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Carsten Jopp is a research fellow at the Department of humanistic informatics, Faculty of Arts, University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests include the development of language and knowledge in ICT-based media, with a special focus on foreign language learning, and the field of open- and distance education. He has edited the Norwegian volume "ICT and learning in a humanistic perspective", and was also the manager of a national project for the development of digital learning environments. Jopp, originally from Germany, has a multi-disciplinary background, combining vocational education at IBM with teacher training and a degree in German literature. The interview was realised by Turid Trebbi (University of Bergen, Norway), member of Distances et Savoirs editorial board.
DISTANCES ET SAVOIRS To what extent do standards and standardization represent significant trends in the educational sector in Norway?
CARSTEN JOPP :H QHHG WR GLVWLQJXLVK EHWZHHQ D QDUURZ DQG D EURDG definition of the terms standards and standardization. The narrow definition is about educational metadata, digital resources and services, and about related efforts to make these exchangeable and interoperable. On that field there was only limited focus in the Norwegian educational sector until the turn of the millennium. In the last couple of years, however, and with the widespread diffusion of ICTs in virtually all parts of the educational system, there has been a significant level of activities. These are highly interesting in a European context, too, since they are based on what may be called the brand mark of Scandinavian design and pedagogy, its user- centeredness. One of the key words here is Topic Maps (www.topicmaps.org) i.e. a way of structuring knowledge domains use- and user-oriented, non-hierarchically.
There is a distinct topic map milieu in Norway, grouped around some commercial and public actors, and it keeps in close contact with European standardization organisations.
Other activities funded and initiated by the government include the Norwegian Digital Library, a project that aims at availing quality resources across sectors, for example from the cultural sector, like literature and TV broadcasts, to the educational sector, and vice versa. The project is administered by the national initiative Norway Opening Universities (NOU); the information architecture and metadata part is "think-tanked" and coordinated and by the eStandard project, an actor who also keeps in contact with international metadata-milieus, and generally
drives the national development of metadata by joining forces with other actors.
Another trend in the past few years has been the establishment of central web-portals for education and research, like utdanning.no, "education.no".These function both as catalogues and as repositories. Interestingly, some of these are powered by an underlying ‘intelligent’ semantic layer that is based on the standard for topic maps, XTM. This makes navigation in these ‘oceans of information’ more intuitive, and is also a showcase and field for research. There are also efforts to systematize course- related administrative data in a standard called CDM, Course Description metadata, and learner-related data for authentication and authorization in another project, FEIDE. Finally, one has established a Norwegian application profile of the international (IEEE) standard on learning object metadata, LOM, called NORLOM.
If we apply a broader definition, and understand standardization as all measures and processes that are applied to achieve some sort of formalization of practice in the educational sector and that are associated with the use of ICTs, then there is more to report on. During the past few years, and in a multi-parted effort probably unmatched in Europe, virtually all Norwegian secondary-and-higher schools, from Tromsø in the North to Kristiansand in the very South, have been equipped with e- learning platforms (learning management systems, LMS). The overwhelming part of them stem from one Norwegian supplier. This, of course, represents a massive standardizing momentum, since all pupils, students and teachers now more or less work with the same system. This winter, after the implementation, the ministry for research and education saw the need to start an initiative that casts a critical light on e-learning platforms; how their affordances influence teacher-student communication, on what kind of ‘world view’ or pedagogical concept they are based on, etc. This initiative was overdue.
D&S Do all the efforts you just mentioned imply that Norwegians in general embrace the ideas associated with standardization?
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oriented oil- and offshore-industry, ISO-certification and -standards are a matter of course; international competition requires that. Here, ISO-standards specify products, services, processes and routines, for example regarding quality management. For parallel reasons, commercial content providers like publishing houses, and developers on the e-learning market, make sure that their products conform to international standards, preferably IMS/SCORM and AICC.
The over-all, explicit and reflective focus on standardization, however, is moderate to low. In the educational sector standardization has been a notoriously ill- defined and also misunderstood concept. For a teacher, a lecturer or a researcher, whose thinking is deeply rooted in the humanities, the terms standard and standardization have traditionally been the closest one could get taboo-words. To
"give standardized lessons" is not exactly what an inspired and creative teacher likes to be associated with. One has a culture for doing-it-yourself. In this context, talking about standardization comes close to suggesting a de-humanizing practice that
represents an antithesis to all what the humanities – the arts –, and education are about. Clearly, a critical approach to standardization is all-important. However, the interpretation described above – a kind of naïve scepticism – obviously ignores a crucial conceptual dimension. For it actually is quite handy and useful to be able to use sheets of paper in the classroom that conform to the DIN-A4 standard. This makes storage and (re-)distribution much easier. Also – and this is an often used, but nonetheless highly illustrative example – there would be no Edvard-Grieg-symphony without the standardized system of musical notes; no writing without the standardized semiotic inventory of the alphabet. Shared standards are the prerequisites of all communication. This generative, productive aspect is most often under-focused.
