Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, standards only take one so far in the implementation of
VLEs. It is worth having some understanding of these issues if a successful implementation is to
be achieved.
Most of the points addressed here were highly visible in the FE MLE programme run by JISC
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_mle_pilots
which primarily looked at using IMS
to link together VLEs and student record systems, but the issues will be found in many other areas
too.
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Many of the standards are not standards at all - most of the standards in the area of
learning technologies are not official standards at all, they are specifications produced by
bodies with no legal standing. This includes IMS which is funded by a number of universities
and suppliers and the JISC. Although many of the "standards" are really specifications they
will be referred to as standards for the sake of simplicity.
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Many of the standards are poorly developed. Standards are typically arrived at through a
consensual process, which attempts to draw in as many of the participants as possible. This
is very slow, with the result that we are often having to develop systems based on drafts of
specifications which are likely to change. Until people start implementing the standards in
their systems it is not really possible to know where their weaknesses lie, and so what
changes may be needed.
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Many standards contain ambiguities - this is related to the previous point. However
ambiguities cause a particular set of problems as they allow different vendors to implement the
standards inn different ways which are incompatible with each other. Thus, although two
systems both claim to be compliant with a particular standard (and may indeed be so) they will
not actually interoperate with each other.
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Version control - standards are moving very quickly, with new versions of many of them
coming out twice a year. They are not always completely backward compatible so that
different versions of the same standard may well not work together. This causes problems
during purchase, but also when it is necessary to upgrade systems
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lack of compliance certification - many systems claim compliance with the relevant
standards, but it is not clear what this means unless they are certified. For instance, WECA
certifies equipment as being compliant with 802.11 wireless standard
and that they do
interoperate. There is no similar body covering educational technology standards.
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Competing standards - many bodies have an interest in developing standards, and in the
area of educational technology these include the Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE), IMS, ADL (who produce SCORM). Even when they are attempting to work
together it still takes a long time for their various standards to converge.
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incompleteness - the standards may not cover everything that needs to be addressed so that
some of the work has to be done outside the standards, or the standards have to be stretched
to cover the issue.
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Multiple standards - there is a need to use different standards to cover different aspects of
the problem (IMS for data formatting, SOAP for transport etc). It may be difficult to tie these
together.
Despite this long list of problems there is progress, and it is worthwhile taking an open standards
approach for the reasons discussed under "why use standards"
