LETSI FAQ

Welcome to LETSI.

This FAQ is intended to answer your questions about LETSI and SCORM 2.0 and to clarify issues that have arisen due to misinformation propagated by others.

What is LETSI?

LETSI is the International Federation for Learning-Education-Teaching Systems Interoperability. It is a coalition of e-learning vendors, adopters, associations, and policy makers who believe that open software standards and an open source community are the key to finally realizing technology's promise in education and job training.

How is LETSI different from the many other LET associations?

LETSI is a proposed approach to solving a problem that no one else is addressing. LETSI was formed as an open and inclusive coalition that would encourage investment and innovation in learning systems by leveraging the work done across all communities of practice, worldwide.

LETSI is also committed to open software standards. Technology has sometimes transformed industries so dramatically that even leading institutions get lost in the transition. In some education and training markets, fundamental technology-driven changes in the way teachers and students interact may be required to solve the real problems. The companies and institutions that dominate the industry today may have mixed feelings about this creative destruction. They are likely to feel real pressure to lock the current industry structure into the software standards themselves.

What is LETSI's mission?

LETSI's mission is to improve individual and organizational learning and performance by:

• Supporting the adoption of interoperability standards by software developers.
• Providing leadership and vision across market sectors: compulsory education, higher education, corporate training, professional training and certification, and other adopters.
• Facilitating participation by all stakeholders, including communities with limited resources - often those with the greatest need for e-learning solutions.
• Harmonizing the activities of multiple specification development and standards-setting organizations.
• Incorporating into our interoperability models only open standards, developed in an open process and available without encumbrance to all players. LETSI neither develops component interoperability specifications nor certifies them as international standards.

What are LETSI's intentions?

• Assure that innovations that result from R&D investments in the aviation industry, for instance, can realize immediate value in healthcare training by promoting and advancing open software standards.
• Enable organizations and individuals from industry, government, and academia, that have a significant interest in learning, education and training, to collaborate globally using a process that is open, democratic and sustainable. LETSI hopes to become a cross-market forum by including all communities in setting the path forward and in protecting their current investments. Active partnerships with other LET organizations are key to LETSI's mission.
• Harmonize technical incompatibilities in current standards and mitigate them in future standards.
• Adopt modular, extensible software architectures to give vendors maximum efficiency in serving the diverse needs of different communities.
• Support an open source software community to share programmer tools and software components and offer services like publications, a help desk, PlugFests, community website, and conformance certification, as the ADL has done during its stewardship of SCORM.
• Move learning systems towards modern, open software practices and assure that open standards form the basis for innovation in learning technology. No single vendor or trade association should control the development of specifications and the definition of interoperability standards. Open standards require transparency in specification development and unencumbered availability of the final results. In particular, adopters must be able to freely profile and extend all specifications to address their specific situation.

The coming decade will be an inflection point in the history of online learning. Technology has belatedly begun to have the transformative impact on formal education and job training that it has had in so many other parts of our lives. Producing well-qualified workers and reducing global ignorance could even become political priorities! Expanded opportunities and new markets will lead to significant growth for the suppliers of online learning materials and systems that people will use to create, catalog, evaluate, buy, assign, monitor, grade, analyze and report learning activities.

LETSI's sponsors believe there are great opportunities and efficiencies to be had if these systems communicate based on open software standards. Further market improvements arise from harmonizing the R&D initiatives in multiple communities: aviation maintenance, healthcare certification, military training, K-12 schools, higher education, and so on. An open source software community could further leverage infrastructure and tooling efforts across market sectors.

Who are the founding sponsors of LETSI?

LETSI is a coalition of e-learning vendors, adopters, industry associations, and policy makers who believe that open standards and an open source software community are key to realizing technology's promise in education and job training. There are twelve Founding Sponsors of LETSI representing vendors, K-12 education, higher education, healthcare certification, government agencies, aviation, other international LET associations, and specification and standard organizations.

• Adobe Systems
• Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative
• Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Fraunhofer Institute Digital Media Technology
• IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee
• Korea Institute for Electronic Commerce
• el Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa
• Masie Learning Consortium
• MedBiquitous
• Schools Interoperability Framework Association

What work is LETSI going to do?

