Lake Mary, Florida (PRWEB) May 03, 2017
IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global), the world leader in edtech interoperability and innovation, announced today the release of its annual report for the calendar year 2016. The report is available online at https://www.imsglobal.org/2016annualreport
In 2016, IMS Global showed significant and continued growth in membership, revenue, and conformance certifications achieved, signaling expanded reach and market demand for open standards to enable a trusted plug-and-play ecosystem. Total membership reached its highest level, adding 53 net new members from higher education institutions, K-12 school districts, public education ministries, and edtech product suppliers around the globe. Over the last 11 years, membership has climbed at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.6%. Revenue surpassed four million dollars for the first time; increasing at a CAGR of 12.8% over this same 11-year period. IMS Global expanded its presence on the global stage with the formation of two new chapters, IMS Europe and the IMS Japan Society.
The rate and demand for IMS Global conformance certifications—the only means to guarantee interoperability across the widest range of product integrations—have grown steadily. Throughout the year, there were 24 OneRoster® certifications, making OneRoster the fastest adopted IMS Global standard, while Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) continued to expand across the education sector, with 144 products certified in 2016 alone.
“IMS Global evolves and adapts to face the ongoing challenge to improve teaching and learning technology,” said Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium. “As demonstrated by the 2016 results, IMS Global members are making great progress toward an edtech ecosystem that is a better way to the future of education than any of the known alternatives in terms of providing great user experiences, lowering the barriers to innovation, enabling actionable information, and saving on integration time and cost.”
IMS Global heralded a new phase of leadership in digital credentials by assuming the management and stewardship of the Open Badges standard on January 1, 2017. In addition, IMS Global completed a pilot of the Extended Transcript standard designed to consolidate multiple forms of learner achievements into a flexible, but standardized credential records store.
IMS Global community leadership launched nine institutional Innovation Leadership Networks to develop resources and share strategies that make it easier for institutions to transition to an integrated teaching and learning ecosystem. These resources are available to the public via the Higher Education and K-12 Playbooks. 2016 was also a year for advancing and strengthening five key initiatives established to lead and scale the evolution of effective digital learning environments.
To support learning data and analytics, the Caliper Analytics® Workgroup began incorporating feedback from initial market implementations—including the 19 learning platforms, tools, and publisher products that achieved Caliper v1.0 certification—to substantially enhance the education analytics standard with an extended information model and improved efficiency.
IMS Global standards are making high-quality interoperable digital assessment easier for states, state consortia, and edtech suppliers around the world. In 2016, the e-Assessment technical workgroups finalized and published a profile of Accessible Portable Item Protocol® (APIP®) for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC) community. And work began on the next version of Question and Test Interoperability® (QTI®) that combines the accessibility functionality of APIP with more advanced features for rendering control and results reporting.
Enabling an innovative ecosystem of learning platforms, apps, and tools, the latest version of the LTI standard includes support for privacy and student data use declarations, automated tool re-registration, and updated security and authentication. LTI can be expanded with a library of extensions performing specific data sharing functions, such as the new Gradebook Services extension, which provides enhanced means for assignments in a learning platform’s gradebook to be graded with an assessment tool, and have grade results returned to the platform’s gradebook along with any comments from the assessor.
The most recent IMS Global achievements and results will be announced at the 2017 Learning Impact Leadership Institute, May 16-19, in Denver, Colorado.
About IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global)
IMS Global is a nonprofit organization that advances technology to affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. IMS Global members are leading suppliers, institutions, and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. IMS Global 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 to help shape the future of educational technology.