AICC Announces New Standard

The Aviation Industry CBT/eLearning Committee (AICC) announces the start of development on the first major elearning data exchange specification since 2004. This specification will greatly expand on the widely used data exchange specifications from both the AICC and the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative’s SCORM specification, and adds the ability to integrate group learning activities, simulations and custom learner interfaces with learning management systems. The specification will supersede the existing AICC computer managed instruction specification and is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2012. The current data exchange specification is used in the development of both elearning content and learning management systems (LMS). It defines the way the two systems communicate so elearning can be launched from and the results sent to an LMS. When it was introduced in 1993, the specification was the first effort at standardizing that data communication, allowing trainers to more easily integrate elearning courseware without custom development. The new specification is being developed in response to changes in the elearning landscape with advances in technology and adoption of different methods of content delivery. The new specification will replace the existing AICC specification which was last updated in 1998. According to AICC Computer Managed Instruction Subcommittee Chairman William A. McDonald, “Over the years, we had many requests to update our data exchange specification but held off knowing that any change would have profound results for all previously certified titles and applications, many of which had been designed for compliance with either the AICC standard or SCORM. The AICC and the ADL have tried to harmonize the two standards but when that effort stalled, we decided to move forward. That requires a completely new approach and that means a completely new data specification.” According to Ed Cohen, Chairman of the Training Infrastructure Committee of the AICC, “This is huge. This will not only supersede our own CMI (computer managed instruction) specification, but will define the way courseware and management systems communicate from here forward.” While the new specification will replace existing specifications that have been used for years, there will be consideration for re-tooling or adapting legacy courseware. Mr. Cohen commented, “We know there’s a ton of courseware out there and it would be cost-prohibitive to force authors to re-develop their titles just because of this specification. However, the LMS providers will be moving forward with adoption pretty rapidly once it’s released, so we need to develop a way to allow legacy titles to still share data while newer courseware can benefit from the expanded capabilities of the new standard.” The AICC has been helping the aviation industry (as well as many others) get the most out of training technologies since 1988. As AICC Chairman Capt. Herbert Schwarz commented, “The AICC has always created solutions for the industry that solve real problems in a very usable manner. Since we are a volunteer consortium of manufacturers, courseware authors, vendors and users, our standards reflect the best that all sides offer so that all can benefit. This new specification, although just a part of the overall elearning infrastructure, will be critical for the future and will help insure interoperability between courseware and LMSs.” Work on the specification has already begun and is being managed as a joint project between several AICC subcommittees. For more information on the specification, information on how to get involved with the development of the specification or for more information on the AICC, please visit www.aicc.org.

Universal eLearning Data Standards Meeting Announced

The Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC) announces a summit meeting to discuss harmonizing Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) data models will be held on September 7th and 8th, 2010. The summit meeting will bring together representatives from the AICC, from the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL), from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the International Federation for Learning, Education, and Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI) to discuss the current state of CMI specifications and to discuss the harmonization across the different organizations. The summit meeting will be held at the ADL Hub Co-Laboratory in Alexandria, VA. The summit will, for the first time, bring together the organizations that are the most influential for standards in the eLearning industry to solve problems that have plagued developers and training organizations alike. “There have been a lot of changes in the industry over the last few years and we really need to decisively move forward on the standards issue” said Ed Cohen, Chief Technical Officer of Plateau Systems and Chairman of the AICC Training Infrastructure Subcommittee. “eLearning is no longer a novelty, it’s become the standard for courseware delivery and companies need the flexibility to mix courseware and systems from different vendors. Without a universal data standard, that flexibility is lost and the industry, as a whole, suffers.” The summit will be a two-day meeting with day one focused on working discussions of the harmonization issues and day two focused on a mix of discussions and presentations of existing standards progress and new technologies. The summit meeting will be held at the ADL Hub Co-Laboratory at 1901 N. Beauregard St., Alexandria, VA, 22311 and is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. The meeting will also be webcast. To view the agenda for the summit meeting and to register, visit www.aicc.org.

AICC PENS AGR-011 Available in French

To further facilitate international adoption, the AICC Package Exchange Notification Services (PENS) AGR document has been translated to French. AICC Guidelines and Recommendations (AGRs) represent the official voice of the AICC with respect to a designated area. All AGRs, including AGR-011 for PENS, have been formally voted upon and approved by the general voting membership of the AICC.

The AICC expresses special thanks to Marc Van Coillie of EIfEL, and Bernard Bouyt and Jean-Louis Bravo of Airbus for their gracious volunteer efforts to translate this document. The PENS AGR summarizes the protocol and provides a rationale for advocating its use. Availability of this document "en francais" will help the shared efforts of the AICC and the European Institute for E-Learning to support interoperability demonstrations at iLearning Forum 2008 in Paris.

