OASIS Announces Education XML Technical Committee

Education XML Technical Committee: Call For Participation

Date:      Mon, 17 Feb 2003 08:13:53 -0500
From:      Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>
To:        members@lists.oasis-open.org, tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org, xml-dev@lists.xml.org, education@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject:   OASIS TC Call For Participation: Education XML TC

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Education XML Technical Committee has been proposed by the following members of OASIS: James Simon, Sun Microsystems; Donald Leclair, Computer Associates; Ronald Alepin, Fujitsu Software; Philip Rossomando, Unisys; George Ward, Cisco Systems; David Alexander, Cisco Learning Institute; Thomas Vreeland, OpenVES; Amber Diehl, The Ross School; and John Cona, Individual member.

The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.

To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC chair, Thomas Vreeland (tsv@openves.org) of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first meeting on 25 Match 2003. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you time you notify the chair.

The private mail list education@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl or by sending a message to education-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding paragraph.)

A public comment list will be available for the public to make comments on the work of this TC; a message may be sent to the TC via the address education-comment@lists.oasis-open.org.

The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/.

-Karl

Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org
http://www.oasis-open.org

OASIS Education XML Technical Committee

Name of Technical Committee

The name of this Technical Committee shall be the OASIS Education XML Technical Committee (Education XML TC).

Statement of Purpose of Technical Committee

The international PK12 (pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade) community of practice is underrepresented in traditional eLearning standards organizations and its unique technical and functional requirements have not been well articulated. The rationale and motivation for the formation of an OASIS Technical Committee to better represent PK12 interests is to provide a new and more open collaborative environment for urgent standards conversations within the PK12 community of practice. Because of enlightened OASIS membership policies for non-profits and educational organizations, and the OASIS open, public, process of collaboration, many more PK12 organizations from around the world will be able to participate than has been possible in other eLearning standards communities.

The United Nations Education for All (EFA) initiative makes it imperative that eLearning technology standards be advanced in order to support the worldwide EFA activities during the next decade. The Education XML TC will prioritize its activities to support UN activities and other international initiatives and to provide leadership in development of PK12 specific XML Specifications, Implementation Guidelines and Best Practices. Recognizing the important role played by other eLearning standards communities from around the world, it will be our goal to coordinate and collaborate with them whenever possible.

The aims and purposes of the Education XML TC shall be as follows:

XML requirements documentation for shared extensible user profiles, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and thesauri, and other needed specifications, not currently underway in OASIS or other standards communities will be undertaken by sub-groups of the Education XML Technical Committee.
Translation and publication of a set of XML schema and specifications based on the authoritative Data Handbooks published by the US Education Department National Center for Educational Statistics for use in and by public education in the United States, as a service to the international PK12 community of practice.
Coordinate closely with, and establish liaison with, other OASIS Technical Committees whose work is directly related to PK12 requirements.
Publish a series of Implementation Handbooks and Best Practice Guidelines for the PK12 community of practice, which document and illustrate the utilization and integration of OASIS XML specifications and other XML specifications and standards in the PK12 context. These Handbooks and Guidelines will be for the use of implementers, vendors, and early adopters.

Relationship to other activities

Where appropriate, the Education XML TC will foster collaborative relationships and liaisons with other activities.

Technical Committee Deliverables

The primary deliverables of the Education XML TC are the documentation of a coordinated set of PK12 requirements, which will enable the development of XML vocabularies, schema, and web services interfaces for implementation of eLearning infrastructure. These implementations will enable the PK12 community of practice to:

deliver eLearning applications and content to end users through a diversity of deployment channels; directly to a browser or mobile or handheld device, indirectly through a portal, or by embedding into web applications and devices; and
create eLearning applications that can be easily modified, adapted, aggregated, integrated, coordinated, or synchronized by simple means to leverage worldwide eLearning application components.

The Education XML Technical Committee plans to begin its work in three phases:

PHASE I: Requirements Gathering

In this phase PK12 requirements will be gathered, and USED Data Handbook Translations will be initiated and first versions published.

PHASE II: Specification Development

In this phase we will identify the available set of XML specifications, which are useful for implementation of PK12 eLearning applications and will develop those XML specifications, which are needed. These may include specifications for identity management and authentication, pedagogical patterns and assessment patterns, federated PK12 content repositories, shared extensible profiles, individual competency profiles, PK12 directory schema, deep semantic classification of learning standards, link management and annotation strategies, web services middleware definitions, and other requirements of the PK12 community of practice.

PHASE III: Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and Best Practices

In the third phase of the Education XML TC^Rs work we will develop Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and document Best Practices and encourage reference implementations and demonstrations of interoperability.

If the work takes place in these phases, it is estimated that the first phase will take approximately nine months, the second phase approximately one year, and the third phase another year. If phases can be combined or run in parallel, then it is estimated that the delivery of an initial set of specifications and implementation guidelines will take one to two years.

