEFOP works to promote a European area of lifelong learning throughout an enlarged EU. It does this by providing information on and analyses of vocational education and training systems, policies, research and practice. It offers advice, research,analysis, information, and stimulates European cooperation and mutual learning. Its networks allow the Centre to keep abreast of recent developments. CEDEFOP works closely with the European Commission, governments, representatives of employers and trade unions, as well as with researchers and practitioners. It provides them with up-to-date information on developments, experience and innovation in VET, and forums for policy debate.
CEDEFOP's tasks are to:- compile selected documentation and analyses of data;
- contribute to developing and coordinating research;
- exploit and disseminate information;
- encourage joint approaches to vocational education and training problems;
- provide a forum for debate and exchanges of ideas.
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Projects and Networks
CEDEFOP is involved in the following projects and networks:- European Journal of Vocational Training. European Journal of Vocational Training is a periodical which appears three times a year and has an independent Editorial Committee. Those wishing to contribute to the Journal can submit their articles in the call for articles section.
- Vet Policy Analysis. This project aims to stimulate debate among researchers, policy makers and practitioners worldwide and to support mutual learning. It focuses on analysing the progress made in improving the quality and attractiveness of VET at EU-level. It also examines VET developments in non-European global players and tries to identify future challenges for VET.
- TTnet. TTnet is the Training of Trainers network set up by Cedefop in 1998 as a Pan-European forum for key players and decision-makers in the training and professional development of vocational teachers and trainers.
- eLearning. E-learning provides basic information about electronic learning on the topic of VET for all those working in education. Its aim is to develop a community of practice as technology gradually enters the world of vocational education and training.
- Research Laboratory. The research laboratory is dedicated to the community of researchers; it is aimed at sharing experience and informing on the most recent Cedefop reports and activities in the research field.
- Skillsnet. The Skillsnet project brings together highly qualified researchers and other stakeholders from across the world to present and discuss outcomes and methods of research and analysis on new and changing skill needs. It also presents medium to longer-term prospects of skills available in the labour market.
- Lifelong Guidance. Lifelong Guidance is a resource for both the provision of information on recent European Union policy developments in lifelong guidance and the exchange of views. Information collected here is targeted to all those interested in lifelong guidance policy and strategy as well as following up research results.
- Quality assurance in VET. Quality assurance in VET is a project supporting Cedefop’s effort to promote quality enhancement in VET by providing technical and scientific support to the Commission in the implementation of its successive programmes on Quality in VET.
- Social Partners. This project is dedicated to the social partners and anyone interested in labour relations in general. It is an information platform for supporting the main stakeholders in lifelong learning policies at European, national, regional and sectoral level.
- Cedra. The Cedefop Research Arena aims to develop new thinking regarding the learning processes for adults in work environments. In order to achieve this goal Cedra forms small European research networks to engage in European development work on a 'work related learning' topic.
- Ero. The European Research Overview supports cooperation between researchers across Europe aiming at the creation of a community of European researchers in vocational education and training and human resource development.
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning) official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning) official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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European Institute for E-Learning
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EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning) is an independent, not-for-profit European professional association whose mission is to support organisations, communities and individuals in building a knowledge economy and a learning society through innovative and reflective practice, continuing professional development and the use of knowledge, information and learning technologies. EIfEL is leading the Europortfolio consortium and is a founding member of EFQUEL the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning |
Vision
EIfEL is creating a community, a framework and tools to identify, develop, recognise and validate the competencies of education, learning and human resources development professionals.
The key principles on which its actions are founded are:
- learning is lifelong, life wide, formal and informal
- individuals, organisations and communities learn in close interaction
- knowledge, information and learning technologies have the power to support innovation and transform and unite all forms of learning
Based these principles, EIfEL supports learning technologies designed and used to value the human capital of individuals (e.g. competencies, knowledge and social networks) and the development of the social capital of learning communities and learning organisations. |
Services and Activities
EIfEL provides services to its organisational and individual members to support the design of eStrategies for learning, the implementation of technologies and the development of competencies through a series of activities such as research, pilot programmes, special interest groups, workshops, conferences and consultancy.
EIfEL has set up the Europortfolio consortium to establish a place for ePortfolio leadership in Europe and international cooperation.
Consultancy services are available to members and non-members. |
Membership
EIfEL welcomes individual and organisational members. Its current membership includes training organisations, regional and local authorities, accrediting bodies, universities, professional bodies, consultancies and private companies.
EIfEL and Europortfolio Members and partners:- Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise "G.Caporale" IZS, an Italian veterinary institute, is a Founding Member of EIfEL.