While the ‘archetypical’ humanist tends to associate standardization with the process of formalizing practice, the ‘technologist’, a programmer or system engineer, usually focuses on content and objects. To them, standards and standardization represent all that makes life computable, predictable, good and easy.
Standards and formalization constitute both building-blocks and the conceptual blueprint of their approach. A good example from the field of education are earlier versions of meta-standards for the coding of digital learning resources, like SCORM 1.2 (2001). This is a top-down, authoritative description of learning objects, i.e. of
‘pieces’ of content that are meant for a single, self-paced learner in an instructional setting – typically a training situation at the US Department of Defence, which also was a central actor behind the standard. SCORM 1.2’s register gave for example no voice to specify which activity a given learning object might be associated with, or the learner’s role, not to mention the possibility of supplementing or restructuring the meta-description of a resource with ‘grass root’ information.
D&S Which challenges do you see for future standardizing work, given the background you just sketched out?
C. J. 7KH XQGHUO\LQJ FKDOOHQJH LV RI FRXUVH KRZ RQH FDQ SRVVLEO\ PDNH sensible use of learning objects in educational settings, while we at the same time agree that learning is not primarily centred around static objects. Open-ended processes, discussions, and the social dimension are integral or even constitutive parts of the learning situation, and need to be catered for when setting up the learning environment. In the past few years, all major standards like IMS/SCORM have acknowledged this and added more "pedagogy" to the specifications, by including for example contextual data about a resource’s use. An international trend that also resonates in Norway is to choose service-oriented architectures and to focus on learning design. Here, one tries to facilitate the learning process in terms of learner roles, learning objectives, activities and resources. The principal challenge, however, remains: how to make pedagogically innovative and wide-spread use of the possibilities that the systematized sharing of resources can bring. To understand standardization solely in terms of easier access, administration and efficiency is not enough. The primary rationale should be pedagogic innovation. The work with
standardization is about creating a "lingua franca for richer patterns of learner interaction", as a colleague, Jon Lanestedt, calls it1.
Another challenge is that issues related to standardization are not exactly popular with researchers, practitioners and pedagogues from the humanities. However, it is them – and not primarily programmers or salespersons – who possess expert knowledge on learning processes and -environments, on deeper semantic structures and meaning production, on ontologies, interpretation and ‘softer’ aspects of knowledge representation – exactly what is needed in the current situation. Standards and meta-languages can describe resources, services and processes, and, ultimately, they also regulate access to them. It is also about power, so there is all reason to get on board. How do selection and presentation relate to meaning and interpretation?
These are humanistic core issues that need to be explored within these emerging fields.
And yet a third challenge: basically, we establish standards in order to follow and lubricate existing practice. The field of net-based learning, however, is young and fast-developing. The only thing we know for sure is that most of today’s solutions, both technologically and regarding the pedagogical design, are still relatively immature. It would neither be productive nor wise to conserve too much of it in long-lasting standards. So, then, how can we inscribe innovation in a standard, i.e.
how can we design for change? This is obviously a non-trivial task, but is nonetheless necessary. Talking about standardization forces us to reflect deeply and systematically on existing practice, and to be explicit about the future. This is an important, and maybe underestimated side-effect of all efforts in the field of standardization, and a potential meeting-point for ‘humanists’ and ‘technologists’.
D&S Which role does the Norwegian culture-specific background play?
C. J. , WKLQN LW LV IDLU WR VD\ WKDW WKHUH LV D VWURQJ FXOWXUDO ELDV DJDLQVW centralized, top-down structures in Norway. Historically, Scandinavian societies have had relatively homogeneous, decentralized structures with a flat, egalitarian profile. In Norway for example, grass root movements have had – and still have – a strong influence, both culturally and politically. One of the original grass root movements, folkeopplysning, people enlightenment, inspired as early as in 1914 the introduction of the first distance-learning-institution, the Norsk Korrespondanseskole (NKS). This place-independent form of secondary and tertiary education responded of course as much to the country’s geographical situation, with its almost inaccessible topography of mountains, valleys and fjords, and its decentralized, thinly-populated and widespread pattern of population where people live in close contact with nature and out of reach of central authorities. Another highly significant
1. Lanestedt, Jon (2003). "The Challenge of Digital Learning Environments in Higher Education. The Need for a Merging of Perspectives on Standardization". In: Liestøl, G., A. Morrison & T. Rasmussen (eds.). Digital Media revisited. Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 65-90.
influence is the 19th century religious pietistic movement. In large parts of Norway this school of thought, with its focus on decentralized religious practice, local rather than central authority and a sober and modest life style, mixed effectively and sustainably with the country’s existing societal –cultural, intellectual and economic–
situation. Pietism gained immense buoyancy that is still notable today, for example in the form of a large number of free churches that all have established their own religious practice, but under a common ideological ‘umbrella’ of organisational separatism and anti-centralism.
