Position Statement

There are different aspects under which this topic can be discussed; I would like to focus on the interoperability among educational components (instead of e.g. education about interoperability in GIS).

Why this aspect is important: To facilitate worker mobility, choice between educational products, use 'market forces' for educational QA, flexible and efficient use of educational resources to cater to different needs, ...

Prerequisites for interoperability between edu components: Defined curricula and entities for delivery (what goes into which course?); entry and transition requirements between these courses; certification levels & standards (cf. ISO TC211 N502); overall, interop in GI edu is closely linked to the certification debate, although approaching it from a different angle.

Assumptions for further discussion: 1. there are accepted standard curricula; 2. a choice of learning units / presentation media is available; 3. multiple, readily available 'access points' (=educational institutions ?)

Facilitating factors: Firstly, since learners' mobility is limited, a flexible distance learning environment is instrumental in enabling the mentioned aspects of 'distributed teaching' (=learners collect instruction from multiple points!). Internet services currently are the (only?) major option for more or less ubiquitous access to interactive multimedia 'experiential' learning environments. A second factor is the globalization of software technology and the knowledge structures 'hardwired' into software products. Otherwise syllabi would be less well defined.

Key question: How can we build adequate, effective and motivating ("fun") learning environments based on distributed media? In other words, what is the "glue" between independent components for distributed teaching? How can we interface components and integrate them under different instructional metaphors, paradigms and styles?

Factors to consider for interop of edu components: * Familiarity: common style etc to provide 'homeroom feeling'

• Navigation: easy 'wayfinding'; sense of current location; intuitive, common structure for learning environment; build right expectations
• Completeness: 'one stop shopping' for knowledge acquisition
• Guidance: availability of a virtual and/or real instructor personality ('coach', 'mentor', 'tour guide')
• Social learning environment: arranging for peer contact to facilitate group learning
• Plug-and-learn: software / platform independence
• Scaleability: move between levels of qualification / ambition / understanding
• Multiple views: support different application / domain / role perspectives for flexible use
• Localization: how do we handle and overcome rifts between languages, cultural and technical contexts?

• The versioning lesson: a common curriculum is more than a collection of content entities; but requires defined structuring, perspectives, context and ...
• The Toolbook lesson: try to maintain software independence, or at least platform independence for interactive teachware components.
• The Spans lesson: try to achieve plug-and-play exchangeability for exercises (everything's done in quadtrees, right?). This requires stated objectives and defined interfacing.
• The reusability lesson: authoring educational components for multiple uses IS difficult! Horizontal (grouping of concepts) and vertical (levels of detail) modularization is key to flexible use of media, but may lead to unmanageable collections of bits and pieces.
• The localization lesson: we can teach students global content - but need to do so within the local culture.
• The K-99 lesson: learning (e.g. about GIS) doesn't happen only once in a lifetime: educational products need positioning along an educational timeline; covering more than one 'era' is definitely an advantage!
• The MD/SDO/SC lesson: how do we keep up with technological evolution? Remain in sync with the 'real world'? Keep in touch with industry?
• The Collabra lesson: groupware technology is a key instrument for Internet-based learning environments. Strategic choices in this area determine the success in bringing components together.
• The EC-US lesson: if you want to put supposedly interoperable components to the test, combine them under different learning style paradigms (the jury is still out on this one!)
• The domino lesson: (aka The 404 lesson aka The dangling node lesson) is there a thing like an educational object? Where semantics, properties, class relationships and methods are so clearly defined that interaction with other objects happens properly over through generations of changes?
• The maze lesson: multiple pathways through collections of educational resources are a striking idea - does a maze need to be a fully connected graph?
• The Watcom lesson: some existing great stuff will never make the educational interoperability grade; too bad we need to start development from scratch ...

See also joint presentation with Jim Petch.

Address