- SCIENTER is a research centre and service provider organisation, active in the field of education and training.
- UTC Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, a French University is a Founding Member of EIfEL.
- City & Guilds is the UK's leading awarding body
- Elluminate joined EIfEL through providing their web-conferencing tool (elluminate live) and sponsoring the 2006 edition of the International ePortfolio conference
- FING Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération. Founded by 3 leading Internet associations, including the Internet Society, FING is a collective and open Research and Development project which focuses on tomorrow’s Internet’s uses, applications and services.
- Microsoft is an actor in the European eLearining community through it's educational software. Microsoft has subscribed to the "eStrategies for empowering individuals" initiative.
- NCSL. The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) exists to help to make a difference to the lives and the life chances of children and young people through the development of world-class school leaders.
- Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
- Nuventive is an ePortfolio software vendor (their tool is called iWebfolio), and has been close to EIfEL since the beginning. They were again Platinum Sponsors of the 2006 edition of the International ePortfolio Conference.
- Région Centre. The ambition of Region Centre is to guarantee to all its citizens the acquisition of fundamental knowledge, essential to their autonomy and their social and professional integration, which is expressed by the construction of a real public service of proximity for the mastering and the acquisition of these basic skills.
- Région Poitou-Charentes. A European Centre of excellence in Quality will be set up in Poitiers with the help of the Region and EIfEL.
- Rennes Métropole. Rennes Métropole is joining EIfEL to put in place an ePortfolio for its community.
- RCN. Royal College of Nursing
- Sheffield City Council .
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the European Schoolnet official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the European Schoolnet official Web site for additional information on terms of use
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Scope
European Schoolnet
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European Schoolnet (EUN) is a network of 31 Ministries of Education in Europe and beyond. EUN was created more than 10 years ago with the aim to bring about innovation in teaching and learning to its key stakeholders: Ministries of Education, schools, teachers and researchers. |
Mission
European Schoolnet’s activities are divided among three strands of work:- Policy, research and innovation.
European Schoolnet demonstrates how information and communications technology (ICT) can support change in teaching and learning. As part of the services it provides to its stakeholders, European Schoolnet produces country reports which highlight the major trends and policies in today’s education systems in terms of ICT. Through various research projects and networks of pilot schools and local coordinators across Europe, European Schoolnet carries out studies on topics such as the use of games in schools, internet safety, use of learning objects and many other topics.
- Schools services. European Schoolnet has established a strategic position as a European platform for schools to achieve effective use of technologies in teaching and learning, promote the European dimension in education, develop new pedagogical approaches and equip teachers and learners with new skills and raise interest in subjects such as maths, science and technology. Many thousands of schools are engaged in our programmes. European Schoolnet has particularly worked on enhancing cooperation across Europe between schools, as the coordinator of the EU's eTwinning Central Support Service and the promotion of the European dimension in education (myEurope, Spring Day for Europe).
- Learning resource exchange and interoperability. European Schoolnet is at the forefront of global initiatives related to the exchange and interoperability of digital learning resources. With the commitment of participating Ministries of Education and support from European Commission research programmes, European Schoolnet is building a Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) service for schools that will enable teachers and learners to find educational content from many different countries and providers. The LRE helps Ministries and other content partners to become part of a federation of repositories.. A measure of the success of the strategy is that, in the MELT project, 16 Ministries of Education in Europe are already making available approximately 40,000 learning resources and over 100,000 learning assets via a beta version of the LRE.
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Portals
European Schoolnet’s maintaints several portals that offer teachers resources, discussions, news, classroom activities, collaborative tools, practice examples and training opportunities.
This is the list of portalts:- eun.org. The gateway to education in Europe. It is the main access to European Schoolnet's activities, projects and services to teachers, school leaders, pupils and policy-makers in Europe.
- eTwinning. School partnerships in Europe. It is the gateway for school in Europe to meet each other and to collaborate on a large number of themes and projects.
- Xplora. European science education portal. It endeavours to be a major European hub for the science education community with a wealth of resources, tools and information for science teachers.
- myEurope. It is a Web-based project which aims to help teachers raise their pupils' awareness of what it means to be a young citizen in Europe.
- Spring Day for Europe 2007. "Schools Celebrating Europe". It is an annual citizen-driven event project on democracy and citizenship where young people learn and make their voice heard on topical European issues.
- Insafe. It acts as a hub for safer Internet information and highlights the activities of a growing network of 19 national awareness raising nodes.