LETSI's first order of business is to lead the development of SCORM 2.0. This has involved an open process of soliciting white papers, requesting comments and feedback, organizing a workshop to discuss the work and generating the road map for SCORM 2.0. Since SCORM is an globally recognized and widely implemented standard, if somewhat dated, taking over stewardship of SCORM and bringing it up to date was the rationale for forming LETSI.

In the future, LETSI will host additional projects, while continuing the evolution of SCORM and support of the SCORM community. LETSI's open process and support of open software standards will attract adopters looking for interoperability in other areas of eLearing, including repositories, metadata, competencies, and so on. For example, branching off from the SCORM 2.0 initiative is a new effort on integrating S1000D-like "authoritative data" into training systems so that training materials are automatically updated when the official data changes (technical documents, regulations, ...).

Who can work on LETSI projects?

LETSI advocates open processes for software standards. The wiki and all of the SCORM 2.0 papers and discussions are open to the public. Anyone is welcome to join the LETSI community, sign up at the wiki (free), and participate in the conversations.

There are currently four LETSI working groups: Business Requirements, Communication, Teaching and Learning Strategies, and Technical Roadmap. Each of these working groups meets at least once a month. New WGs will be formed as the need arises. The Working Group meetings are open. Active participants must become LETSI members to vote in the working groups.

Is LETSI a legal entity?

LETSI is organized as an international program under the IEEE's Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO). The IEEE-ISTO is a not-for-profit corporation, tax exempt under Section 501(c)(6) of the U.S. tax code. ISTO offers industry groups like LETSI an innovative and flexible operational forum and support for standards development and post-development activities.

How does LETSI get its funding?

LETSI receives funding from the Sponsors' annual fees and from individual membership dues.

In the future, LETSI will seek additional funding through new sponsorship categories, foundation grants, and project funding.

SCORM 2.0 will be a community project among software vendors, major adopters and other implementers. The LETSI Sponsors feel that SCORM has value to the entire LET community and that the community must be responsible for its future. What that means exactly, in terms of LETSI's business model, remains to be seen and depends, of course, on the markets response to SCORM 2.0.

Is LETSI part of the US Department of Defense?

No, LETSI is neither a part of the U.S. Department of Defense nor a spin-off of the US Department of Defense.

As a major adopter of eLearing, the DoD, through its ADL Initiative, is one of 12 Founding Sponsors of LETSI. The Sponsors contribute money, host events, volunteer technical expertise, and vote on policies, projects, and work products.

SCORM, on the other hand, is indeed a spin-off technology developed by the US DoD....

Why is LETSI taking over SCORM's stewardship from the U.S. ADL Initiative?

SCORM is now the de facto standard for e-learning systems and has been used successfully around the world in major projects for after school tutoring, corporate sales training, professional certification, and remote education. As adoption has grown, the ADL Initiative, a small DoD R&D office, is less and less equipped to service the expanding SCORM community and ensure the integrity of SCORM.

Like GPS and the Internet, the US DoD is spinning off SCORM by transferring stewardship of future editions of SCORM to LETSI. The ADL Initiative will continue to maintain SCORM 2004 for the US Department of Defense and will continue to engage in research and development efforts for other advanced learning technologies and standards.

Why can't an existing trade association be SCORM's steward?

SCORM is not your usual trade association "standard." SCORM is a software model that helps software teams incorporate multiple, interacting community standards (data structure, communications protocols, metadata, distribution formats, etc.) so that everything works right together. However, SCORM makes no commitment to the current product-line configuration or market structure, which allows independent innovation in both. Innovation is needed to finally realize the potential that technology has promised for education and job training, but innovation in market structure is sometimes threatening to established institutions and vendors.

Inclusion and openness (if not always unanimity) were essential to SCORM's success and broad adoption around the world. LETSI hopes to continue SCORM's stewardship in that tradition. We are evolving a governance mechanism and operational procedures that will ensure that all stakeholders are heard and that past investments are protected without thwarting innovation.

Is SCORM still needed?

