Kicking-off iCoper
Posted on | September 4, 2008 | Comments Off
I and my collegue, Peter Vinnervik , are at the kick-off meting for the iCoper project in Wien. The project spans 30 month and has the potential of becoming one of the most interesting EU-projects that I have participated in. This is in the abstract for the project:
Higher education institutions and continuing education centers face a growing number of challenges in delivering competency-driven educational content with their learning services. The current lack of widely accepted standards and their adoption hinders the effective implementation of learning technologies.
Driven by a consortium of key players in the European arena iCOPER will access to a critical mass of more than 15,000 hours of integrated educational content. Based on this beneficial infrastructure the project will systematically analyze the implementation of existing specifications such as IMS RCDEO, IMS LD, SQI, and QTI. iCOPER’s underlying pedagogical framework will guide a consensus building approach to developing Best Practices, addressing issues such as (1) exchange of competency models in a cross-cultural educational context, (2) collaboration around learning designs, (3) integration of content via federated search and harvesting, (4) reuse of instructional models and content in learning deliver environments, (5) interoperability of item banks for assessment and evaluation.
iCOPER will provide mechanisms to ensure European-wide user involvement, cooperation, and adoption of standards within a large community to support all phases of standardization. Liaison management will condense findings into an iCOPER Reference Model which will be fed back to standards bodies and disseminated via the iCOPER Institute for Training, Consulting & Piloting.
The thing that makes iCoper interesting is that it deals with the big picture, which is something that is usually missing when working with technology standards and the pedagogical perspective. By that, iCoper fits the profile and research at IML very well.
Tags: Digital learning content > Digital Learning Resources > eContent Plus > icoper > learning design > Learning Objects > learning technology standards > LMS > LOR > Metadata > OER > Projects > Research > Standards > Technology enhanced learning > Virtual Learning Environment