- Insight. knowledge base for new technology and education. It is EUN’s observatory for new technology and education. It provides policy-makers, school leaders and all actors in the field of ICT in education with news and analysis on e-learning in Europe.
- Virtual School. It is a virtual meeting place for teachers to exchange material and discuss experiences.
- EUN Communities. It is a Virtual workspace where teachers, policy-makers, researchers and others can communicate, share files and news articles, discuss in online forums, publish web pages and feel close to each other.
- eSchoolnet: The European Teachers Portal. It is a portal for teachers in Europe. On the eSchoolnet website teachers can get in contact with other colleagues, find and exchange learning resources, share experiences, join EUN's international teacher networks, work together in online communities and projects, and much.
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Standardization Activities
European Schoolnet has been working on interoperability and specifications to facilitate the implementation of learning technologies in schools across Europe since its beginning in 1996. There have been various European Commission funded projects to support this work:- The first project was MM1010 which established a European school information network, i.e. European Schoolnet itself. The project also created the first European Schoolnet metadata model (EUNMES) and an educational Thesaurus.
- A follow-up project, part of the fifth Framework Programme was called European Treasury Browser (ETB) which aims to create an infrastructure for the exchange of European learning resources. A multilingual thesaurus of 11 language versions was created within the project.
- Furthermore, CELEBRATE built upon the interoperability of Learning Objects (LO) and different Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) so that the one is not dependent on the other.
- eColours-project continued the work on cross-boarder creation of learning resources, whereas EUN members are actively seeking efficient ways to agree upon the exchange on learning resources in the European level.
- OASIS: Open Architectures in Schools in Society. OASIS is a project that promotes small virtual communities in schools, concentrating particularly on how the role of socialisation can be enhanced by the Internet.
- Life: Learning Interoperability Framework for Europe.The aim of the LIFE project is to improve interoperability and the use of standards in the field of e-learning by increasing the effectiveness of Learning Technology standards and specifications.
- ITEMs: Integrated Teaching Elearning Modules. The Integrated Teaching Elearning Modules (ITEMs) project has as central objective the development of a framework aimed at driving up standards of teaching and learning in Science and Mathematic
- Currently it is running the ASPECT Best Practice Network for educational content. It is is a 30-month, Best Practice Network for educational content that involves 22 partners from 15 countries, including 9 Ministries of Education (MoE), four commercial content developers and leading technology providers. For the first time, experts from all international standardisation bodies and consortia active in e-learning (CEN/ISSS, IEEE, ISO, IMS, ADL) will work together in order to improve the adoption of learning technology standards and specifications.
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the GEM official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the GEM official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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GEM logo
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The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit and commercial Internet sites. GEM expands educators' capability to access Internet-based lesson plans, instructional units and other educational materials in all forms and formats.
GEM is a nonprofit consortium membership organization serving educators and trainers at all levels in the USA and around the world. |
History
Founded in 1996, GEM established and developed the architecture, software, and training materials necessary to build and maintain The Gateway to Educational Materials which was introduced in 1997. Enhancing the ability to search by state and national curriculum standards, expanding elements and vocabularies in postsecondary levels of education, and continuing research in cross-domain searching and systems interoperability, GEM is making improvements in software for use in metadata projects worldwide and in soliciting high quality resource collections for The Gateway. The GEM metadata standards, GEM data files and applications for creating GEM metadata records are used today by collection holders around the world. |
Resources
The Gateway contains a variety of educational resource types from activities and lesson plans to online projects to assessment items. Materials that are purposed for use in the classroom are appropriate for inclusion in The Gateway.
GEM uses a new, advanced retrieval engine named Seamark from Siderean Software to help you find resources that meet your needs. The engine is built around a search technique called "faceted searching". Faceted searching combines the processes of searching for specific words somewhat as one does in Yahoo!® and Google® with browsing descriptions of resources based on what are called "facets." The result is a powerful new interface that supports exploration as well as discovery of resources.
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Outputs
In addition to Gateway access to educational resources on the Web, GEM has developed a set of widely used standards used for describing those resources. GEM has also developed tools to make creating resource descriptions simple. Next it is a list of these products:
- GEM 2.0: Application Profiles Application profiles for GEM 2.0 including GEM (in general), Gateway Lite and Gateway Full
- GEM 2.0: Element Descriptions Descriptions of metadata elements used in GEM including encoding schemes (XML and RDF/XML) and "best practices" in their use.
- Controlled VocabulariesGEM Consortium has developed a series of controlled vocabularies that it recommends be used for a number of elements in the GEM element set. While use of these vocabularies is recommended, use of other non-GEM controlled vocabularies is encouraged where needed to serve the needs of a specific metadata collection.