Most people interested in e-learning would not need to know about SCORM or interoperability standards. However, for those responsible for the long-term viability of learning technology in their organizations, there is nothing else like SCORM on the learning technology landscape. Because it has been so broadly embraced over the last 10 years, SCORM has dramatically transformed the LET market:

• Allowed competition for replacement and supplemental LMS and LCMS products by ensuring that training materials would run on all systems;
• Lowered barriers to participation by innovative tool developers across the life cycle of learning materials and in different market sectors; and
• Spawned an independent industry around the publishing of on-line learning materials that ran on all LMS systems.

What are some examples of strategic success with SCORM 2004?

SCORM has been used by different communities in different ways, all solving interoperability problems in that particular market sector:

• AICC: In the aviation industry, because aircraft have such long lifetimes, durability of materials was a major issue - assuring critical courses kept running while the LMS systems and authoring tools changed over the years.
• Korea's CHLS: Content interoperability across all the K-12 school districts. Interestingly, they replaced SCORM 2004's Sequencing mechanism with a scheme based on a handful of lesson design templates.
• Chrysler/BBDO: Chrysler's dealership distance learning is a one-LMS operation that has used SCORM 2004 to "regain control of the content from the suppliers." By establishing corporate guidelines and templates for their custom-developed training materials, Chrysler was able to realize substantial savings in re-use and competition among providers. (Any provider could update a lesson vs. sending the whole course back to the original contractor.) Individualization of training was another benefit of taking SCORM seriously.
• MedBiquitous is a consortium of medical professional associations focused on sharing education and training across the entire healthcare community. Like other major adopters, there were community-specific adaptations required, but accommodation by vendors was straightforward. MedBiquitous's efforts have resulted in market unification for the creators of healthcare learning materials and broad application of innovative approaches.
• US DoD: Perphas has the most ambitious plans for SCORM. Content portability across LMS systems was key to the original vision of plug-and-play content objects (lessons, activities) that could be shared by teachers and trainers across a vast enterprise and managed in a modular and cost-efficient manner.

What's the goal of SCORM 2.0?

SCORM 2.0 will re-evaluate interoperability issues in the context of modern enterprise software and emerging teaching and learning strategies. Our ultimate goal is to help educators use technology, by helping people build better software systems and learning materials. For SCORM 1.0 and SCORM 2004, that meant content portability across so called "learning management systems." As we start to define SCORM 2.0, we make no assumptions about the nature of content or systems.

Why is a new version of SCORM needed?

1. SCORM 2004 implements a model of on-line training that is outdated in terms of the range of learning activities it supports naturally. No immersive learning environments, game scenarios, collaborative learning, team training, reach back, etc. While these might be implementable in SCORM, there is no guidance for how to implement them in a way that allows interoperability across an increasing number of enterprise systems for evaluating, buying, managing, scheduling, tracking, and administering online learning activities.
2. Distributing content in a "package" needs to be re-thought in terms of how content will be organized for distribution on the web in the future. For example, SCORM does not accommodate "hosted" learning activities or vendor "catalogues".
3. The method chosen in SCORM 2004 to express sequencing across LMS platforms has not attracted tool-vendor support. It's probably needs to be re-thought. At least, it needs to be an optional feature so that the simplest content can be delivered across LMSs simply.
4. There is no capacity in SCORM 2004 for the specifying non-browser software needed to run games or sims, for example.
5. SCORM is currently based on proprietary standards that need to be replaced with open standards.
6. There is no solution in SCORM for creating portable assessment instruments.
7. Metadata as used in SCORM needs re-thinking too. Certainly some capacity for describing learning objectives and pre-requisites (competencies) should be a basic part of SCORM. Maybe the whole concept of how content is located in a post-Google world needs re-thinking.
8. New standards, like the forthcoming ISO/IEC Accessibility specification, should be considered for inclusion in order to promote SCORM's adoption in all markets.
9. SCORM's software architecture is outdated. A service-oriented architecture is needed to keep up with the enterprise software world.
10. SCORM needs to be more modular and extensible to help vendors sell across LET market sectors, since different communities of practice will want to profile and extend SCORM 2.0.

