Principles and
practice in eLearning
platform architecture
UK eUniversities Worldwide
November 2002
2. Historical background
of eLearning platforms page 3
3. Principles of eLearning platform design page 4
4. UKeU eLearning platform design page 7
5. Conclusion page 9
Appendix A: The role of standards page 10
up to work with UK universities to
create new content and courses for
students and corporations worldwide,
and to broaden access to higher
education for a wider range of students
in the UK. Each of these courses meets
an identified market demand and has
been designed specifically for learning via
the Internet. The courses are delivered
to corporations, public sector
organisations and directly to students via
local partners around the world, using a
sophisticated new eLearning platform,
based on robust open-standards
technology.
This briefing paper forms one of a series
from UKeU. It is intended to provide
our partners, the creators of content and
managers in corporations and public
bodies with a sense of our view of the
principles of eLearning and to sketch
how we have approached the creation
and delivery of each of its components.
This paper considers the architectural
principles behind our eLearning platform.
3
1.
Introduction
Few people working in education or training can relish the prospect of reading a Briefing Paper on computing and network platforms. But the primary focus of this paper is not technology; rather, it concerns the design principles driving technology and the functional criteria by which technology can and should be judged by teachers, learners and other users of online learning environments. Furthermore, it takes as its starting point the undeniably negative impact that poorly conceived and executed technology platforms, as well as poorly designed and supported courses, have had to date on the experiences of all key user groups in the eLearning marketplace.
For these groups (teachers, learners, content creators, administrators and others) much of the disappointment might have been avoided – or at least predicted and managed – if they had been given a better picture of what a state-of-the-art eLearning platform should consist of, what it could be expected to deliver, and to what extent their suppliers’ systems met or fell short of best practice. This paper is designed to help paint that picture for the next generation of eLearning solutions.
It starts with a brief overview of historical approaches to eLearning platform design. It then looks at the key principles underpinning current best-practice eLearning architectures. And lastly, it describes how UKeU has put these principles into practice in its own modular, open standards-based eLearning environment.
2.
Historical Background of
eLearning Platforms
Despite the huge potential benefits of eLearning, its track record so far has not lived up to the hype – especially when compared with the many other online services available to computer-literate consumers. In many cases, the unsatisfactory experiences of key user groups have led educators and learners to conclude that the disadvantages of distributed electronic learning far outweigh its advantages. For example:
• Teachers and course designers have had little or no capacity for real-time discussion of, or reaction to, learners’ concerns with content or presentation
• Content providers have been unnecessarily restricted in their source material, course design and workflow options
• Corporations, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and other organisations have found it difficult to adapt core content to their local learners’ needs
• Learners have been put off by inconsistencies in presentation and navigation, and by discontinuities between different functional areas of the online experience (e.g. content access, group discussion, testing)
• Administrators (corporate or institutional) have had to deal with multiple systems and unnecessary manual data transfer
• Many users, including students, are highly computer-literate. Even where they have not used an eLearning system before, they have high expectations born of their other
computing and online experiences. Shortfalls are highly apparent.
While much of this historical dissatisfaction can be attributed to the quality of the content and support, most of it has arisen directly from the inflexibility and ‘unfriendliness’ of the underlying technical platforms. Indeed, many instances of poor quality learning material can also be traced back to the limitations of the content generation and distribution tools involved – limitations that in many cases are endemic to any new field of technological endeavour. For example:
The (non)human factor
In keeping with most early Internet thinking, eLearning was initially seen as an opportunity to cut costs by automating a recognised process (learning), cutting out the ‘middlemen’ (teachers and admin staff), reducing inventory (books) and minimising real estate (classrooms). Far from being an accidental by-product of prototype eLearning platforms, the marginalisation of the human factor was actually one of their key guiding principles – a fundamental error from which the industry is in many respects still struggling to recover.
4
Inherited paradigms
Today, eCommerce practitioners in many industry sectors (travel, retail, financial services and so on) have recognised that the key to success is to acknowledge the unique demands and opportunities of the distributed electronic
environment, and to re-engineer their businesses to accommodate them. In the eLearning world, even in those instances where significant user input (from academics, corporate HR people and others) has been sought at the system design stage, the most common platform strategy to date has been to try and replicate existing classroom and course design practices.