- Metadata Schemas RDF (Resource Description Framework) metadata schemas in XML used by GEM in producing descriptions of educational resources. The various metadata schemas are combined into an application profile.
- Application Profiles GEM uses application profiles to manage the element sets that the project uses in describing educational resources and in configuring metadata tools.
- Metadata Preparation for the Gateway to Educational Materials An overview of the steps required to prepare metadata records for inclusion in the Gateway.
- GEM Element Descriptions (Archive) Archive of GEM element descriptions
- Development Environment This document describes the application development environment for software used in the GEM project.
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Membership
Using the "The Gateway" is free to everyone, without membership. Consortium membership in GEM is only necessary if you would like your records made available in our search engine. To fill out an application for Consortium membership, go to the Join GEM link. There is no fee to join the GEM consortium. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the HR-XML Consortium official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the HR-XML Consortium official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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| The HR-XML Consortium is the only independent, non-profit, volunteer-led organization dedicated to the development and promotion of a standard suite of XML specifications to enable e-business and the automation of human resources-related data exchanges. |
Mission
The HR-XML Consortium is driven by the needs and priorities of its members. Any member can propose that the Consortium undertake a standards activity. Proposals are subject to a review process and must include the names of at least three sponsor organizations as well as satisfy other pre-requisites.
HR-XML Consortium mission statement:- Lead the development of robust, extensible, global HR interoperability standards enabling easy-to-implement, time- and cost-effective integration of business applications within the HR industry.
- Partner with our membership, the HR industry, and other relevant standards organizations to ensure alignment with business needs, trends in the HR industry, and related technologies.
- Continually enhance our collection of quality standards.
- Maintain a reputation for being the exclusive source of global HR interoperability standards.
- Promote the awareness and adoption of HR interoperability standards.
- Bring together the key stakeholders and top talent necessary for developing meaningful standards.
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Outputs
The HR-XML Consortium produced a library of more than 100 interdependent "XML schemas." XML Schemas define the data elements for particular HR transactions, as well as options and constraints governing the use of those elements. The HR-XML Consortium has produced schemas covering major processes, as well as component schemas, used across multiple business processes.
The HR-XML 3.0 library takes the specialized HR domain knowledge contributed to the HR-XML Consortium over 10 years and puts those contributions within a uniform architecture based on the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS). The HR-XML library is the first vertical industry standard to be designed as a plug-in to the Open Applications Group Business Process Integration Platform. |
Membership
The HR-XML Consortium offers memberships for individuals and organizations. Organizations can be associated as Premier Members, Executive Members and General Members.
Current list of HR-XML member organizations (* denotes a Premier Member):- Accurate Background
- ADP*
- Allshare Personnel BV
- American Staffing Association
- Applicant Insight Limited Inc.
- Arbita
- Assess Systems, a Bigby Havis Company
- Association of Test Publishers
- Bundesanstalt für Arbeit (German Employment Service)
- Carco Group, Inc.
- CareerBuilder
- Centre For Educational Technology Interoperability Standards
- Ceridian*
- ChoicePoint Inc.*
- ClearStar.net
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service
- Development Dimensions International
- DJM Consulting GmbH / JobStairs
- ECP.NL
- EDS*
- EIfEL
- European Community Telework Forum
- Fieldglass, Inc.
- First Advantage*
- General Information Services, Inc. (GIS)*
- GFI-Adelior
- Hewitt Associates*
- HR Plus, A Division of AlliedBarton Security Services
- Humanique
- iProfile
- Kroll Background Screening*
- Kronos Incorporated*
- Lawson Software*
- Le FOREM
- Microsoft Corporation*
- milch & zucker
- Object Management Group
- Open Applications Group, Inc.
- OPENonline, LLC
- Oracle*
- Peopleclick*
- PeopleNet Corporation
- PIXID
- Porthus
- Pre-Employ.com
- PreVisor, the Union of ePredix, Qwiz, and PDRI
- Profiles International, Inc.
- Questionmark Corporation
- Randstad US*
- SAP
- SHL Group plc*
- Society for Human Resource Management
- StepStone
- Sterling Testing Systems*
- Swedish Armed Forces*
- Swedish National Labour Market Board*
- Synergetics nv
- Talent Technology Corporation
- Taleo*
- Ultimate Software
- Universal Background Screening, Inc.
- Valtera
- Verifications. Inc.
- Volt/ProcureStaff
- WCC Services b.v.