The Education XML TC Specifications will use implementation and language neutral XML formats defined in XML Schema where appropriate.

Language in which the TC will conduct business

All business of the Education XML TC will be conducted in English

Date and time of the first meeting

The first formal meeting of the Education XML Technical Committee is proposed to be via a telephone conference on Tuesday, 25 March 2003 at 2pm Eastern Time.

Meeting schedule for the year following the formation of the Technical Committee

It is proposed that the Education XML Technical Committee will hold face-to-face meetings semi-annually (time and place to be determined) and also will hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged. The dates and places for those meetings are:

Quarterly Mtg    Date and Time              Type of Meeting
-------------    ----------------------     ---------------------
March 2003       March 25, 2003 2pm EST     Telephone Conference Mtg
June 2003        To be determined           Face to Face Meeting - NY
September 2003   To be determined           Telephone Conference Mtg
January 2004     To be determined           Face to Face Meeting - NY

Other meetings will be conducted by telephone, or on the web, at such other times as the members of the TC will determine. It is the intention of the sponsors of the TC to adopt a meeting schedule that will maximize contact between the persons engaged in the Education XML work, business experts engaged in the work of OASIS and W3C, education experts engaged in the work of IMS and ADL, and educators and persons engaged in the work of other organizations attempting to define XML and Web Services based eLearning application standards.

TC Sponsors

Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee participation committed to the stated meeting schedule and purpose:

The following OASIS members support the creation of the Education XML Technical Committee:

James Simon, jjs@sun.com, Sun Microsystems
Donald Leclair, Donald.Leclair@ca.com, Computer Associates
Ronald Alepin, Ralepin@msn.com, Fujitsu Software
Philip Rossomando, Philip.Rossomando@unisys.com, Unisys
George Ward, gward@cisco.com, Cisco Systems
David Alexander, daalexan@cisco.com, Cisco Learning Institute
Thomas Vreeland, tsv@openves.org, OpenVES
John Cona, johncona@optonline.net, Individual member
Amber Diehl, adiehl@ross.org, The Ross School

Name of the Technical Committee Chair

Chair: Thomas Vreeland
Vice Chair: John Cona

Name of phone meeting sponsor

Thomas Vreeland

Name of face-to-face meeting sponsor

Thomas Vreeland

Policies and procedures of the Education XML Technical Committee

The Education XML Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of OASIS.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See general references in "XML and Educational Technologies."

