SALTIS Webinar Registration

Chat transcript, 13th November 2009

Key

Comment typed in chat

Spoken comment

Answer added to the minutes but not given during the webinar

Phil N	Do we actually need disaggregation if content suppliers are willing to produce content that is already disaggregarted? Likewise, if sequecning tools don't exist then does 'solving' disaggregation help?
Crispin Weston	For the larger publishers, they see commercial value in publishing complete courses, and there is value in the default course - but they also recognise that the user often wants to access the diaggregated content. And "disaggregation" is not just about taking things apart but defining what the disaggregated content looks like. My analogy is that you can't build a wall till you know what a brick looks like. I shall deal with some of the details of disaggregation in details later in the presentation.
Rojon	Disaggregated gives the educator choices
Dave Hodge	Can you give me an example of disagregated content please?
Phil N	(In response to presentation) Yes Simple sequecning is not simple!
Rojon	lol very true phil
Dave Hodge	Surely it is a question of whether the end user is an ''informed user"
Crispin Weston	The complexity of Simple Sequencing has been a problem not principally for end users but, more significantly, for tools developers. No recognised, interoperable tools have been developed and different implementations have often proved not to be interoperable.
Richard Lang	The introduction and uptake of Adobe Air should give VLE publishers good reason to think about out of browser content
Rojon	swf files enable you to... but at the same time can be changed to a SCORM package
Phil N	Out of browser (IMHO) is the way
Crispin Weston	I'm interested in getting to out-of-browser. One of the objections that the VLE providers raised was that this would make the installation of VLEs a nightmare on school networks and run into all sorts of firewall and networking problems. I think we need to do some more investigation. There are some VLEs in the UK that already run out-of browser content. So I certainly think that is a direction of travel that we want to go in. There is also some work being done by LETSI on a web service implementation of the SCORM run time - and once you have this, you can then have that runtime data interaction out-of-browser as well as in-browser. So its part of a package that needs to be in step 2.
Ray Shaw	Out of browser gives more power - strongly agree.
Dave Hodge	Here here!
Taras	The line will soon be so blurred that in/out will not be an issue :)
Requirement for multi-player content
Rojon	Never thought about that.
Presentation of disaggregation model
Richard Lang	Phew!
Phil N	I'll do it on the forum
Rojon	Interesting :-)
Rojon	We have worked closely with providers to get dissagregated content this yr
Frank	Does RAMLET Resource Aggregation Model for Learning Education and Training play into this effort?
Crispin Weston	No. The project is assuming that the base technology will be IMS Content Packaging version 1.2, which is in the final stages of adoption as an ISO standard.
Dave Hodge	Testing is the biggest issue for content publishers
Crispin Weston	I couldn't agree more with that. I've been arguing that rigorous conformance testing and kite-marking is essential. It won't fly without that. Testing is obviously quite expensive and so, as far as content publishers are concerned, I have been arguing that what we need is a content packaging tool that just does it right. A Word document is a conformant Word document because it has been produced in Microsoft Word - and a content package will be a conformant package because it has been produced in the packaging tool. And if you do that, there is very little need for expensive, bespoke, conformance testing. Of course, VLEs are another matter - and there will need to be bespoke testing on VLEs and that will need to be paid for. And if that conformance testing is going to make sense, you have to link it up with kitemarking so that the kite-mark represents for the end-user a guarantee for the end-user that things will plug together as advertised. And if they don't plug together as advertised, then it is the certifying authority which is responsible for sorting things out - either by removing the kite-mark from someone who hasn't complied or by sorting out any problem in the specifications. I think there has to be a clear line of reponsibility which has to end with the certifying authority.
Phil N	Does this proposal cover content going into Learning content management systems (or repositories) as well as into VLEs? (Presume yes)
Crispin Weston	That's an open question Phil. Becta has made proposals for an Ecosystem, which will be a network of repositories and possibly indexes and other central infrastructure. I think the answer needs to be "yes" - but it's outside the scope of this project.
Rojon	think that we can understand the concept learning objects, but when I work with schools they seem puzzled of how it works! Any process of making it simple?
Crispin Weston	I agree with that. I think there is question over what terminology needs to be regarded as technical and what is appropriate to the end-user - and for "learning object", I'm not sure what the answer is. Whenever I start talking about learning objects to teachers, they often ask "how big is a learning object?" Is it an activity or is it a course - and the whole point of learning objects is that it doesn't specify this. So it may be that the terminology of "learning objects" is not one that flies with teachers - it may be we can explain it to them. I think that will become clearer in our discussions with end-users - and I think that a clearer terminology is one of the key benefits of this kind of project.
Rojon	yeah explaining it to them takes even longer!
Phil Hall	I think I have a handle from your explanation Crispin, thanks. your content packaging application is what I was trying to get at. though how a content packaging application would work with our conversational system is an interesting thought
Ray Shaw	Feel confident that what you're aiming at is raising aspiration rather than limiting it - which seemed a huge danger and backward step!
James Smith	Great conference, I think you've covered just about everything!
Rojon	Thank you.
Deborah	Thanks it was really interesting
John Rogers	Anyone interested in coming to next Tuesday's meeting in the capacity of end-user representative, please drop me an email at john.rogers@edicts.com.
Phil N	Yep (y) cheers Crispin, very interesting
David Holden	Thanks, are there criteria for being a member?
Crispin Weston	The criterion for being a member is that you should supply education-specific technology to schools (being defined as the compulsory education sector). So we don't want people who are just selling computer hardware because they don't have a perspective on what is required for learning technology. If you don't meet that criterion for being a member, you can still be a partner and partners still participate in all our technical discussions, they just don't necessarily get to vote. In practice, the distinction between partner and member is not that significant. So if you are not a member and are interested in participating, just drop me a line, because we want to have as many people as possible.
Taras 2	Thanks - very clear. Look forward to seeing the spec.