Briefing Paper: Integrated Learning Environments and 21st Century Learning

This paper provides context for the Integrated Learning Environments and 21st Century Learning activity within the DER Technical Standards for Education project.

The aim is to provide background information, and a framework for eliciting feedback from the focus group on business requirements, possible technical approaches, and priorities for engagement with standards and specifications bodies.

This document is a work in progress: it will be expanded in collaboration with the focus group for this activity.


© Copyright 2009 University of Southern Queensland

Business drivers

  1. Jurisdictions require efficient ways for their administrative and learning systems to integrate with each other in data exchange
  2. Jurisdictions on occasion need to exchange data with each other and with external bodies (boards of studies, NAPLAN)
  3. Efficiencies and pedagogical improvements in sharing learning experiences, resources across schools and jurisdictions
  4. Any sharing of learning or data between systems must be consistent, secure, and cheap

Interoperability challenges

  • Jurisdiction systems have disparate data models needing to be reconciled.
  • There is diversity in practice between jurisdictions, which will make common data models harder to realise.
  • Integrating administrative and learning systems will require culture change.
  • Learning systems have traditionally been designed for use in isolation.
  • There are major concerns over data privacy, and over extending sharing student data outside the jurisdiction.
  • There are duty-of-care concerns over student privacy.
  • There are disparities in schools over networking and computing infrastructure.

Scenario

The scenarios illustrate the gains in efficiency and improved access to information through integrating systems, in both the administrative and learning domains in education.

Integrated Administration Environments

Student Karen enrols in Swan Hill Primary School in Victoria; she was previously enrolled in another school in Victoria. The Swan Hill Primary systems are synchronised with the central Victorian jurisdiction systems, which hold data on academic performance, special needs, and custodial information. Swan Hill Primary can receive all the information it needs on Karen from the central systems on demand, through SIF, and can update the central systems with new information in the same way.

Swan Hill Primary needs to report aggregate, anonymised student performance information to the Commonwealth. Data on students' academic performance, including Karen's, is gathered from Swan Hill's assessment systems, and sent to the Victorian jurisdiction system through SIF. The jurisdiction aggregates all the performance data, anonymises it, and reports it upstream to the Commonwealth through SIF. The entire process is automated and efficient.

Integrated Learning Environments

Karen is choosing between projects she can work on online for her science course. The Swan Hill Primary Learning Management System has live access to the Swan Hill Primary Student Management System. The Student Management System has information on what learning outcomes Karen has already fulfilled. While Karen is choosing projects from the LMS, the LMS display communicates with the Student Management System, and lets her know which projects would help her satisfy an assessment task she has not yet been credited for.

Karen's science teacher Hiram is doing learning design through LAMS (Learning Activity Management System: http://www.lamsinternational.com/). LAMS sequences learning activities as a workflow. The learning activities are hosted on Moodle. Hiram can use LAMS to sequence learning activities on Moodle, and the two tools can access each other directly across the Web.

Karen and Jenny use the learning activities on Moodle in Hiram's science course, as a basis for a collaborative assignment built through Google Wave. The Wave interacts with Moodle through "gadgets", so students can interact with Moodle as a virtual conversation partner at strategic points. This means LAMS creates a seamless learner experience for the lesson, and presents it through Google Wave drawing on resources in Moodle: Karen do not have to jump between Moodle and LAMS, to experience the learning activities in the sequence Hiram has set up.

Interoperability and technical analysis

There is a growing requirement for integration of systems in the school sector: administrative systems within a jurisdiction; administrative systems with systems external to the jurisdiction (e.g. vertical reporting); collaboration systems with learning environments; and administrate systems with learning environments. Such integration is undertaken to achieve a variety of goals, including

  • vertical reporting to national bodies
  • efficient dissemination of common data
  • coordinating learning content from multiple systems (including the Open Web) into coherent learning experiences
  • supporting online collaborative and interactive experiences in learning environments
  • gathering information from the learning management systems for administrative purposes

Integration of different systems involves particular choices of integration technologies. There are a variety of technologies; SIF in particular has emerged as a popular method in the Australian school sector for systems integration. Web 2.0 technologies and emerging practice, such as widgets, also need to be considered as mechanisms of integration. Web 2.0 approaches are of particular interest in pedagogy, since they promote collaboration in learning, as well as a more interactive learning experience.

Integration requires shared models of the data to be exchanged between the systems; the disparity of systems means the semantics of the shared data models should be broadly understood, and the data values should follow generic standards where applicable.

Choices in both data models and technologies for system integration are driven by the particular business requirements that the integration addresses. This activity seeks to explore requirements for integration in the sector. We do not anticipate that a single data model or technology will satisfy all requirements for all systems in the sector. Once the requirements are established, the group can look at which technologies and data models provide the best fit for particular requirements. The group's primary focus will be on how the integration of Web 2.0 technologies in learning environments can help improve the educational experience; the group will also consider synergies between Web 2.0 and SIF in the school sector.

Questions to be worked through in establishing integration requirements include:

  • What sort of data exchange will advance pedagogical objectives most?
  • Which integration technologies and modes of integration are most productive pedagogically in learning environments?
  • What data from learning management systems is important to gather for administrative purposes?
  • What technologies can facilitate such data exchanges best, under which circumstances?
  • How should new integration technologies like widgets and Google Wave best be harnessed in the classroom?

Technical Approaches

Architectures for systems integration

SOA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture : Architecture for integrating functionality across systems through loosely coupled services, exposing both new functionality and functionality of existing systems

SIF: http://www.sifassociation.org : Well-establlshed standard approach for data exchange and interoperability in school sector

Web 2.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 : Approach to web design emphasising interactivity, user control of data, and integration of data from multiple sources

W3C Widgets: http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/ : Emerging standard for packaging of software applications for inclusion in web content, to support Web 2.0 interactivity

Google Wave: http://wave.google.com/ . For more on the possibilities of such use of Google Wave in structured LAMS-like contexts, see e.g. http://mfeldstein.com/does-google-wave-mean-the-end-of-the-lms

Data Standards for communications between systems

SIF-AU: http://www.sifassociation.org/au/ : Australian profile of SIF-AU, adapting SIF data model and vocabulary to Australian School environment

ABS: http://www.abs.gov.au/ : Australian Bureau of Statistics, source of standards for data exchange in Australia, especially at government level

MCEETYA: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya/data_standards_manual_2009,26299.html : Source of standards used for data values in Australian school sector, especially in reporting

NCES: http://nces.ed.gov/ , http://nces.sifinfo.org/datamodel/ : National Center for Education Statistics, Source of most of SIF-US’ data standards


The Technical Standards for Digital Education project is funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

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