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Joel Farrell, Dan Rehak, Carl Singer, Valerie Smothers
The group leveraged the Adobe connect platform at Johns Hopkins for application sharing during the call. Joel asked Valerie to walk the committee through the educational trajectory specification. Valerie provided an overview of the specification. The educational trajectory specification builds leap 2A, which in turn builds on the atom syndication format and RDF.
Valerie then walked through some of the elements, describing how LEAP2A leverages the Atom elements. Joel commented that customary way of adding context-specific data to Atom was to use the content element rather than adopting existing atom elements for a different purpose. He added that the visual depictions at the end of the document should indicate that they are not normative.
Joel summarize that educational trajectory is a profile of leap 2A. We define put atom in the leap elements mean in the context of our requirements. We also provide suggested approaches to visualizing the data. Valerie agreed that was an accurate summary.
Joel asked who was using leap 2A and if it was popular. If it is popular, the spec is ideal because it reflects the direction in which the community is going. Valerie commented that there was an open-source the portfolio pool called Mahara that implemented the specification, but other than that she did not know with implementers.
Joel asked Dan for his opinion. Dan replied that he did not know the popularity of the leap 2A spec. From his perspective, it is the only thing out there. It has received a lot of attention. Leap 2A started as a project within JISC. He has not transition to a more formal group for longevity and governance. He questioned the implication of submitting an ANSI standard with that background.
Valerie clarified that MedBiquitous does not plan to submit the educational trajectory as an ANSI standard precisely because it is a profile and not an independent standard. In addition, there are some IP problems. The IP arrangements of the leap 2A specification are not clear. When discussed with Adam Cooper and Simon Grant at JISC, they indicated a willingness to ask contributors to the specification to sign an agreement granting license to others to use make, derivative works, etc. to date they have not had much success in getting other contributors to sign that agreement.
Dan commented that that is part of his concern. The group is well-intentioned, but education has received large budget cuts within the UK, on the order of 700,000,000 pounds. JISC’s parent organization is on the chopping block along with many others. Because of their funding cycle, CETIS will be okay for 12 months, but he is unsure of where they are headed long-term. Dan explains that he does not want the educational trajectory specification to be a dead-end.
Valerie commented that if just cortices supporting leap 2A and changes were necessary to support the educational trajectory, MedBiquitous could make those changes. Alternatively, MedBiquitous could take the definitions and requirements incorporated into the profile and define a different schema or binding for that data model.
Joel agreed. We can easily define another standard if leap 2A goes away. But leap could be successful. If not, we have other options. From his perspective, the influence of MedBiquitous specifications will continue to increase. That could be helpful to leap 2A.
Valerie added that the organization most likely to influence adoption is the Association of American medical colleges, which is one of the sponsors of the specification. The group was encouraged by that news.
Joel summarized that the committee has no serious concerns. Existing tools leveraging leap 2A provide a big advantage.
Our June 9 call will include Panos from the mEducator group, who will present their work related to sharing and discovering learning resources and the people involved.