D5.3.5

=Modifications to the physical e-learning infrastructure are guided by interoperability standards. =

Evidence
Jochems et al., (2004) promote integrated e-learning as an effective complete system and identify three interrelated dimensions in the e-learning domain – functional, organizational, technical. The first two mainly concern pedagogical and administrative issues, however, the technical dimension deals with a large number of infrastructural matters. To address these Jochems et al. stress the urgent need for interoperable reference architectures, but note that the plethora of incomplete architectures, protocols and standards presently make this problematic. They conclude that in their framework ‘the most complex issues deal with the coherence, connectivity, and emergence of the different fragments of the model’, and they propose a ‘learning networks’ perspective ‘that is, self-organized, emergent, distributed systems created to facilitate learning and lifelong learning… [that] promise to change the way we learn in the future quite fundamentally’ (p. 75).

Interoperability standards and also resource discovery standards are discussed by Marshall (2004b). Interoperability standards are important so that different systems can talk to each other and share data, e.g. student information. And resource discovery standards are important so that items can be stored and reused.