Overview of e-learning standards

Emmanuel Fernandes (1) , Nicolas Dunand (1) , Nadia Spang Bovey (1)

1 UNIL - Université de Lausanne = University of Lausanne

The following article presents an overview of the different standards developing in the eLearning sector. As any new technology, eLearning and its various functionalities need to be underpinned by a standard reference schema. The existence of such a standard is mandatory for the development of a new technology, as it allows the interoperability of resources that would otherwise be incompatible. Interoperability is the keyword here, and its lack is the main barrier to resource exchange and sharing. The emergence of standards will allow the exchange of learning resources, which in turn will allow the production of didactic material using ICT at a lower cost thanks to the interoperability of various software systems. Different aspects of the standardization are reviewed here. After a brief presentation of the main actors of the standardization, the discussion will focus on the description of the most used and the most promising standards. This discussion will include an introduction to flagship concepts, such as metadata, learning objects and learning units, as well as pedagogical modeling languages. The last part of this article addresses the learner or the learning material designer who considers the use of standard descriptors for his didactic material. This part is centered on technical and pedagogical considerations and provides the reader with some guidelines allowing him to make a choice with full knowledge of the facts.

Keywords: e-learning; learning standards; standardisation bodies

Domains: Technology for Human Learning

Emmanuel Fernandes, Nicolas Dunand, Nadia Spang Bovey. Overview of e-learning standards. 2006. ⟨hal-00190245⟩