HR-XML Consortium Web Site |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the JISC official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the JISC official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Joint Information Systems Committee
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The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is an advisory committee to the funding councils and manages a programme of work through its sub-committees. Each sub-committee has a different focus. JISC has three additional standing sub-committees to consider the constitutional issues of the nomination of members, remuneration, and the audit of JISC activities.
JISC is funded by the UK HE and FE funding bodies to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research.
JISC manages and funds more than 200 projects within 16 programmes. Outputs and lessons are made available to the HE and FE community.
JISC also supports 49 Services that provide expertise, advice, guidance and resources to address the needs of all users in HE and FE. |
Mission
JISC's mission is to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of Information and Communications Technology to support education and research |
Strategic Themes
The JISC develops its activities on the following strategic themes:- Network. Provides the UK’s national research and education network
- e-Learning. Identifies how learners, practitioners and educational institutions can benefit from e-learning
- Access Management. Provides controlled, secure access to resources through authentication and authorisation
- e-Research. Develops and supports technologies which facilitate all the processes involved in research
- Information Environment. Ensures convenient access to resources through the use of tools, better services and practice
- e-Administration. Increases the efficiency of administrative processes within institutions
- Content. Supports the community in its engagement with digital information and resources
- Business and Community Engagement. Aims to support institutions’ third stream mission to enhance their contribution to the economy and society
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Strategy
JISC delivers its mission through:- innovative and sustainable ICT infrastructure, services and practice that support institutions in meeting their mission
- promoting the development, uptake and effective use of ICT to support learning and teaching
- promoting the development, uptake and effective use of ICT to support research
- promoting the development, uptake and effective use of ICT within institutions and in support of their management
- developing and implementing a programme to support institutions' engagement with the wider community
- continuing to improve its own working practices
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CETIS
JISC CETIS is a JISC Innovation Support Centre providing advice to the UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors on educational technology and standards. Its web site brings together educational technology news, comment and analysis, as well as information on our community events. Its aim is to contribute to current debates and future thinking in this rapidly growing and changing field. |
Working Groups (WGs)
Working groups are set up to look at and report on specific issues. They may come within the remit of one or more of the JISC's committees.
Current Working Groups:
- Business & Community Engagement Advisory Group
- Digital Libraries in the Classroom Peer Review Panel
- Digitisation Advisory Group
- e-Infrastructure Advisory Board
- e-Framework Working Group
- e-Learning Capital Programme Advisory Board
- Information Environment Working Group
- IPR Advisory Group
- Jorum Steering Group
- JOS Work Programme Sub Group
- National e-Books Project Advisory Board
- Network Development Group
- PALS Interoperability and Metadata
- Pedagogy Steering Group
- Repositories and Preservation Advisory Group
- Scholarly Communications
- Strategic Content Alliance (formerly Common information environment)
- UK Access Management Federation Policy Board
- Users & Innovation: Personalising Technologies Working Group
- Virtual Research Envrionments Advisory Board
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Partnerships
JISC is committed to enabling the UK education and research communities to engage in national and global collaborations. Working at the forefront of technology innovation for education and research, JISC establishes partnerships to collaborate with organisations to overcome the challenges of delivering world-class Information Communications Technology (ICT) solutions and services.
- Becta (British Education and Communications Technology Agency), UK
- British Library
- Higher Education Academy (The Academy), UK
- Digital Library Federation (DLF), USA
- Association for Learning Technology (ALT), UK
- UCAS UK
- Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Australia
- Internet2 USA
- SURF Foundation The Netherlands
- Ministry of Education New Zealand
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the LETSI official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the LETSI official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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International Federation for Learning, Education, and Training Systems Interoperability
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The International Federation for Learning, Education, and Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving systems interoperability and supporting innovation in learning, education, and training technology.
LETSI is a global federation of organizations and individuals formed as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). LETSI’s goal is to improve individual and organizational learning and performance through the promotion and development of standards and software that lead to interoperability among learning, education, and training systems. |
Rationale
There are a number of learning-related trade associations and standards organizations around the world. Dozens, in fact. LETSI's Founding Sponsors believe that yet another organization is needed:- There is no existing forum that crosses geographical regions and market boundaries (K-12, higher education, corporate job training) and that includes educators, technologists, vendors, and policy makers and the associations that represent these stakeholders.
- Members-only organizations close their processes to give paying members a "return on investment." LETSI believes that in today's education and job training market, an open participation model is required to support market variation and bottom-up innovation.
