IMS GLC: CC Alliance

Common Cartridge Alliance

The Common Cartridge Alliance has been created as a high value community for those involved in implementing Common Cartridge and Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) through a primarily online engagement with experts from the IMS member organizations, IMS staff, and a large variety of resources shared by the participants. End-user organizations are also heavily involved in the Common Cartridge Alliance because IMS staff facilitate collaborative projects among institutions, school districts, and suppliers that are looking to scale the effective use of digital resources and applications.

Joining the Common Cartridge Alliance provides tremendous leverage because it is extremely low cost and the resources made available through the alliance are 98% subsidized by the IMS Contributing Member organizations. Joining the alliance is a great way to show your support for the work of IMS without a large expenditure of money or resources. In fact, the return on investment from the provided resources and support is large.

The Alliance focuses on the Common Cartridge (CC) and Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specifications, along with the IMS broader family of 'content' specifications; namely, Content Packaging (CP), Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) and Learning Design (LD).

Common Cartridge Conformance

Membership in the Common Cartridge Alliance is the only way to achieve official conformance to the Common Cartridge (CC) or Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standards. Digital content or learning platforms must exhibit the marks shown here, signifying achievement of the official conformance process, to be compliant to IMS Common Cartridge or IMS QTI. Products without these marks are not considered to be compliant by IMS GLC.

Further information on the conformance program is available on the IMS Profiles and Conformance Program page.

You can browse the available products and see which have been awarded a conformance mark in the Learning & Educational Technology Product Directory

What people are saying about Common Cartridge
"The cross platform compatibility offered by the Common Cartridge can energize the digital learning content market. The technology makes it viable to both extend coverage across the curriculum while simultaneously enriching the learner experience with access to specialized tools, simulations and assessments, all seamlessly integrated with the core content. Pearson Education has participated in the development of this specification and the trials to prove the technology and its application. We are now preparing titles for release in this format and anticipate its adoption by both a broad range of publishers and by institutions for in-house content development".– David O'Connor, Senior Vice President of Core Technology Product Development, Pearson Education

"The Common Cartridge initiative is poised to be the most well-coordinated collaboration between the publishing industry and the LMS industry to date. Educational providers and their learners alike will benefit tremendously from this initiative as the quantity and quality of online educational resources will grow exponentially in the very near future. We are proud to be amongst the earliest adapters of the Common Cartridge specification and have already worked it into our next generation platforms built for the Apple iPhone as well as the desktop via Adobe's Integrated Runtime."– Edward B. Mansouri, CEO, Ucompass.com, Inc.

"The business need for the CommonCartridge is quite simple. If our industry can reduce obstacles for content interoperability investment in producing very basic online courses can shift towards designing courses that support the vision of personalized instruction around learning outcomes. Without a well established open standard for content and support from key educational technology players, we'll languish. Our strategy at ANGEL is to provoke this positive change by our commitment to shipping support for CommonCartridge. We challenge other industry players to match our pace for the good of the industry."– Ray Henderson, Chief Products Officer, ANGEL Learning

"Common Cartridge is a standard whose time has come! Common Cartridge enables publishers to focus their valuable resources on delivering enhanced learning content depth and breadth, and less on packaging for compatibilities sake across many LMS solutions. It eliminates redundancy and allows for new innovations that will help accelerate and fully engage today's digital savvy, experientially-focused students."– Curt Allen, President and CEO, Agilix Labs

"Cengage Learning is working to evolve the way that students learn by partnering with instructors to provide a wide range of digital content and services. The "common cartridge" extends the Cengage Learning focus to create, protect, and deliver quality content consistently across learning management systems for instructors and students. Cengage Learning has partnered to develop engaging products for this emerging standard and is actively testing our titles to prove compatibility. We are pleased to continue our support of the common cartridge standard."– Jonathan Stowe, Senior Vice President, Academic and Professional Group, Cengage Learning

"Course management systems have become mission-critical applications in support of academic programs at universities. Common Cartridge will help enrich course sites and provide students with digital textbooks and supplementary materials for learning and assessment. The emerging Common Cartridge standard, by providing easy access and inter-operable tools, should increase student time-on-task, the factor most closely correlated with improved learning."– Charles F. Leonhardt, Principal Technologist, Georgetown University

Alliance Activities
In addition to notices issued by IMS Global Learning Consortium (e.g. press releases or the IMS monthly Dispatch), the Alliance exploits four communication channels:

CC Alliance Forums: These are where much of the exciting work among IMS member organizations takes place. The forums are actively supported by IMS staff. Current topics in the forums include:

Announcements & discussion of alliance activities
Discussion of implementation and testing issues relating to achieving compliance
Discussion of implementation and testing issues relating to achieving compliance
Discussion area for all things relating to QTI
Discussion and resources for the Digital Learning Connection project
Discussion and resources for use of Common Cartridge & LTI to implement tagging with Curriculum Standards (K-12)
Discussion around including Basic LTI in a Common Cartridge (version 1.1)
IMS Content Packaging as an area of continued evolution
Learn about the IMS Product Directory, how to find products, add your product, and locate conformance
CEO’s corner – updates from Rob Abel

CC Alliance website: this has a public area offering access to the specification and the CC cartridge test tool, as well as introductory information on CC and the conformance program. The participants area provides access to (a) a wider range of CC tools (e.g. SCORM2CC), test data and sample cartridges, (b) a corresponding area dedicated to the QTI specification, and (c) details of the conformance program.
Member-only Webinars & Workshops: Hands-on and informational update sessions, both virtual and at IMS scheduled meetings throughout the year.
Testfest: These events are co-located with the IMS quarterly meetings and the annual Learning Impact conference. Testfests are often open to the public, offering an opportunity for newcomers to get a taste of the Alliance activities and meet other participants. The meetings provide a platform for demonstrating new implementations of CC, conducting ad-hoc interoperability testing and discussing common issues.
CC News Update: An occasional publication distributed to Contributing Members, Affiliate Members, Alliance participants and the IMS Community, offering news on events, new tools available and adoption activities.

The Common Cartridge (CC) standard distils state-of-the-art practice in online education and training into an easy-to-implement format for creating and sharing digital content. It defines an integrated approach to exchanging content exploiting:

A consistent model for packaging content.
Metadata (based on simple Dublin Core).
Assessment (harnessing a commonly used set of question types).
Additional features such as discussion topics and authorization for protected content.
Version 1.1 of Common Cartridge introduces support for Basic LTI, a subset of the functionality offered by the Learning Tools Interoperability specification.

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)
IMS LTI complements the Common Cartridge standard with access to rich, web-based applications or Tools embedded into cartridges with active, authenticated links back to the centrally hosted content. High stakes or premium content can be integrated into specific learning contexts and support the retrieval of results, making the value of eBooks and online content a reality. For more information on Basic LTI visit: Basic Learning Tools Interoperability Video Overview
The CC Alliance is an online community of vendors, user institutions and practitioners committed to advancing the use of the IMS family of content-related specifications encompassing:

Common Cartridge (CC).
Content Packaging (CP).
Question & Test Interoperability (QTI).
Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI).

Goals

Encourage supply of CC, CP, LTI & QTI compatible products and services in the marketplace
Facilitate adoption of CC, CP, LTI & QTI products by a worldwide community of education and training organizations
Provide tools and content to enable interested organizations to develop CC/CP/LTI/QTI-enabled products that meet the conformance requirements set out by the IMS GLC membership

Benefits of Alliance Membership

Promotion of compliant products and services in the online product & services catalog for organizations who join the Alliance..
Use of an approved product mark for appropriately tested products.
Attendance at testfest events.
CC news updates and discussion forum.
Listing of support on IMS GLC web site.
Use of CC Alliance logo on web and in literature.
Notifications of new test cases and changes.
Opportunity to participate in CC Alliance presence at conferences and exhibitions.
Discounted registration fees for Learning Impact Conference.

Current Resources available for community members

Free-to-use CC Test System (under development for QTI)
Valid cartridge test data set
Tools, test harnesses and sample code
CC Alliance logo and marketing materials
Access to unreleased draft specifications
Open content example cartridges

Join the CC Alliance
Join the Common Cartridge Alliance and begin taking advantage of the benefits described above. Sign up now online.

CC Alliance Members
See the list of CC Alliance members and the growing community of educational institutions and vendors committed to proliferating the CC standard.

Common Cartridge Testing
The CCv1.0 test system is made available free-of-charge so that you can perform your own testing of cartridges for conformance with the Common Cartridge v1.0 specification. The test system generates a comprehensive report of any non-conformance issues detected. You do not need to be a member of the Alliance to download the tool, but you are required to register as a member of the IMS community to gain access. Select here to proceed.

Common Cartridge Information

For more information, contact us.