A glaring example of this is the assumption that most academic courses can be designed, taught, tested and graded by a single individual, or by a small group of individuals at a single geographic location. While this may be true of some traditional classroom-based learning, such an assumption places near-impossible restrictions on any degree-level courseware design calling for inter-site or international team-working, up-to-the-minute content, multiple local adaptations and
professional-quality media production. And yet, since most content generation and distribution solutions on the market today are based on the ‘sole practitioner’ model, these restrictions now form an integral part of what most professionals think of as eLearning.
Piecemeal solutions
In the absence of any real consistent vision of what an eLearning platform should be or do – or, until recently, any real commitment to fund such a vision – the natural corollary of inherited paradigms was to patch together existing technologies and systems (authoring, email, whiteboard, content delivery etc.), to deliver the various functionalities required. As a result, most of today’s eLearners are burdened with multiple systems with multiple passwords, multiple designs and multiple modes of operation, depending on the nature of the task in hand. Even assuming that these systems can all be accessed by low-cost PCs, standard web browsers and 56k modems (which many of them cannot), many users find navigating through them and negotiating between them unnecessarily complex and obstructive.
Proprietary systems
Although an inevitable characteristic of the early stages of any technology-based market environment, the proprietary approach to eLearning has
undoubtedly exacerbated the frustrations of many users who not only feel let down but also trapped by under-performing or overly restrictive systems. Thanks to the emergence of eLearning industry standards over the last five years, and the widespread adoption of third party Application Service Provider (ASP) solutions in place of in-house systems, the risks of backing the wrong technological horse are now significantly reduced. However, since most industry standards are still driven by
operational and economic demands for re-usable content, rather than by higher-level pedagogic and ergonomic requirements, it is likely to be a while yet before ‘standards compliance’ alone offers any guarantee that a given eLearning solution will meet the needs of the majority of its users.
3.
Principles of Platform Design
As shown above, today’s user needs turn out to be a lot more complicated than the simple imperative to cut costs – although clearly that is still a core driver for the ongoing growth of the eLearning market-place. In such a fast-changing environment there is also a strong element of “I’ll know it when I see it”, but in terms of platform design we can probably list key user needs under three broad headings:
Ease of use
If people can’t use it, they won’t use it. Among other things, a well-designed eLearning platform therefore has to provide a consistent interface across all its functions, easy access and navigation to required content, a single ID and log-on, and a single point of contact for technical support and course-related enquiries. For administrators, there also needs to be a simple means of tracking individual user performance and viewing
individual user records.
Accessibility
Ease of use extends to all users, regardless of physical ability. In many countries, legal frameworks requiring that online educational
5
systems and content be accessible to a very wide range of users have already been established. In many cases, governments have enacted
compulsion as a principle and are building specific codes of practice that implement the detail.
Flexibility
As far as possible, an eLearning platform should not dictate terms to its users, either in the way they work or in the way the system works with other systems. Learners, for example, should be able to access the platform from the widest possible range of computing and
communications equipment and, once online, customise their operating environment to the way they work and choose from a range of routes through the learning material. Course designers should be able to customise their workflow, enjoy an unrestricted choice of media and freely adapt core material to local needs. Teachers should be able to deal with learners as individuals, or assemble them into whichever groupings best suit a particular course module. And service
providers or administrators should be free to choose which parts of the platform they source from which supplier, and which hardware they use to run which applications.
Cost-effectiveness
However powerful and feature-rich a platform might be, it still has to offer significant cost advantages over a classroom-based equivalent. Required characteristics therefore include: interoperability, for quick, low-cost connection to existing data storage and other information systems; re-usability and portability of
courseware, to maximise return on investment and promote competitiveness among vendors; manageability, to ensure maximum system productivity at all times; user accessibility, to ensure the best use of available working hours; and durability, to avoid costly technology obsolescence.
Design parameters
These user needs suggest certain broad technical design parameters that any next-generation
eLearning platform will need to follow. Chief among them are:
Separation of services from implementation
It is essential that the various services provided by the platform (content generation, group collaboration, testing etc.) are designed as modular building blocks which are completely interoperable and can be implemented as a complete collection or standalone. In practical terms, this means that buying one service from one supplier should not oblige the purchaser to buy other services from the same supplier. In turn, this allows the platform owner to select ‘best of breed’ applications for each individual service, and provides future-proofing by ensuring that architectural integrity is retained no matter how many services are changed or added to meet the needs of the owner’s changing business model.