- Open software standards that can be freely customized are critical to support market diversity and to give innovators a level playing field. Unlike many trade associations and standards bodies, LETSI work products are licensed under a business-friendly, industry-standard, permissive license, with "no strings attached."
- Trade associations support existing business models and established institutions. Dramatic innovations, less so.
- It takes years for standards to mature and enjoy broad adoption. LETSI will not develop standards, but will expedite the adoption of available standards in learning technology and related fields like HR and Knowledge Management.
- LETSI's modern, community-based software model will shorten the adoption cycle and enable less costly and more consistent implementations.
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Mission
LETSI supports the long-term sustainability of eLearning initiatives by promoting and facilitating standards innovation and harmonization. Core principles driving LETSI’s work are:- Openness and inclusion. Providing an effective forum for educators, technologists and policy makers around the world who are interested in realizing the full potential of technology-supported learning.
- A cross-market orientation. Finding common ground across diverse learning, education, and training domains (K-12 education, higher education, corporate and government training, and professional education and certification).
- Coordination and harmonization. Serving as a key resource for standards development organizations (SDOs) and other standards stakeholders in facilitating interoperability across the diverse learning, education, and training markets. LETSI is a standards integrator, not an SDO.
- Innovation. Pioneering the next-generation approaches to interoperability that are difficult for existing standards organizations and consortia to pursue on their own because of their obligations to adopters of the current generation of learning interoperability specifications.
- Working code for the real world. Developing royalty-free software components to test and implement interoperability specifications. These components are developed not as merely after-the-fact reference implementations, but as an integral part of LETSI’s methodology of producing and expediting the adoption of specifications capable of meeting real-world needs.
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Activities
Recently, LETSI brought together the SCORM community to discuss its future. This involved over 100 white papers, dozens of online discussion forums, a 3-day workshop in Pensacola, and four follow-on LETSI working groups – some 250 people all together. The conclusions of the “SCORM 2.0 Project” are available at letsi.org in our Assumptions Document.
LETSI will follow and improve upon the ADL model for working with standards organizations, software and solution vendors, and elearning system customers to drive interoperability improvements. SCORM has become the de facto world standard for learning content. However, adopter’s laments about partially met requirements for elearning interoperability are still nearly as universal as SCORM adoption. For this reason, LETSI’s new ideas regarding open governance, shared software libraries, and agile development processes have been strongly embraced by the broad cross section of elearning stakeholders that have been involved in LETSI’s requirements gathering processes.
LETSI is starting its first shared-software project in the area of web service definitions for a segment of well-defined, core SCORM functionality (the SCORM run time environment ECMAScript API).
The LETSI Technical Roadmap Committee is hosting a series of webinars to discuss other existing technologies whose adoption in elearning could be transformative, allowing, for example:
- Expression of each community’s model of learning objectives, competencies, and curricula.
- Intelligent orchestration of session activities for the individual learner or for teams.
- Facilitating content and performance result interoperability with and among new learning environments, including, simulations, serious games, and virtual worlds.
- Secure integration of data from all sources, not just the LMS, e.g., accessing learner data from an HR system.
- Integrating official, ever-changing technical and policy documents into training in real-time.
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Liaisons
LETSI’s first project on web service definitions is coordinated with related work being carried out by the IEEE Learning Standards Technology Committee. LETSI has additional formal liaisons with the leading elearning standards bodies and trade associations: AICC, SIF Association, ILCE in Latin America, SALTIS in the UK, MedBiquitous in healthcare, and a category A liaison with the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36. It is in discussions with OASIS, OKI, OCW, MERLOT, e-Framework, S1000D, PESC, and others.
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Membership
Stakeholders in learning, education, and training systems interoperability are invited to join in the benefits of LETSI membership and support its progress in advancing next-generation approaches and tools for LET system interoperability.
To enable broad participation across market sectors and geographical regions and to include small, innovative organizations as well as established players, LETSI has established attractive, low-cost participation options available whether you are looking to raise the visibility of your organization by sponsoring this high-profile industry initiative or have technical or domain expertise to contribute to a LETSI development effort. In addition to organizational sponsors, LETSI is seeking seed financing from foundations and government agencies, to support two years of international community building. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) Web Site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the OKI Web Site for additional information on terms of use.
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The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) develops and promotes specifications that describe how the components of a software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems. OKI specifications enable sustainable interoperability and integration by defining standards for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Through this work OKI seeks to open new market opportunities across a wide range of software application domains.
