Orchestration and sequencing

The concept of sequencing is about allowing publishers, teachers and other intermediaries to pick and mix content "objects", create customised lessons, workplans and courses. It envisages that content from different sources (e.g. commercial and user-generated) could be combined and that students could be given personalised learning pathways, depending on performance, competency, characteristic or choice.

Previous attempts to achieve interoperable sequencing specifications (such as Simple Sequencing and Learning Design) have had only limited success. Two of SALTIS' partners are therefore looking at different ways of moving forwards and providing solutions which allow for the distribution of remixable content aggregations.

IMS review of Simple Sequencing

Based on the experience of KERIS (Korea Education and Research Information Service) in creating a tightly defined profile of Simple Sequencing, Warwick Bailey of Icodeon (a member of SALTIS) and Rob Abel of IMS are proposing to work on a more commonly applicable profile, that would solve some of the current problems with Simple Sequencing.

	Link to A Common Evolution for IMS Simple Sequencing?, a paper by Warwick Bailey and Rob Abel, along with associated discussion (requires free login to the IMS site).
	Link to discussions about IMS Learning Design (an alternative approach to the scripting of learning processes).

LETSI proposals for orchestration and sequencing

SALTIS' Chairman, Crispin Weston, also chairs the LETSI Orchestration Working Group, which is also addressing the requirment for better, more interoperable sequencing solutions. The LETSI Orchestration Working Group has identified two approaches to this requirement:

	A declarative sequencing specification, which would tools to create interoperable "scripts", combining learning objects into lessons, workplans and courses.
	An architecture for delegated orchestration, which would allow developers to create third-party sequencing services, which could manage student progression and differentiation in innovative and possibly proprietary ways.

In the long term, the delegated model offers more scope for developing innovative new approaches. The declarative specification (at least at a very simple level) is nevertheless a prerequisite for any delegated architecture and is therefore the current object of the working group's attention.

Everyone is welcome to participate in the LETSI disucussions—please send an email to info@letsi.org to register your interest. A selection of key papers from the orchestration group is also copied here.

	Overview of LETSI orchestration proposals (now with full notes - Crispin Weston)
	Videoed presentation of the the slides above.
	Draft proposal for declarative sequencing (Crispin Weston). Current draft of a proposal being considered by LETSI's orchestration working group, on which the overview (above) is based.

Note. In the terminology being adopted by the LETSI orchestration group, "sequencing" is one type of "orchestration". Sequencing refers to the combination of learning activities over time; orchestration refers more generally to putting different objects and components together for a variety of different purposes and in a variety of different contexts.

SALTIS' role

As a representative of the community of practice involved in supplying learning technology to UK schools, SALTIS will act as an intermediary in both of these developments—gathering requirements, participating in technical discussions and endeavouring to ensure that any outputs serve the interests of UK education.

There is also a close relationship between sequencing and packaging—which SALTIS will need to bear in mind in its approach to the content packaging profile to ensure that content packaging profile and sequencing spec work synergistically together.