Backwards compatibility
To protect existing investments, next-generation platforms must allow anyone to adopt their technologies regardless of existing infrastructure. This means adopting leading standards being addressed by eLearning vendors and content providers. It means providing compatibility with the Microsoft .NET framework through Web Services, and allowing for a wide choice of implementations with preferred vendors. And it means allowing owners of legacy platforms to retain existing implementations of particular services and add new services as part of a planned migration process (another benefit of separating services from implementation.)
Reusable Learning Objects
Widely accepted as the future of distance
learning, Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) can be described as the smallest element of a course or other educational offering that defines a learning activity. ‘Reusability’ is usually taken to mean that any given RLO should be usable by any eLearning platform, thereby increasing customer choice and supplier competitiveness. As defined by UKeU, RLOs (or oblets as we have named them) certainly incorporate this feature, although our primary focus has been to
6
in order to allow courses to be constructed in pedagogically powerful ways and maximise the efficiency of production processes. Used in conjunction with a learning profile, RLOs can be assembled to deliver a tailored set of learning outcomes specifically designed for each student. Any next-generation eLearning platform must therefore be designed to support RLOs from the ground up to support both static and adaptive sequencing in the learning programme definition.
Service delivery
To maximise cost-effectiveness and to reach the widest possible user base, the architecture of next-generation eLearning platforms will almost certainly be based on a powerful central server with multiple ‘thin’ clients. This not only frees up local administrators and IT departments from system-level management and other non-core activities but also provides far greater levels of security for customer organisations. In addition, it allows end-users a wide choice of low-cost client terminals – unlike peer-to-peer models, which demand significant processing power at the edge of the network. This approach will also enable universities which create their content to host on a managed service.
A logical framework
Within these broad design parameters, what might a real-world eLearning platform look like? As a guide, the model below lays out the key service definitions and the way they should relate to each other.
Portal
User Management Collaboration Event Management LCMS LMS Assessment Administration
Database(s) Layer 1 – Portal
A single entry point allowing all users to access all relevant parts of the platform via a standard web browser.
Layer 2 – Common services
The services that everyone needs, regardless of role. They are not tied to, nor dependent on, any
particular pedagogic function, and therefore should
not be inseparably integrated with the pedagogic items of an eLearning package.
User Management
• Identifies, tracks and assigns privileges to every individual user of the system
• Provides a single ‘lifetime’ ID to every user, whatever their role and however often their role might change
• Provides a consistent, high-quality interface and user experience for all – again,
irrespective of user roles (student, tutor, administrator etc.).
Collaboration
Provides communication between all users of the system – both synchronous (whiteboard, chat rooms, webcasts etc.) and asynchronous (email, discussion threads etc.).
Event Management
Provides calendar, scheduling and reminder functions for all users.
Layer 3 – Learning Services
These services provide the core functionality for the production and consumption of eLearning resources. They should allow maximum flexibility in the sourcing, packaging and presentation of content, the marking and assessment of student performance, and the integration of user records into corporate or other institutional administrative systems.
Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
“A software application that enables authors to register, store, assemble, manage, and publish learning content for delivery via web, print, or CD.”
MASIE Center definition.
The LCMS should offer maximum flexibility in the authoring process, allowing each institution to assign required roles and define a suitable workflow for managing who contributes what, and in which order.
Learning Management System (LMS)
“Software that automates the administration of training events. The LMS registers users, tracks courses in a catalogue, records data from learners, and provides reports to management. An LMS is typically designed to handle courses by multiple
7
publishers and providers. A learner’s development plan and job-related training can be stored and personalised to the individual.” MASIE Center definition.
As a delivery mechanism, an LMS should offer institutions the maximum possible choice in the way they source and distribute learning content, and the closest possible tracking of the way content is used. Some platforms combine the LMS function with the LCMS function – a ‘tail-wagging-the-dog’ approach in which the delivery vehicle places unnecessary restrictions on content creation. To fulfil its function properly, the LMS should impose minimal restrictions on where or how the content is authored, while at the same time offering direct and detailed feedback to assist course designers in improving the usability of their material.
Assessment System
This part of the platform measures student
performance against specified goals, using a variety of tools ranging from multiple choice questions to complex assignment handling, which covers multiple markers, and so on. It should allow institutions to match the most appropriate
assessment tools to any given course and/or student and support secure assignment handling and support for accreditation processes.
