Thursday, September 10, 2020

IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Update

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Kickoff Meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. The standard, was released in 2002 and is due for a refresh. One possibility is to generalize to learning "resources" rather than objects, with more details of what the learning is for, rather than technical files which make it up. It is a good time to consider this with e-learning suddenly being used on a large scale due to  COVID-19. As with any standard, one of the tasks is to work out why we are doing this: what is the problem we are trying to solve? An example would be micro-credentials, where there would be many more small components to learning to keep track of.

The meeting time is not exactly convenient for me (4:30am in Canberra), but there are there are 24 participants around the world, so it can't be good for everyone. This is a formal groups with membership, an agenda and voting (I am an individual IEEE). I haven't taken part in a formal meeting for years and the chair is showing considerable patience going through the process online. This may seem cumbersome but is necessary for standards meetings as passions can run and there was conflict with the previous group (I was on the balloting group in 2002, but did not attend previously).

The meeting is using WebEX, which I have not used for years and had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface in Firefox, but might use the Android client next time.

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