How many white papers did LETSI receive to kick off the SCORM 2.0 initiative?

LETSI has currently received 98 white papers and fifteen informal submissions on requirements for SCORM 2.0. These are posted for public comment at www.letsi.org/scorm2. There are hundreds of comments on the white papers, and on other people's comments. Relevant blog threads were also accumulated and posted on the wiki.

The solicitation of White Papers (ideas, suggestions, use cases, and proposed solutions) was the first step in fully involving the learning, education, and training community to address the challenges that lay ahead. In order to accomplish this, LETSI requested white papers in May 2008 to detail some of the challenges being faced in the various LET communities of practice and to assess the state of solutions and approaches being explored.

From where did the white papers come?

The white papers came from different types of LET organizations including: government, military, K-12 education, higher education, healthcare, aviation and other industry adopters. Contributions came from experts in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.

A program committee was formed to ensure all white papers and discussion threads were analyzed and to facilitate the on-line conversations leading up to the October Workshop.

What will happen after the SCORM 2.0 Requirements Workshop?

LETSI organized the SCORM 2.0 Requirements Workshop, October 15-17, 2008 in Pensacola, Florida. The Workshop, which sold out a month in advance, is a working meeting where experts will discuss priorities and alternatives and begin to set a road map for SCORM 2.0. Participants have diverse backgrounds, including software architecture design, instructional design, systems deployment, and advanced learning technologies. In addition, they come from diverse eLearning communities: military training, K-12 education, higher education, healthcare certification, corporate training, and aviation training.

After the Workshop, the LETSI Technical Roadmap Working Group will take over the SCORM 2.0 process. They will prioritize the requirements and produce the plan for going forward, including Core SCORM's basic components and software architecture and a release schedule for SCORM's support of additional interoperability features. A final draft of the SCORM 2.0 Report will be approved by the LETSI Sponsors in December 2008.

LETSI's charter specifies that, as has been the tradition with SCORM, LETSI will not develop component specifications itself. Instead, the specifications that are combined into the SCORM 2.0 reference model will be adopted from or developed in cooperation with technical groups at IEEE LTSC, AICC, SC36, OASIS, IMS, etc. LETSI's charter also specifies that only specifications and standards that are developed openly and available without unreasonable encumbrances be included in LETSI reference models.

It is intended that the Draft Report have enough information to drive further requirements gathering efforts and to allow implementers and vendors to begin to integrate SCORM 2.0 conformance into their development plans. We hope to see conformant products by the end of 2009.

Who gets to vote on SCORM 2.0?

The LETSI Sponsors are responsible for the final decisions about SCORM 2.0. The following procedures have been specified in LETSI's Operating Procedrues Pro Tem:

• LETSI's Technical Roadmap Working Group (TRWG) will prepare a Draft Report about the nature of SCORM 2.0 as soon as possible after the October Workshop. The TRWG can spawn subcommittees to address specific issues.
• Anyone can participate in LETSI WGs. Only individual LETSI members can vote in WGs.
• The TRWG's SCORM 2.0 Draft Report must then be approved by a majority of LETSI sponsors.

How can my organization become a LETSI sponsor?

An organization can become a LETSI sponsor by reviewing and agreeing to the Memorandum of Understanding and Operating Procedures Pro Tem. With the approval of a majority of the existing sponsors, new sponsors can sign up any time. The fee is $10,000 per year. A majority of the current sponsors can vote to waive the fee for a new sponsor, e.g. an international LET standards organization. If they join in time, they get to vote on the SCORM 2.0 report when the TRWG produces its draft.

How can I personally get involved in LETSI?

We are always happy to hear from the LETSI community at large. The wiki is viewable by the public, and with a (free) account you can add your voice to LETSI by participating in a Working Group, commenting on a document, or contributing to a discussion forum. We welcome your participation.

Working Group participants attend meetings by teleconference every week or two and have wiki permissions to create and edit pages. To vote on a working group ballot, active participants must become individual members of LETSI. The individual membership fee is just $100/year. To become a member, complete the individual membership form at http://www.regonline.com/letsimember.

Please contact info@letsi.org if you're interested in participating in a Working Group.

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