Learning Administration System
This acts as an interface between the eLearning platform and the host institution’s existing billing or other back office information systems, for the efficient management of enrolment, fee payment and related administrative functions. Some platforms still require the administrator to access and manually correlate several different systems and several different databases – thereby reducing efficiency and increasing the risk of error. But the only satisfactory long-term solution is to give the administrator a single, 360° view of every student, tutor or other specified user of the system, allowing easy and seamless integration of all relevant data.
Layer 4 – Databases
All database solutions should give the user a completely free choice of hardware platform and manufacturer.
Theory into practice
Individual system architectures can implement these logical functions in many different ways – some of which have led directly to the negative experiences outlined in Section 2, for example:
• Inconsistent quality of environment and experience for different users (students, tutors, admin staff etc.) and different tasks (study, communication, testing etc.)
• Needless restrictions on authoring process imposed by inflexibly combining LCMS and LMS functionality
• Multiple portals/logons/passwords required by administrators to access different parts of the system
• Lack of choice in hardware used to run databases.
How has UKeU set about avoiding these problems, and what makes its own implementation different?
4.
UKeU Platform Design
The UKeU eLearning platform architecture has been designed by UKeU, working with Sun Microsystems, according to the logical framework outlined in Section 3. Based on open standards components, this ‘eLearning Reference Architecture’ allows complete separation of the service definitions from vendor implementation, so that UKeU can pick and choose ‘best of breed’ solutions for each individual component now and at any time in the future.
This section highlights some of the key features and benefits of each component of the platform.
Portal
The Portal provides a single point of entry for every user, using any client computer capable of running Version 4 of Internet Explorer or Netscape
Navigator, with a direct or dial-up Internet connection. The user’s profile will dictate which services will be visible, while single sign-on ensures that credentials only need to be entered once, no matter how many services or systems the user interacts with.
8
The portal can be tailored to every Institution’s guidelines and can easily integrate with an existing portal solution.
User Management
All services in the framework delegate the task of managing users and groups to a central service. This User Management Service provides the backbone for the user authentication and authorisation for all services in the framework.
Collaboration Environment
The power of the Reference Architecture is the abstraction of common facilities from the typical ‘LMS only’ model. This is demonstrated in the use of a central collaboration environment being made available to all users of the platform. This
environment is the backbone of the all-pervasive feedback mechanism allowing users to collaborate on any of the services available in the Reference Architecture and have their comments directed to the appropriate resource owner.
The Collaboration Environment supports multiple forms of interaction and is able adopt new mechanisms with advances in technology. The main formats supported include:
• Email (asynchronous)
• Threaded Discussions (asynchronous)
• Web cast (synchronous)
• Desktop Sharing and Simulations (synchronous)
• White-boards and Chat (synchronous). In the early releases of UKeU platform, emphasis will be on the asynchronous approach, since this provides more effective collaboration over multiple time zones, and research to date has shown that students favour this method.
Schedule/Event Management
All services have access to a single schedule management system controlling both synchronous and asynchronous messages between the services and the users. Examples include reminder messages to chase the progress of a student application for enrolment, a student for an assignment, or a tutor for responses to student queries and so on. User calendar functionality is also supplied by the Schedule Management Service.
All interaction between users and services is captured in the Event Management System. This data provides invaluable information for both program management and research into the pedagogy of eLearning, and can be used for both canned and dynamic reporting. An example of dynamic reporting might include the ability to ask “How long does it take for a tutor to respond to a student’s query?”
Learning Content Management Service
The Learning Content Management Service uses a workflow-driven approach to the production of both online and traditional instructional material to support blended learning. Learning Objects are discovered and assembled using a meta-data language allowing flexible course construction. The workflow model supports course specification and author peer review when constructing the learning programme, and can handle up to 26 pre-defined authoring roles, including the three generic core roles of Specifier, Author and Reviewer. The learning material can be imported from other Content Systems using IMS interoperability standards and similarly exported to the Learning Management Service for learning delivery.