Even if the majority of Norwegians today live in non-rural areas, and the centralizing powers have grown, and the capital city Oslo has become more significant on the national scale in all respects, the identity of most Norwegians is still tightly associated with this heritage. This also might explain why the majority both in 1972 and in 1994 chose to stay outside of the EU. Many Norwegians do not relate intuitively to the concept of standardization.
The crucial question is if standardization necessarily equals centralization and a top-down approach, with all its ideological implications. Ideally, standardizing efforts should aim at enabling local actors –teachers and students–, to ‘compose symphonies’, and not to force them to ‘sing karaoke’. It has been fairly uncontroversial –even if unnoticed by most people as a standardizing effort– to introduce basic technical standards like the ‘languages’ of the Internet, TCP/IP and HTML. The next step was educational administrative metadata, for example for use in course catalogues and in educational web portals. Also this is relatively uncontroversial, since these efforts can be seen as a continuation of well-established practices from the field of organizing libraries. An early version of NORLOM, for example, was based on Dewey’s classification.
However, the closer we get to the learning situation, the more controversial it gets. A good example here is the standardizing efforts for electronic learning portfolios, ePortfolios. On the one hand we have the IMS specification. Since the e- learning platforms used by Norwegian students comply to IMS/SCORM, the ePortfolio standard will have a clear impact on how a student’s portfolio will look like structurally. On the other hand, we have active pedagogic milieus in Norway that have worked for years innovatively and successfully with digital portfolios, but with a marked socio-constructivist approach. To them, an ePortfolio is not merely a digital collection of student products, but a digital learning arena, with a heavy emphasis on collective processes of knowledge development and -sharing. In their eyes, today’s e-learning platforms are good for content-focused CSL, computer- supported learning, but too restricted and ‘narrow-minded’ for CSCL, computer- supported collaborative learning – a field where one sees, and has achieved, promising pedagogic innovation. Their approach is to rely solely on the basic technical standards of the Internet, especially HTML’s capacity for hyperlinking, and give the students the responsibility to decide on which editing tool, web- publishing application or web service –for example a weblog or a wiki– they wish to use when working on their digital portfolio. I think all standardizing work should
listen to alternative approaches like this, and try to keep a door open – and be careful about not creating de-facto standards that are to ‘tight’.
D&S How can the central authorities influence work on standardization?
C. J. 7Rdecree authoritatively a common national standard for the mark-up of learning resources would be doomed to failure right from the start – because of its top-down implementation mode. Also, the steering authorities alone are unlikely to have comprehensive and sufficient expertise on the subject matter which is necessary to guarantee such a standard’s quality. Norway is a small country, and top expertise is often scarce and most often decentralized. Therefore, local milieus and initiatives need be fostered, stimulated, consulted – an often-used strategy which is also known as letting the thousand flowers grow – but the bouquet is hardly to be a far-reaching consensus on standardizing practice. Coordinating efforts are necessary, and an intricate give-and-take interaction between local and central actors is a frequent pattern. This process has been relatively fruitful in the case of standardization. The result so far is a focus on user-centred, bottom-up perspectives, an approach that has broad legitimation. A concrete example is, as mentioned initially, the activities related to topic maps.
D&S Could you elaborate on the example of topic maps?
C. J. 7RSLF PDSV DQ ,62VWDQGDUG VLQFH FDQ UHSUHVHQW NQRZOHGJH domains non-hierarchically, by describing topics (i.e. concepts) according to their occurances and their (types of) associations with other topics. A visualization of a topic map resembles a mind map with its ‘boxes and arrows’. The types of topics, associations and occurances can be defined in an ontology. This allows for a merging of individual topic maps into one coherent new topic map. Originally, topic maps were designed to navigate and search complex sites in a more user-oriented and ‘intelligent’ way than hierarchical classification can offer. A Norwegian initiative has recently proposed to use topic maps to meta-describe packages of standard-compliant learning content. Topic maps can specify for example which resources and activities might be combined in a given learning context, or how activites relate to existing curricula. On a concrete level, it seems that the topic map standard is finding its way into the IMS Content Packaging specification
Due to topic maps’ flexiblity other areas of application have appeared. A company based in Northern Norway has developed the software application BrainBank (brainbank.no) where building topic maps of a given subject area can be made a concrete learning activity. A pupil or a student –this application is used on all educational levels– isolates topics of the given knowledge domain, describes how one concept relates to other concepts, and where they occur. In the next step, learners can integrate their individual topic maps, thus creating a richer and more complex representation collaboratively. These activities match nicely with theories on concept development and knowledge building, so this might be an interesting track to follow.
