IMS releases draft specification that lets developers exchange, retrieve and certify controlled vocabularies
Spec developers seek public commentary
BURLINGTON, Mass. - September 3, 2003 - IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS) today announces the release of the Vocabulary Definition Exchange (VDEX) public draft specification and invites input from prospective users.
VDEX is designed to supplement other IMS specifications and the IEEE LOM standard by giving additional semantic control to tool developers. When used, VDEX will enable developers to create tools that can:
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Create consistent metadata for an application profile;
- Retrieve existing vocabularies from registries and repositories as well as create new ones;
- Interpret meta-data for users; and
- Provide a thesaurus web service for a community of interest.
Project team leader Adam Cooper says that use of VDEX can bring more semantic control to working with metadata: "If we think of an interoperability specification as providing 'grammar', in that it gives the rules for expressing information, then VDEX supplies certain words to be used to formulate the expression," explained Dr. Cooper, Software Architect at FD Learning Ltd.
The Public Draft of the VDEX specification is a set of three documents - both technical and narrative in nature. The full document set: VDEX Information Model, VDEX Best Practices and Implementation Guide, and VDEX Binding, is available for public review and comment. Those interested in providing feedback or suggestions may comment on any or all of the documents, which are available, at no charge from http://www.imsglobal.org/vdex/ in a fully accessible HTML version and in a downloadable PDF version.
Public comment on the documents will be accepted for six weeks - from September 3, 2003 through October 15, 2003. Following the public comment phase, the project team will incorporate revisions and submit the document set to the IMS Technical Advisory Board for a vote.
VDEX was developed by technical experts and IMS members from the following organizations: FD Learning, Ltd (UK), Department of Education, Science and Training (AUS), Click2Learn, Inc. (USA), CETIS (UK), Penn State (USA) and Thomson NETg (USA).
About IMS
The IMS Global Learning Consortium develops and promotes the adoption of open technical specifications for interoperable learning technology. Several IMS specifications have become worldwide de facto standards for delivering learning products and services. IMS specifications and related publications are made available to the public at no charge from www.imsglobal.org. No fee is required to implement the specifications.
IMS is a worldwide non-profit organization that includes more than 50 Contributing Members and affiliates. These members come from every sector of the global e-learning community. They include hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, publishers, government agencies, systems integrators, multimedia content providers, and other consortia. The Consortium provides a neutral forum in which members with competing business interests and different decision-making criteria collaborate to satisfy real-world requirements for interoperability and re-use.
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For more information contact
Marketing, marketing@imsglobal.org
http://www.imsglobal.org
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