The OKI project was initially launched in 2001 through a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and in collaboration with a number of like minded organizations. Today the OKI Phase II project is housed at the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, a part of MIT's Dean of Undergraduate Education Office. |
OKI Phase II project goals
- To develop, demonstrate and implement the specifications of OKI to realize sustainable educational opportunities and actively identify new opportunities that would benefit from OKI’s successful models, processes and influence.
- Extend the functionality of OKI’s interoperability specifications and increase their adoption to meet the requirements of more complex and varied educational applications critical to the community.
- Develop OKI into a sustainable organization which has increased investment and increasing awareness and creditability.
- Use the example of the successful efforts to date with Content Repository interoperability using OSIDs as a model to build additional communities around other OSIDs of critical interest for educational applications.
- Evolve the OSID specifications to achieve a higher degree of interoperability and meet the changing requirements of the community.
- Provide more high-quality educational material on software interoperability and the application of OSIDs to better support the growing OSID developer community
- Improve community collaboration to ensure active problem-solving and to extend the network effect of OKI
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Outputs
The OKI project has developed and published the Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs), whose design has been informed by a broad architectural view. The OSIDs define important components of a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) as they provide general software contracts between service consumers and service providers. This enables applications to be constructed independently of any particular service environment, and eases integration. The OSIDs enable choice of end-user tools by providing plugin interoperability.
OSIDs are software contracts only and therefore are compatible with most other technologies and specifications, such a SOAP, WSDL. They can be used with existing technology, open source or vended solutions.
OSIDs are a local language service definition and bindings of them are provided in Java and PHP, and investigatory work has been done with bindings for Objective C and C#. |
Partnerships
The organizations listed here are those which have contributed to the OKI project at MIT:- Apple Education Marketing
- Common Need
- Giunti Labs
- Middlebury College
- MIT
- Nolaria Consulting
- OnTapSolutions
- UOC (Open University of Catalonia)
- Verbena Consulting
Open Knowledge Initiative Web Site |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the Open Archives Initiative official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the Open Archives Initiative official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The Open Archives Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. The fundamental technological framework and standards that are developing to support this work are, however, independent of the both the type of content offered and the economic mechanisms surrounding that content, and promise to have much broader relevance in opening up access to a range of digital materials. Over time, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to digital resources for eScholarship, eLearning, and eScience. As a result, the Open Archives Initiative is currently an organization and an effort explicitly in transition, and is committed to exploring and enabling this new and broader range of applications. |
Outputs
The Open Archives Initiative works in the following two main projects:- OAI-PMH. The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability. Data Providers are repositories that expose structured metadata via OAI-PMH. Service Providers then make OAI-PMH service requests to harvest that metadata. OAI-PMH is a set of six verbs or services that are invoked within HTTP.
- OAI-ORE. The Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources. These aggregations, sometimes called compound digital objects, may combine distributed resources with multiple media types including text, images, data, and video. The goal of these standards is to expose the rich content in these aggregations to applications that support authoring, deposit, exchange, visualization, reuse, and preservation. Although a motivating use case for the work is the changing nature of scholarship and scholarly communication, and the need for cyberinfrastructure to support that scholarship, the intent of the effort is to develop standards that generalize across all web-based information including the increasing popular social networks of “web 2.0”.
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Membership
The OAI invites anyone to participate in the interoperability framework that is defined in the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol. Participation has two dimensions:- Data Providers administer systems that support the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata. A data provider may choose to register via the OAI data provider registration page (http://www.openarchives.org/data/registerasprovider.html), and thereby publicize the fact that they have adopted the OAI-PMH.
- Service Providers use metadata harvested via the OAI-PMH as a basis for building value-added services. A service provider may choose to register by following the instructions available at the service provider registration page (http://www.openarchives.org/service/registerasprovider.html). As a result of this registration, service providers publicize their existence.
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Participants may also subscribe to either of the open mailing lists:- OAI-general - This is a general discussion group for people interested in the OAI. Subscribe to the list at http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oai-general. This mailing list is archived and can be searched at http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/pipermail/oai-general/.
- OAI-implementers - This is a technical discussion group for sharing information on implementation experience. Subscribe to the list at http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oai-implementers. This mailing list is archived and can be searched at http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oai-implementers.
OAI Web Site |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the SALTIS official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the SALTIS official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools
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Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools (SALTIS) is leading the drive to improve interoperability standards for teaching and learning in UK schools.
SALTIS believes that new learning technologies will dramatically raise standards of teaching and learning only when they are given a chance to develop in an unfettered market. A market in which the requirements of end users—teachers and learners—are allowed to drive and reward successful innovation.
