The IMS Project

1
The IMS Project

• Technology for supporting learning
• Sandy Britain, UK IMS Centre

2
Outline

• Part 1 Background and Rationale
• Part 2 Description

3
The IMS Project

• Created to address challenges in on-line learning
• Partnership of universities and companies
• (e.g. California State University, UNC, U.
  Michigan, Miami-Dade, Microsoft, Sun, IBM,
  Apple, KPMG, International Thomson Publishing,
  NIST, DOD)

4
Goal of IMS

• Building the Internet Architecture for Learning
• freely available technical specifications
• freely available prototypes and migration tools

5
IMS Standards
6
IMS Environment
Authoring Tools
Learning Resources
Teacher
Off Campus Student
IMS Mgmt System Content
CD
Back office
Collaboration Tools
On campus Student
7
What open technical standards can do

• Jumpstart content and educational environments
  for the Internet (and Intranet)
• Make it easier for developers to create and
  distribute content
• dont have to support proprietary servers
• people can find it easily
• Enable any time, any where learning

8
Project Outputs

• Specifications for
• Metadata U. North Carolina
• Content interoperability IBM
• Profiles Farance Inc.
• Learning Management Blackboard Inc.
• Back Office PeopleSoft Inc.
• Ecommerce George Mason U.
• Examples prototypes

9
Scope of the IMS Specification
Student Profiles
Interfaces to External Services
Management
Meta-data
Content
10
IMS Meta-data Specification

• IMS Metadata Search/Query Demonstration
• http//metadata.imsproject.org/mdtool/
• IMS/NIST Metadata Repository
• dictionary of terms for describing content
• supports group specialization
• can be queried/browsed with modified authoring
  tools

11
IMS Content Specification

• Supports technical interoperability of
• assessment
• sequencing
• reporting data
• bookmarking
• notification
• meta-data

12
Management Specification

• Manages
• Content
• Courses
• Collaboration
• Interfaces
• Database, Security, Access control, HTTP/CGI,
  tracking, session management, DCOM/Corba message
  bridging .

13
IMS Profile Specification

• Educational records Wallet
• Mobile
• Contains
• Personal information
• Performance information
• Portfolio
• Preferences

14
External Services Specification

• Specifies technical interface to campus IT
  infrastructure
• student records
• billing/commerce
• library

15
What kind of a project is IMS?

• Not your usual standards committee
• action oriented, creating prototypes, putting
  them into real situations
• Not selling anything but working very hard to
  give it away
• goal is widespread adoption of the technical
  specification
• Looking to transform the learning technology
  marketplace
• specifications designed for evolution and change

16
Timings

• Release 1.0 at Easter
• Main aspects of
• Metadata
• Content
• Profiles
• Back Office
• Subsequent 6 monthly releases

17
UK IMS Centre

• Bangor and OU
• Funded by JTAP
• 2 year project
• Represent UK View
• Disseminate results

18
Current Actions

• University User Groups
• Face to face and online discussions
• Identify UK requirements
• Advisory board meetings
• Technical board meetings
• Maintain information flow
• Website, events

19
Contact information

• www.imsproject.org.uk
• Paul Lefrere (OU)
• Oleg Liber (Bangor)
• Bill Olivier (Bangor)
• Lisa Rowlands (Bangor