2005-11-16 Edinburgh
Delegates invited to the JISC-CETIS Conference 2005 at Herriot Watt university in Edinburgh were asked to update each other on progress and to identify funding priorities for the coming year.
It was clear from the key note presentations on the first day that although the term Reference Models may not be quite right, work commissioned under that funding stream was vitally important to the evolution and adoption of the e-Framework. Interestingly for XCRI, the e-Framework now has three streams; the traditional two of e-Learning and e-Research are joined by e-Admin, which provides a home for the behind-the-scenes integration work so important for giving teachers, learners and researchers time to do their real work.
The conference was divided into parallel strands for the afternoon of day one and morning of day two, each with a remit to present and summarise progress and identify funding priorities. XCRI was positioned in the Integration strand, and our presentation was well received (and even podcast). Jim Farmer asked key questions that really emphasised the need for all Reference Model projects to be acutely aware of the business case for adoption and of the benefits that would be manifest for each particular stakeholder group.
The Integration strand's feedback presentation (podcast) to the rest of the conference emphasised that a lot of progress had been made in a year, but that much work still remained. Large scale testing with big institutions and major partners like UCAS would be necessary to really demonstrate the value of e-Admin services within the e-Framework. Vendors would need to be engaged to ensure that adapters were available for proposed web services.
For curriculum in particular, the challenge of data entry (smart on/offline XML forms editing) would need to tackled and supported by production quality solutions before busy academics and quality assurance coordinators would contemplate shifting away from monolithic word processed course documents. What was also apparent from feedback from other strands was the value that could be gained from genuine joined-up thinking. Links to assessment, e-Portfolio and repositories (for storing curriculum content) should definitely be pursued in further work.
The conference also provided an excellent opportunity to find out about and learn from other projects, UK and further afield. Thanks in particular to Jim (Farmer) for helping me to appreciate how JISC's e-Framework approach and curriculum would map to the US experience, and to Tore (Hoel) for updating me on Norway's CDM and progress on European standardisation. Conversations with Selwyn of Phosphorix, Ben from Kainao and Anne from MIMAS convinced us that Apache Xindice was unfortunately a dead project, so our focus has now shifted to SleepyCat's Berkeley DB as XML database for our prototype. We also learned that Selwyn has been using early drafts of the XCRI schema to move course information around within the LearningMatrix and the East of England Lifelong Learning Support Regional Pilot projects. We will need to allocate appropriate time and resource to documenting and reviewing this experience. Selwyn and I agreed to get together soon and the CETIS Enterprise SIG meeting scheduled for 2005-12-05 in Crewe should give us an excellent opportunity to plan how we maximise the potential of his hard efforts.
