SCORM/NSDL Technical Meeting
Technical Information

Background Paper Distributed before the Meeting

Background

The NSF's National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative’s Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) program are two federal funded initiatives that have potential for collaboration. On May 18, there will be a small meeting to discuss opportunities for technical collaboration.

Here is some background information. ADL's emphasis is on learning materials, in contexts where there are strong incentives to follow models for structuring and organizing resources with prescribed standards that enable interoperability across delivery systems and enable content reuse. SCORM is therefore a richly defined standard tailored for a specific category of material that is being applied across all levels of education and training. ADL has recently begun a new initiative, known as CORDRA (Content Object Repository Discovery and Registry Architecture), to facilitate discovery and reuse of SCORM content objects.

The NSDL is a broad-based program that encompasses all levels of education in all scientific disciplines. Its particular emphasis is on information discovery: helping students and teachers find resources. As such, it takes a very broad view of what constitutes an educational resource. However, the NSDL has found that many independent collections are willing to follow simple guidelines for structuring and organizing resources. An example is the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI).

Topics for Discussion

Potential areas of overlap for NSDL and SCORM/CORDRA to be discussed at the meeting include the following:

Identification

CORDRA is exploring an identification system based on the CNRI handle system. NSDL makes internal use of OAI identifiers, which are compatible with handles.

Packaging

NSDL would benefit from adopting a packaging scheme, such as MPEG21, METS or IMS Content Packaging (IMS CP), for internal use and as a recommendation for others. SCORM uses IMS CP.

Information discovery

CORDRA is investigating architectures for information discovery. NSDL has been surprisingly successful in using an OAI harvesting architecture, but needs to consider alternatives.

Registration of collections and repositories

Registration of repositories and other key components is an important part of CORDRA, but has yet to select a definitive model. The OAI model of registration has been a partial success. NSDL has managed to make considerable progress without a model of registration.

Persistence and archiving

Both CORDRA and NSDL would benefit from a consistent view of how to manage changes of resources over time.

Selected References

• SCORM technical overview

• NSDL architectural overview

• CORDRA: Technical Introduction and Overview

• Open Archives Initiative

• The Handle System

• Reusable Learning