IMS Global Learning Consortium Receives Grant to Accelerate Digital Learning Content, Tool and App Connectivity
Lake Mary, Florida (PRWEB) October 29, 2014 -- IMS Global Learning Consortium is pleased to announce that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded IMS a grant to accelerate deployment of open standards that provide a foundation for connectivity of learning platforms, digital courseware, tools and resources so that they can be used together to support the needs of instructors and students. It is anticipated that the results from this grant will greatly increase the number of personalized learning solutions that can be readily integrated by suppliers and institutions, providing greater choice for students, instructors and institutions to improve educational participation and achievement.
The ease of use of digital content, courseware, tools, and apps within the institutional setting and the interoperability of data available from these same resources is key to enabling the future of personalized learning. Today most digital educational resources take months to integrate with institutional systems or are not integrated at all. As a result, the student learning data remains locked inside, where it is not readily usable by instructors or combinable with data from other systems. Thus, the student and the instructor are deprived of an integrated teaching and learning experience.
The grant will accelerate adoption of IMS Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®), which is already used to enable seamless integration of content, tools and apps into more than 30 learning platforms and the IMS Caliper Analytics™ Framework (Caliper), which enables secure learning data sharing and analysis. The grant will focus on adoption of LTI and Caliper into next generation products as prioritized by institutional partners of the Foundation and IMS. For example, the Gates Foundation recently announced the finalists of a $20 million Next Generation Courseware Challenge, and plans to recommend that all of its finalists leverage IMS standards for interoperability.
“IMS is very pleased that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting acceleration of the open architecture for educational innovation that over 270 IMS member organizations around the world have made viable,” said Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of IMS Global. “Achieving 1-click, data-rich connectivity of educational tools, content and apps with institutional systems is a game-changer that is now closer to reality via this grant and the anticipated ongoing collaboration with the Foundation.”
In conjunction with the grant, the Foundation will become an IMS Contributing Member organization (see a full list of IMS Contributing Members here) and be given an observer seat on the IMS Board of Directors.
About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS Global is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. IMS members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. IMS sponsors the Learning Impact Leadership Institute, a global program focused on recognizing the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality while developing the people and ideas that are going to help shape the future of educational technology.
IMS Global, IMS Global Learning Consortium, http://www.imsglobal.org, +1 407.362.7783, [email protected]
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