In this example, the generation of meta data is made part of the learning activity itself. In all other cases, one has to establish routines for how and by whom new or existing resources are to be annotated with meta data. Should I as a teacher fill out a form with detailed meta information for each web side I publish on the world wide web? This gives ‘grassroot-control’ and high legitimicy to the meta data, but represents an extra work load which might render this solution not sustainable in the long run. Also, the consistency of the data might be of varying quality. Here, new and interesting web services, like the site for social bookmarking, del.icio.us, can inspire possible solutions. All meta-tagging is based on users’ simple keyword input and require only little overhead. However, the underlying software and the users’
sense of community maximizes the usefulness of these data, however ambiguous or inconsistent they might be. This socially oriented form of classifying content is known under the neologism folksonomy, "people’s classification management", certainly an inspiring way to think.
D&S You mentioned the introduction of e-learning platforms in all institutions – an effort you labelled a "massive standardizing momentum". Is that in the spirit of Scandinavian "bottom-up" philosophy?
C. J. <HV DQG QR 0RVW VFKRRO RZQHUV RQ WKH ORFDO OHYHO ZKR WRRN WKH GHFLVLRQ considered this a strategically important move. They were of course heavily influenced –and may have felt urged– by the national and international discourse on ICT and learning. Recently, the founder of the dominating LMS supplier company compared his company’s position with that of Microsoft’s monopoly, announcing only half-jokingly that he had the Norwegian educational sector "in his hand". This has lead to an increased focus on open standards on the side of the policy makers, to avoid being locked to one supplier. The department also started an –overdue–
initiative to cast a critical light on digital learning platforms. How does the ‘world view’ that is inscripted in such a system influence practice? Until now, this question has barely been touched upon. This illustrates that standardization is an interesting concept that, when related to a domain like institutionalized education, we are only at the start of understanding completely. It is an interesting lens to cast a light on fundamental issues of institutionalized education.
D&S What about open standards and open source software? A country with traditions in a grass root culture must have a natural inclination to that collective form of tool-building?
C. J. 6XUSULVLQJO\ QRW UHDOO\ -XVW OLNH LW LV PDQGDWRU\ IRU D 1RUZHJLan business person to be able to speak English, most IT managers have considered it necessary to ‘speak Microsoft’ in regards to their information systems. The huge international suppliers are regarded and appreciated as guarantors of de-facto standards that drive the economic wheel. Nobody ‘loves’ Microsoft, but appreciates that they have standardized IT services and people’s PC desktop.
Government policy and the public sector in general has until recently been close to blind or naïve in respect to open standards in terms of file formats. Numerous publicly funded digital services, from the film archive of the national broadcasting station, NRK, to downloadable travel bill forms are readable and editable with proprietary software only. In many official documents, the term for a proprietary software application, "Word", is used instead of the generic term "word processing application" –without any sign of reflection on the signal effect of that communicative practice. Last year, the dean of the University of Bergen asked rhetorically how we can possibly ensure long-term open accessibility of academic intellectual property in a situation where large parts of it are stored in proprietary file formats which are owned and controlled by third parts. Most universities’ strategies emphasize clearly the importance of using open standards, but the daily routines of the individual ‘knowledge worker’ are hard to change. As a final example, financial resources in public schools are under constant pressure –and still the majority of schools pay a significant amount of licence fees for proprietary office-software that basically has a free, open-sourced equivalent.
There has, however, been a marked shift in the right direction. The Norwegian Technology Council, Teknologirådet, has just published an influential white paper that sketches out a differentiated policy in regards to open standards and open source software. The paper emphasizes the crucial importance of open standards, i.e. of file formats, protocols etc.. Open source software is recommended for most usages. But it is also suggested that some cutting-edge applications might require other, more marketplace-friendly organizational models than the principals of the open-source- movement. In schools, the movement Linux-for-schools is gaining more and more recognition, and is now also part of strategic plans of the government. Digital competence and digital ‘Bildung’ are key words in these plans. In my opinion, the ability to reflect on basic implications of the organizational principals of ICT-related use and services, and what these can mean for the individual and society, is a vital part of digital competence. This also includes a basic understanding of standards and of the processes associated with standardization.
Carsten Jopp Dep. of humanistic informatics University of Bergen, Norvège [email protected]