Now available from the AICC Publications page: AGR011 - CBT Package Exchange Notification en français [PDF, 168K].

Call for Participation: New CSA Initiative to Use Web Service for

The CSA (Content Services Architecture) initiative is a new AICC work group that is developing a set of specifications to drive adoption of interoperable web services to support learning and training. Participation in the CSA work group is open to any organization wishing to join. Note that membership is by company/organization and not by individual.

CSA will specify web services that facilitate integration of hosted content, data and content catalog synchronization between publisher (Content Management) and content consumer systems such as a LMS (learning management system). CSA web services will also support a variety of access control and commerce models to integrate content-as-a-service and LMS-as-a-service capabilities. With CSA specifications, content on different internet domains can work seamlessly with a Learning Management System (LMS) in a different internet domain through web services.

The success of this forward-looking initiative depends on strong participation from the elearning community and the AICC greatly needs your help. If you are a LMS (Learning Management System) vendor, CMS (Content Management System) vendor, content creation tool vendor, or an organization that is a content consumer you are encouraged to get involved. Much preliminary work has been done and preliminary input is already being gathered for initial draft documents. The AICC also hosts a CSA Discussion Forum online as a point for collaboration.

Please contact the AICC at CSA@aicc.org if your organization is interested in joining our team.

Thank you.

ADL-AICC Workshop on Standards Convergence

Representatives of the organizations responsible for the dominant LMS standards specifications will meet to address critical considerations for convergence and collaboration. General implementers and vendors would likely both benefit from a common approach that leverages the expertise and resources of both ADL and the AICC.

During upcoming AICC meetings, the ADL and AICC will meet on Thursday, September 27, 2007 from 1:30pm to 4:30pm at the Boeing Training and Support Systems facility in St. Louis, Missouri to discuss possible collaboration and convergence on a future release of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

Motivating the workshop are the origins of ADL SCORM in the AICC CMI specification, the gradual technical divergence of CMI and SCORM, and the anticipated benefits for both organizations, their constituents and the tremendous number of LMS adopters across the globe.

The workshop occurs in the context of ADL’s interest in progressing SCORM as an ISO/IEC standard. Both ADL and AICC are participating in the formation of a new international collaboration for Learning, Education and Training Systems interoperability (working name: LETSI). In 2008, LETSI will assume responsibility for future maintenance and evolution of the SCORM specification.

The workshop will address aspects of a possible SCORM collaboration, including: implementer requirements, technical coverage, conformance testing, funding and resource requirements, and economic benefits. Workshop participation is open, subject to normal AICC meeting participation guidelines and reasonable meeting host requirements for site access.

AGR 012 Training Development Checklist - Review Notice

Proposed changes to AGR 012 Training Development Checklist are ready for your review and comments via the AICC Forum - http://www.aicc.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=Check_list.

Please review the changes starting on page 12 of the document and continuing through page 22. You may provide comments on the forum. Significant marked up changes or additions can be sent via email to Neil Cramer at neil.cramer@nwa.com.

You are strongly encouraged to sign up to receive email notification as new information is posted. On the AICC Forum, once you have selected the topic, you can click on the "Notification" button to enable email notifications.

Please participate in this review which will run through September 14, 2007. We will discuss the feedback and move towards adoption of the changes at the September 24th AICC meeting in St. Louis.

AICC Announces Offline CMI Specification CMI-013

The AICC released a specification that enables learning management system (LMS) vendors to easily integrate with local (offline) LMS players, resulting in a more flexible learning environment for mobile learners. It also allows elearning vendors to use the format for other communication methods. The specification is available as a royalty-free AICC publication from the www.aicc.org web site.

Referred to as XML for CMI Communications (CMI-013), the new specification allows the person taking the course to download online course materials and review the online course completely disconnected from the Internet while being tracked by a local version of an LMS. Similar solutions exist but are proprietary. CMI-013 will allow LMSs to integrate with third-party offline players in a standard way - greatly expanding interoperability. Offline CMI will be an open, data model agnostic, architecture that will work with the AICC/CMI data model, SCORM/IEEE data model, and others as they become available.

Read the Full Press Release

AICC Metadata (DELS002 Draft 23) - Available for Review

AICC Metadata (DELS002 Draft 23) is now available for review. DELS002 is based on the IEEE/LOM (Learning Object Metadata) and contains an AICC metadata profile. This draft has revisions from the September 2006 Vancouver, BC meeting. View this document. Post comments about this document

Plugfest Drives Updates to PENS Tools

In response to feedback from the successful PENS Plugfest, the AICC has updated the PENS HTML Test Harness and PHP PENS Command Validator. The updated versions are online now from the PENS Sample HTML page on AICC.ORG. The updates reflect the approval of the CMI-012 Packaging Specification, and clarify the need for independent verification of package contents against the specified package format. See the README file for details.