Learning Management Service
The Learning Management Service is responsible for the delivery and management of the course. It can address learners in small groups for maximum interactivity, and manage all interaction between them and their learning material, including tracking progress and monitoring the usage levels to detect how the environment is being used. This
information is invaluable in assessing the quality of the learning experience and detecting problems early enough to address them. The Learning Management Service is distinguished from a typical ‘LMS’ by its flexible support for multiple pedagogic models through static and adaptive Reusable Learning Object sequences. It is, in effect, a neutral delivery and tracking tool which will ‘play’ whatever content is fed into it (from the LCMS or from any third party provider) so long as it conforms to standard XML protocols.
9 Assessment System
Both formative and summative assessment is provided through a collection of tools available to teachers to assess learners’ progress against their learning objectives. The tools support the following assessment types:
• Multiple Choice Questions
• Multiple Right Answer
• Short Answer
• True/False
• Essay Assignments
• Simulations
• Group Work
• Secure assignment handling
• Support for accreditation processes.
While many platforms offer a variety of assessment tools, few allow assessors a free choice in which tools to assign to which courses. UKeU offers complete flexibility not only in the way courses are assessed but also in the way individual students are assessed. Using the tools listed above, the assessment process becomes a more interactive model instead of the typical automated solution.
Learning Administration System
The Learning Administration System manages all reference data in support of the learning services as a series of domains specific to the individual education institution. A standard domain might include:
• Student Applications
• Student Records
• Student Personal Development Plan
• Tutor Records
• Learning Programs
• Digital Rights Management.
Databases
The repositories contain libraries of digital resources for constructing learning material. Resources are discovered through an open search interface and made available to both the Learning Content Management Service for sequence definition of courses and the Learning Management Service for delivery. Reusable Learning Objects are represented using a metadata language for mark-up of digital media including descriptions, specifications and usage guidelines.
The UKeU platform in action
The UKeU eLearning platform is the result of a substantial investment of time and money whose explicit aim is to move the entire eLearning market to the next stage of its evolution. To this end, once the platform is in place, there are at least three different ways it can be used:
First and foremost, it can be implemented on UKeU’s dedicated servers to deliver courseware from our UK university partners to customers around the world, either directly or via channel HEIs.
Second, it can be made available to partner HEIs and other organisations to create and deliver own-brand courseware.
And third, it can be marketed as an installable product in its own right, either in the form of individual components or as a complete solution, for customers who want to customise it with their own in-house modules.
5.
Conclusion
In this paper we have presented UKeU’s perspective on the challenges facing
next-generation eLearning platforms, and has outlined a set of principles and practices by which those challenges might be approached and overcome. Specifically, it has suggested:
• That users’ experiences of most eLearning solutions to date have raised significant concerns, to the point where many potential beneficiaries believe that the advantages of online learning are outweighed by the disadvantages
• That the majority of these shortcomings are directly attributable to inherited and
inappropriate platform design paradigms, and to a piecemeal, non-holistic implementation of the underlying technologies
• That in order to re-engage the key
constituencies of the eLearning marketplace, platform architecture and implementation has to be re-thought from the ground up, focusing not only cost-effectiveness but also on
10
• That the only workable long term solution is a modular, open standards-based design
approach allowing complete separation of generic deliverable services from particular delivery mechanisms
• That having taken such an approach, UKeU’s new eLearning platform has the potential to move the eLearning market to the next stage of its evolution.
Appendix A
The role of standards
Over the last three or four years, considerable work has been conducted around Internet technology standards in general and eLearning standards in particular. This work has addressed not only technical interoperability, e.g. streamed video delivery standards and file formats; but also pedagogic issues such as learning pathways and competencies, administrative interoperability between different suppliers’ systems, and accessibility.
Although the eLearning community agrees that standards are vital for the long-term growth of the industry, progress has not been as great as we might have hoped. This is not down to a lack of will, but rather to the conflicting interests of users and commercial suppliers; users want openness and choice where as suppliers want to minimise their costs and protect their market. It must also be recognised that adherence to standards will in many cases inevitably have an impact on functionality; what is easy to do in a proprietary environment may not be possible in an open environment.
Who benefits?
All the key user communities stand to benefit from the effective and widespread application of standards:
The learner,perhaps the most important
community. Standards will provide learners with the flexibility to choose the most appropriate
programme for their individual learning needs, without worrying about institutional and national boundaries. They will also allow learners to take their own learning history and achievements with them. The key standard to make these requirements
a reality concerns the definition of learner profiles. In the vocational and CPD arenas, another key issue is the way in which generic competency
requirements are defined. And work on accessibility standards has the goal of opening learning
opportunities for people who traditionally have been disenfranchised by physical and learning disabilities.
