Purpose

1. The purpose of this paper is to explain when the first round of The Le@rning Federation online content will be completed and the issues relating to the release of this content to systems for implementation in schools.

Background

2. Between 2001-2006 The Le@rning Federation Initiative is developing a pool of educationally sound quality assured content and a supporting technical infrastructure to deliver this content to all Australian and New Zealand schools through the education systems. This is an innovative project on a scale that has never before been attempted in the school sector and as such, is focused as much on research and development as the timely achievement of its objectives.

3. The process for developing content as learning objects, components of online material that can be identified, tracked, referenced, used and reused for a variety of learning purposes, is pioneering technology that, while widely accepted, is in its infancy worldwide. The project is working with educationalists from Australian states and territories and New Zealand in scoping the content and then closely managing teams including multimedia developers, instructional designers and educators to develop the content within a user-centred development model involving teachers and students at every point of the development process.

4. The Le@rning Federation is also responsible for scoping and building the Exchange, a sophisticated technical infrastructure to support content development and quality assurance processes and to manage the distribution of the content to the education systems for distribution to government, Catholic and independent schools.

5. A critical aspect to this work involves liaising with education systems and international standards bodies in the development of specifications relating to accessibility, educational soundness, rights management and content development to enable the content to interoperate with a range of systems and hardware. Metadata is also being developed involving a schools-focused thesaurus to describe educational terms and a curriculum organiser to enable states and territories to access their content via their curriculum frameworks, if they so wish.

Issues

6. Content development will proceed over the course of the project with regularly scheduled completion of specific components. Unlike a traditional off-line content development project, where the product is released as it is completed, the distribution of The Le@rning Federation online content to schools is dependent on education systems and sectors having the technical frameworks in place to enable the distribution of digital content to their schools, and on schools having sufficient internet connectivity and appropriate access to learning management systems or tools to enable them to use the content with their students.

7. All education systems and sectors are currently in the process of investigating the most appropriate framework for the delivery of digital content, including The Le@rning Federation content, to their schools. Low bandwidth is a major challenge and is being addressed on a local and national level. Learning management systems and tools suitable for the school sector that interoperate with learning objects according to a common and agreed set of standards, are still in their first generation of development.

8. It is therefore expected that total distribution of The Le@rning Federation content to all schools will occur well into the life of the project when these challenges have been largely overcome. It is not a requirement by The Le@rning Federation that education systems and sectors have their infrastructure or their implementation planning ready simultaneously, and it is expected that content distribution and professional development of teachers is likely to occur in a staged manner over the life of the Initiative, providing time for systems and sectors to learn from trials and small-scale implementation.

9. The following table shows projects scheduled for completion between now and December 2003. During this time, the first round of online content will be created in each of the priority curriculum areas.

10. The Science 1 content will be completed at the end of November 2002. To provide early access to this content, in lieu of wide scale implementation of appropriate learning management systems, the Basic E-Learning Tool Set (BELTS) is being developed by The Le@rning Federation, in consultation with states and territories.

11. The completion of the first stage of BELTS at the end of December 2002 will enable education systems and sectors and their selected schools to view and use Science 1 learning objects and to experience and experiment with the content. The Le@rning Federation will continue to work with the TLF Contact Liaison Officers from each education system to disseminate and share professional development and implementation planning to support the successful rollout of the online curriculum content into schools.

12. The implementation of BELTS will also provide the opportunity for education systems and sectors to test the download of content into their content repository, where they have one, and an opportunity for The Le@rning Federation joint venture to further develop and test BELTS.

13. In summary, the timing of the release and implementation of The Le@rning Federation content in schools is a state and territory decision, largely dependent on their achievement of a suitable framework for delivery of digital content to their schools, and teacher support mechanisms. The Le@rning Federation is working closely with states and territories to support implementation planning, facilitate discussion of appropriate delivery solutions and to collaborate on the specifications for education systems and sectors to interface with the Exchange and to receive and manage the learning objects as they are released over the course of the Initiative.

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The Le@rning Federation Schools Online Curriculum Content Iniative

Award of the Contract for BELTS