An independent organization is also hosting an online version of the HTML test harness and the server validation tool for PENS- see http://pens.lmstesting.com/pages/resources.htm

PENS Plugfest 2006 Conclusion

The very first PENS plugfest ended yesterday and was acknowleged by all as a big sucess. Future PENS Plugfests will be held to address issues and continue to identify best practices. See the presentation (PPT zipped) for details.

PENS Plugfest 2006 in progress

The first PENS Plugfest is currently in underway in Vancouver, BC. EEDO, Adobe, Outstart, and QuestionMark were among the vendors working with participants (see picture below). Lab results and vendor presentations are scheduled for tommorrow.

AICC Releases Packaging Specification

The AICC announced the release of its Packaging Specification (document CMI012) today. The specification defines the structure of a ZIP archive for AICC courseware. It is intended to be used in conjuction with other AICC specifications such as PENS (CMI010), AICC/CMI Guidelines (CMI001), and the Offline CMI specification.

PENS Validation Suite Updates - Testers Needed

The AICC PENS validation suite has been updated to validate PENS commands sent via either HTTP GET or HTTP POST methods. The updated PHP code will also verify that the package-url can be accessed, and issue an email receipt (or alerts) if a mailto: address is specified in the appropriate data element.

Those interested is testing the new PHP server code to validate PENS client commands should contact tom.king@aicc.org. Note that the HTML test harness has not been updated at this time, the update available for testing only impacts the PHP code used to validate inbound PENS commands.

For more information on PENS (Package Exchange Notification Services) see AICC AGR-011 for an overview or AICC CMI-010 for the full specification. Both documents are available from the AICC Publications downloads page, http://aicc.org/pages/down-docs-index.htm.

There is also an independent web site for the PENS community, found at: http://pens.lmstesting.com that has a variety of information about PENS and PENS implementations.

PENS Sample Code Updated

The PENS Sample Code has been updated to include PHP code that acts as a PENS server to verify PENS commands, and improve the HTML test harness. It is available for download now from: http://aicc.org/pages/pens_sample.html.

The sample HTML files now include more default value for PENS elements, and a minor correction was made to address a typo in the QTI package type (was incorrectly "lms-qti" and is now corrected to "ims-qti"). The package-id generation and formatting was also updated, and notes were added to the form explaining special vendor-data values for use with the PHP-based PENS validation code.

Separately, the PENS specification has been updated to correct a typo in the sample value for the package-expiry element, as noted in the AICC PENS discussion forum in November 2005. The Acrobat version of the PENS specification document has been updated to provide hyperlinks to document subsections and to allow copy and paste operations. Download the current CMI010 PENS (Package Exchange Notification Services) document from the AICC Publications page.

AICC PENS Specification News and Events

Several recent international activities point to the growing adoption of the PENS specification. PENS information on Learning Technology Standards Observatory CEN ("Comite Europeen de Normalisation" or European Committee for Standardization) sponsors a web site on Learning Technology standards Standards, called Learning Technology Standards Observatory. We're pleased to see PENS mentioned on this important web site as it gains additional international recognition. Call for Presentations: Paris LIFE-fest June 2006 The LIFE project is an e-Learning project funded by the European Commission (Education and Culture) and EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning). A critical success factor for e-learning is the possibility to share, collaborate, twin, and move people and resources across Europe. The objective of this event is to present the state of the art of eLearning technologies, demonstrate and explore interoperability between eLearning solutions (LMS, authoring tools, content packaging) or/and other information systems. Organizers are interested in making available information about PENS, provided that a suitable presenter is available. Interested presenters may contact the AICC Communications Chairperson or the conference organizers. LIfE-fest Conference information: http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/ EIfEL Site (registration may be required): http://www.eife-l.org/search?SearchableText=LIFE-fest (Available in French or English)

AICC Approves PENS Specification

The Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) announces a new interoperability specification that makes it easier for content systems and learning management system (LMS) products to cooperate on the staging, transfer and submission of "LMS-ready" packages. The specification simplifies deployment of content for key elearning standards, supporting content packages in both AICC and SCORM content package formats. Press Release- AICC Approves PENS Specification to Streamline Publishing of Elearning AICC Guidelines (Overview)- AGR-010: CBT Package Exchange Notification (PDF file) AICC Specification- CMI-010: Package Exchange Notification Services (PDF file) AICC PENS Sample HTML Test Harness for Developers (no fee download)