The teacher.Standards will enable the mixing and matching of learning material and course objects from a wide range of producers, be they colleagues, other educational resources or commercial
publishers, without having to worry about
compatibility. However, eLearning is not just about content. The design of an online course, and its ability to meet the learning needs of the student and provide the learning outcomes defined by the teacher, are paramount.
The institution (corporation, school, college or university).There are obvious benefits to be garnered from the inter-working of course delivery, student records and administrative systems from different vendors. The history of incompatible systems needs no retelling here.
The vendor.Here, there is both an opportunity and a threat. For the smaller companies trying to develop education systems, standards compliancy will mean being able to play with the larger, established players. For those major players, it will increase competition and the beginnings of a supply chain of value added developers.
The publisher.Again, this community faces an opportunity and a threat. Standards will mean lower development costs and a quicker time to market, as multiple development paths will not be needed. However, they will also allow small companies to enter the content market and make it easier for teachers to develop (assemble) their own courses.
Whose standards?
A number of bodies have begun to develop learning technology specifications and standards. Some, like the Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC) have approached the subject to meet a very specific business requirement, whilst others such as the MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative is very much a pre-specification forum trying to set a
forward agenda for learning technology specifications and standards.
The process tends to progress from a definition of users’ needs to a specification and finally, if the specification gains wide acceptance, submission to a formal standards body such as ISO or IEEE.
The key bodies working in this field are:
IMSThe IMS Global Learning Consortium is an independent organisation that is leading the way in developing learning technology specifications and is the most relevant to UKeU. As the direction IMS takes is membership driven it is crucial that UKeU is seen to be an active member both in its own right and supportive of the wider UK HE/FE involvement through JISC and CETIS.
ADL/SCORMADLNet (Advanced Distributed Learning Network) is US Government/military sponsored initiative. Its aim is to “accelerate large-scale development of dynamic and cost-effective learning software and to stimulate an efficient market for these products in order to meet the education and training needs of the military and the nation’s workforce of the future.”
The most significant output to date from ADL has been its Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), a specification for Reusable Learning Objects. Although developed within the US military community, SCORM is now being actively adopted by many training and education vendors, including UKeU.
CEN/ISSSIn 1999, the European Commission gave CEN/ISSS (the Centre de European Normalisation/ the Information Society Standardisation System) a remit to identify and define learning technology standards requirements to support their wider eEurope strategy.
Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)OKI is a collaborative project involving a number of
prominent American universities. It is defining open architectural specifications to support the
development of educational software. Its
architecture will provide a modular and extensible development platform for building both traditional and innovative educational applications while helping institutions exploit existing infrastructure. OKI is designed for broad adoption in the
university setting and will simplify the assembly, delivery and access to educational technology resources, while creating a large collaborative community.
IEEE LTSCThe Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ Learning Technology Sub-Committee (IEEE LTSC) consists of a number of individual working groups defining formal learning technology standards.
ISOThe International Standards Organisation (ISO) is a network of national standards institutes and works in partnership with international bodies, governments and industry to develop international learning technology standards.
BSIThe British Standards Institute is the UK’s formal standards body and has set up a committee to look at UK specific requirements in the field of learning technology standards.
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)The DCMI is an open user led forum that is developing a metadata standard for the common description of online information resources.
WAI and other accessibility initiatives There are a number of major initiatives currently addressing accessibility issues both in the US and Europe. In the US most accessibility work is around W3C’s (WWW Consortium) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which is working on providing guidelines to make the WWW more accessible to people with disabilities. In Europe there is an ongoing program under the European Commission’s eEurope
programme that has adopted the W3C WAI guidelines. There is also a programme of work under CEN-ISSS called Design for Accessibility that is attempting to build a comprehensive information resource for accessibility practitioners. In addition IMS, which has been looking at accessibility as one of its specifications, is now working to ensure that accessibility issues are addressed in all specifications. for design and quality assurance. The result is high quality eCourseware which is well adapted for online learning, and which is delivered in a way that exploits the potential of the latest technology to create a more personal, exciting and involving
London SW1E 6LB United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7932 4444 Fax:+44 (0)20 7932 4445 www.ukeu.com
