New International Subcommittee Advances IEEE Standards Work on Learning Technology.

PISCATAWAY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 1999--

The IEEE, along with its Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC), announced that the formation of the new ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission) Subcommittee on Learning Technology (called SC36) will further the international development and acceptance of the IEEE's learning technology (1484) standards. LTSC will work closely with SC36 on the development of common IEEE and ISO/IEC standards in this area. SC36 was formed within ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical Committee 1), Information Technology standards.

The IEEE LTSC was established in 1996 and has grown to 20 working and study groups, covering most of the major areas of learning technology particular to education and training. These include metadata, learning management systems, portable student records, application programming interfaces, XML bindings, system architecture, and portable learning content. Worldwide, the education and training market is over a trillion (US) dollars.

As a formal standards committee within the IEEE, the LTSC has maintained both market relevancy and speed. "The committee has focused on the smallest, useful, doable specifications that have technical feasibility, commercial viability, and widespread adoption," says Frank Farance, Vice Chair of LTSC. LTSC is furthering interoperability of its standards by coordinating conformance testing with the IEEE-ISTO (Industry Standards and Technology Organization).

LTSC has greatly benefited from close collaboration with many organizations. Ed Walker, CEO of IMS (Instructional Management Systems), says, "International consortia like IMS develop technical specifications that enable developers and end-users to quickly evaluate the impact and usability of emerging standards. This feedback helps the overall process consolidate the individual strengths of participating groups into effective and robust formal standards".

Anne Montgomery, Technical Coordinator for AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee), sees additional benefits. "The users and vendors are worldwide ... so international standards are important, and the organizations themselves should be international," states Montgomery.

Although internationalization is important, strong national or local peculiarities have to be considered. "The social process [of education] can benefit...from internationally supported standardization work...without harming the much-valued multicultural and multilingual aspects of education," says Eddy Forte, Chair of PROMETEUS (PROmoting Multimedia access to Education and Training in European Society) and Coordinator of ARIADNE (Alliance for REmote Instruction Authoring and Distribution Networks of Europe). ARIADNE, an active participant in LTSC, is expected to help ensure that Europe's social, linguistic and cultural concerns are represented in the new SC36 subcommittee.

With the formation of SC36, the LTSC will be incorporating an innovation developed in the early 1990s for the standards process: co-located meetings. The SC36 and LTSC co-located meetings permit greater efficiencies, while minimizing travel cost and avoiding the creation of splinter organizations.

The next LTSC meeting will be held on 6 December through 10 December in Washington, DC and will be hosted by the Department of Defense Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative.

For further information:

- LTSC: http://ltsc.ieee.org - IEEE Standards: http://standards.ieee.org/ - ISO/IEC JTC 1:

http://www.jtc1.org

Organizations that collaborate with LTSC:

- ADL (DoD Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative)

http://www.adlnet.org - AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee) http://www.aicc.org - ARIADNE (Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and

Distribution Networks of Europe) http://ariadne.unil.ch - CEN/ISSS/LTWS (European Committee for Standardization,

Information Society Standardization System, Learning Technology

Workshop) http://www.cenorm.be/isss/workshop/lt - GEM Project (Gateway to Education Materials)

http://www.geminfo.org - GESTALT (Getting Educational Systems Talking Across Leading-edge

Technologies) http://www.fdgroup.co.uk/gestalt - IMS (IMS Project) http://www.imsproject.org - PROMETEUS (PROmoting Multimedia access to Education and Training

in EUropean Society) http://www.prometeus.org