Abstract
Abstract: Bill Olivier and Oleg Liber begin this chapter with an succinct summary of the benefits of interoperable media and software for education and training, as well as a concise differentiation of specifications, reference models, and standards. At the time this chapter was written, most work on specifications and standards concentrated on data exchange. The data consisted of items of content, learner characteristics, or administrative information. But while they are necessary, data specifications by themselves are by no means sufficient to characterize the technical requirements of the interactions.
Indeed, work on a second generation of specifications that deals with the behavior, as well as the structure, of learning resources, had begun. Certainly much work remains to be done to refine and extend specifications for the means which underlie effective learning interactions... However, primitive as they are, using them have begun to reveal that use cases (examples) and profiles (applied standards) which differentiate pedagogies on the basis of their technical requirements -- as opposed to merely on the features of one pedagogical technique or another -- are difficult to find and understand.
Editors: Allison Littlejohn and Simon Buckingham Shum.