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	OASIS Announces Education XML Technical Committee Education XML Technical Committee: Call For Participation Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 08:13:53 -0500 From: Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org> To: members@lists.oasis-open.org, tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org, xml-dev@lists.xml.org, education@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: OASIS TC Call For Participation: Education XML TC A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Education XML Technical Committee has been proposed by the following members of OASIS: James Simon, Sun Microsystems; Donald Leclair, Computer Associates; Ronald Alepin, Fujitsu Software; Philip Rossomando, Unisys; George Ward, Cisco Systems; David Alexander, Cisco Learning Institute; Thomas Vreeland, OpenVES; Amber Diehl, The Ross School; and John Cona, Individual member. The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting. To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC chair, Thomas Vreeland (tsv@openves.org) of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first meeting on 25 Match 2003. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you time you notify the chair. The private mail list education@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl or by sending a message to education-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding paragraph.) A public comment list will be available for the public to make comments on the work of this TC; a message may be sent to the TC via the address education-comment@lists.oasis-open.org. The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/. -Karl Karl F. Best Vice President, OASIS +1 978.667.5115 x206 karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org OASIS Education XML Technical Committee Name of Technical Committee The name of this Technical Committee shall be the OASIS Education XML Technical Committee (Education XML TC). Statement of Purpose of Technical Committee The international PK12 (pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade) community of practice is underrepresented in traditional eLearning standards organizations and its unique technical and functional requirements have not been well articulated. The rationale and motivation for the formation of an OASIS Technical Committee to better represent PK12 interests is to provide a new and more open collaborative environment for urgent standards conversations within the PK12 community of practice. Because of enlightened OASIS membership policies for non-profits and educational organizations, and the OASIS open, public, process of collaboration, many more PK12 organizations from around the world will be able to participate than has been possible in other eLearning standards communities. The United Nations Education for All (EFA) initiative makes it imperative that eLearning technology standards be advanced in order to support the worldwide EFA activities during the next decade. The Education XML TC will prioritize its activities to support UN activities and other international initiatives and to provide leadership in development of PK12 specific XML Specifications, Implementation Guidelines and Best Practices. Recognizing the important role played by other eLearning standards communities from around the world, it will be our goal to coordinate and collaborate with them whenever possible. The aims and purposes of the Education XML TC shall be as follows: XML requirements documentation for shared extensible user profiles, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and thesauri, and other needed specifications, not currently underway in OASIS or other standards communities will be undertaken by sub-groups of the Education XML Technical Committee. Translation and publication of a set of XML schema and specifications based on the authoritative Data Handbooks published by the US Education Department National Center for Educational Statistics for use in and by public education in the United States, as a service to the international PK12 community of practice. Coordinate closely with, and establish liaison with, other OASIS Technical Committees whose work is directly related to PK12 requirements. Publish a series of Implementation Handbooks and Best Practice Guidelines for the PK12 community of practice, which document and illustrate the utilization and integration of OASIS XML specifications and other XML specifications and standards in the PK12 context. These Handbooks and Guidelines will be for the use of implementers, vendors, and early adopters. Relationship to other activities Where appropriate, the Education XML TC will foster collaborative relationships and liaisons with other activities. Technical Committee Deliverables The primary deliverables of the Education XML TC are the documentation of a coordinated set of PK12 requirements, which will enable the development of XML vocabularies, schema, and web services interfaces for implementation of eLearning infrastructure. These implementations will enable the PK12 community of practice to: deliver eLearning applications and content to end users through a diversity of deployment channels; directly to a browser or mobile or handheld device, indirectly through a portal, or by embedding into web applications and devices; and create eLearning applications that can be easily modified, adapted, aggregated, integrated, coordinated, or synchronized by simple means to leverage worldwide eLearning application components. The Education XML Technical Committee plans to begin its work in three phases: PHASE I: Requirements Gathering In this phase PK12 requirements will be gathered, and USED Data Handbook Translations will be initiated and first versions published. PHASE II: Specification Development In this phase we will identify the available set of XML specifications, which are useful for implementation of PK12 eLearning applications and will develop those XML specifications, which are needed. These may include specifications for identity management and authentication, pedagogical patterns and assessment patterns, federated PK12 content repositories, shared extensible profiles, individual competency profiles, PK12 directory schema, deep semantic classification of learning standards, link management and annotation strategies, web services middleware definitions, and other requirements of the PK12 community of practice. PHASE III: Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and Best Practices In the third phase of the Education XML TC^Rs work we will develop Implementation Guidelines, Conformance Suites, and document Best Practices and encourage reference implementations and demonstrations of interoperability. If the work takes place in these phases, it is estimated that the first phase will take approximately nine months, the second phase approximately one year, and the third phase another year. If phases can be combined or run in parallel, then it is estimated that the delivery of an initial set of specifications and implementation guidelines will take one to two years. The Education XML TC Specifications will use implementation and language neutral XML formats defined in XML Schema where appropriate. Language in which the TC will conduct business All business of the Education XML TC will be conducted in English Date and time of the first meeting The first formal meeting of the Education XML Technical Committee is proposed to be via a telephone conference on Tuesday, 25 March 2003 at 2pm Eastern Time. Meeting schedule for the year following the formation of the Technical Committee It is proposed that the Education XML Technical Committee will hold face-to-face meetings semi-annually (time and place to be determined) and also will hold quarterly telephone or web meetings to be arranged. The dates and places for those meetings are: Quarterly Mtg Date and Time Type of Meeting ------------- ---------------------- --------------------- March 2003 March 25, 2003 2pm EST Telephone Conference Mtg June 2003 To be determined Face to Face Meeting - NY September 2003 To be determined Telephone Conference Mtg January 2004 To be determined Face to Face Meeting - NY Other meetings will be conducted by telephone, or on the web, at such other times as the members of the TC will determine. It is the intention of the sponsors of the TC to adopt a meeting schedule that will maximize contact between the persons engaged in the Education XML work, business experts engaged in the work of OASIS and W3C, education experts engaged in the work of IMS and ADL, and educators and persons engaged in the work of other organizations attempting to define XML and Web Services based eLearning application standards. TC Sponsors Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of persons eligible for OASIS Technical Committee participation committed to the stated meeting schedule and purpose: The following OASIS members support the creation of the Education XML Technical Committee: James Simon, jjs@sun.com, Sun Microsystems Donald Leclair, Donald.Leclair@ca.com, Computer Associates Ronald Alepin, Ralepin@msn.com, Fujitsu Software Philip Rossomando, Philip.Rossomando@unisys.com, Unisys George Ward, gward@cisco.com, Cisco Systems David Alexander, daalexan@cisco.com, Cisco Learning Institute Thomas Vreeland, tsv@openves.org, OpenVES John Cona, johncona@optonline.net, Individual member Amber Diehl, adiehl@ross.org, The Ross School Name of the Technical Committee Chair Chair: Thomas Vreeland Vice Chair: John Cona Name of phone meeting sponsor Thomas Vreeland Name of face-to-face meeting sponsor Thomas Vreeland Policies and procedures of the Education XML Technical Committee The Education XML Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of OASIS. Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See general references in "XML and Educational Technologies."