SALTIS aims to improve the interoperability of learning technology—thereby improving the effectiveness of ICT as a means of raising standards of teaching and learning in UK schools. |
Activities
SALTIS has identified a number of key areas in which better interoperability standards are required to support e-learning in UK schools.- Improved content interoperability. SALTIS' main priority is to support better standards for content interoperability. In this context, "content" refers not only to static, expositive (information-bearing) text, pictures and video, but also to tools and applications which allow students to interact, create and share their own "product". Theirs is a vision of content which represents (to use a grammatical analogy) verbs as well as nouns.
- Sharable assessment items. From a technical point of view, there are two different approaches to supporting interoperable assessments: scripted and "black box" items. SALTIS believes that there is a long-term requirement for both types of assessment. It will be important, for both technical models, that assessment items can be easily created, selected and manipulated by teachers to suit their particular requirements - while at the same time respecting the IP of commercial publishers, who will otherwise have no incentive to invest in creating quality content.
- Interoperable e-portfolio. It has become apparent that there are widely differing understandings of what constitutes an e-portfolio: an authenticated record of a student's achievement; a student's own presentation of him/herself; a tool to support reflective learning or social interaction; or just a storage space for files. Whichever combination of these models gains currency in schools, they believe it is important that e-Portfolio data can be transferred between different systems and services. SALTIS is therefore tracking a number of initiatives to ensure that, as the market moves to define the requirement more closely, a coherent policy on e-portfolio interoperability will be ready to implement.
- Transferring student records. In order to manage authentication and assignment and to track performance and competency, learning platforms need data about courses, teachers, students and how they are grouped. This data already exists in school MIS systems. What is required is a means of transferring the data between the two systems. The transfer needs to be reliable and automatic so that as soon as any changes are made in a school's MIS, those changes are immediately reflected in the school's learning platform.
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Liaisons
SALTIS is pursuing its objectives in cooperation with BECTA and the Education Schools and Childrens Services Information Standards Board (ESCS ISB). |
Membership
SALTIS has 81 members, from large multi-nationals to small cottage industries, providing every type of learning technology to UK schools, from learning platforms to interactive whiteboards and niche, subject-specific learning software.
SALTIS has 15 partners which do not supply learning technology to schools but who are able to make an important contribution to our discussions. They include government agencies and advisers, representatives of teaching practitioners and technicians, global standards bodies and academics. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the SURF official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the SURF official Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Dutch higher education and research partnership for information and communication technology
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SURF is the collaborative organisation for higher education institutions and research institutes aimed at breakthrough innovations in ICT. SURF provides the foundation for the excellence of higher education and research in the Netherlands.
Stichting SURF was founded in 1987 by the joint universities. At present SURF represents over sixty institutions (academic universities, universities of applied sciences, research centres and centres for documentary information services). SURF is also active in many international collaborative platforms such as JISC, TERENA and GLIF. SURF's Strategic Plan is the guide for its activities. The Strategic Plan covers several years and is formulated by the participating institutions. |
Mission
SURF consists of three organisations that each have their own field of activity: - SURFfoundation is the initiator for innovation in higher education and research. SURFfoundation initiates, guides and stimulates ICT innovation through sharing knowledge and partnerships.
- SURFnet develops and operates the national SURFnet6 network. It provides innovative services in the areas of security, authentication and authorisation, group communication and video.
- SURFdiensten is the organisation for licences for higher education and research that facilitates the use of ICT. SURFdiensten offers software, content, ICT services and hardware at unique prices and conditions.
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Liaisons
SURF tries to be involved with other international organizations. The most formalised and tangible activity is SURF's collaboration with JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), SURFfoundation's sister organisation in the United Kingdom.
Other examples of international collaborative projects are:- Knowledge Exchange is focused on developing a coherent policy for improving the ICT facilities and infrastructure within higher education in Europe.
- E-Framework is aimed at making ICT facilities available and accessible for higher education and research at an international scale. E-Framework is closely tied to the developments in the field of SOA (Service Oriented Approach).
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the W3C Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the W3C Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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World Wide Web Consortium
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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.
The W3C mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth of the Web. Educational stakeholders use some W3C standards, particularly those related with accessibility.
The following principles guide W3C's work.
- Web for All. The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability. Learn more about:
- Web Accessibility Initiative
- Internationalization
- Mobile Web for Social Development
- Web on Everything. The number of different kinds of devices that can access the Web has grown immensely. Mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, interactive television systems, voice response systems, kiosks and even certain domestic appliances can all access the Web. Learn more about:
- Web of Devices
- Mobile Web Initiative
- Browsers and Other Agents
W3C Web site |
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