Collaborations and Affiliations

IMS Global actively collaborates with a number of organizations to ensure that IMS specifications and practices for enabling better learning from better learning technology have a high level of applicability across learning domains and global relevance.

American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) is a higher education member organization that represents approximately 4,600 institutions worldwide to promote best practices for records management, enrollment management, admissions, student services and administrative information technology. IMS and AACRAO are collaborating to extend the traditional transcript as a comprehensive digital record of student achievement to support innovative new education models such as Competencey Based Education.

Achievement Standards Network (ASN) provides open access to machine-readable representations of learning objects published by education agencies and organizations, including the Common Core State Standards. IMS is in close partnership with ASN (powered by D2L) to enable use of the ASN RDF framework in conjunction with the IMS standards, such as Common Cartridge, Question and Test Interoperability, and Learning Tools Interoperability, both in the U.S. and around the world.

Association of Public & Land Grant Universities (APLU) is a research, policy, and advocacy organization dedicated to strengthening and advancing the work of public universities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. APLU is actively involved with the IMS institutional Caliper Analytics leadership group to identify metric profiles needed to support adaptive learning technologies at scale.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded IMS a 3-year grant in the Fall of 2014 to accelerate deployment of IMS standards that provide a foundation for connectivity of learning platforms, digital courseware, tools and resources so that they can be used together to support the needs of instructors and students. It is anticipated that the results from this grant will greatly increase the number of personalized learning solutions that can be readily integrated by suppliers and institutions, providing greater choice for students, instructors and institutions to improve educational participation and achievement.

Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. Some 220 institutions representing higher education, publishing, network and telecommunications, information technology, and libraries and library organizations make up CNI's Members.

Competency Based Education Network (C-BEN) is a group of colleges and universities working together to address shared challenges to designing, developing and scaling competency-based degree programs. IMS and C-BEN have been collaborating since 2014 to identify the applications, platforms and tools used for CBE programs and to address interoperability challenges.

Consortium for School Networking (CoSN ) is an association of K-12 technology leaders. IMS works closely with CoSN on K-12 initiatives and is a member of CoSN.

Dublin Core has established a widely accepted technical specification for meta-data for the content of digital libraries. The IMS Learning Resources Meta-data Specification incorporates major aspects of the Dublin Core by defining extensions that are appropriate specifically for educational and training materials.

Ed-Fi Alliance, funded by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, provides standards and software for the actionable use of data by K-12 states and school districts. IMS Global and Ed-Fi have joined forces to collaborate on K-12 standards – bringing together IMS’s “front-end” learning technology standards with Ed-Fi’s “back-end” data standards. The collaboration will focus on broad adoption of IMS’s OneRosterTM standards and targeting several additional high need areas in order to accelerate connecting district level to state level systems. These additional areas include assessment, learning analytics and digital credentials (competency-based education and digital badges).

EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association and the foremost community of IT leaders and professionals committed to advancing higher education. IMS came into existence as a project within EDUCAUSE in 1995. IMS continues to have a close relationship with EDUCAUSE, including a close affiliation with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), to align efforts to advance the effective use of technology to support teaching and learning impact.

European Committee for Standardization/Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS) is an international association, formally recognized by the European Community, managing the cooperation amongst the national standards bodies of the 15 EU states, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. ISSS was formed to focus specifically on "Information Society" standardization requirements, and has established a number of open workshops. IMS is a participant in the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata for Multimedia Information. In addition, IMS is involved in consideration of a Memorandum of Understanding with CEN/ISSS and other organizations to build consensus for educational technology, improving access to lifelong learning across Europe.

European University Information Systems (EUNIS) is an organisation focused on helping member institutions develop their IT landscape by sharing experiences and working together. IMS is frequently invited to participate in the their programs to expand awareness for IMS standards and practices.

GÉANT is a fundamental element of Europe’s e-infrastructure, delivering the pan-European GÉANT network for scientific excellence, research, education and innovation. Through its integrated catalogue of connectivity, collaboration and identity services, GÉANT provides users with highly reliable, unconstrained access to computing, analysis, storage, applications and other resources, to ensure that Europe remains at the forefront of research.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the IMS Global Learning Consortium will continue to collaborate with the IEEE toward efforts to establish international learning technology standards. IMS GLC is a member of the IEEE Standards Association.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36) is a network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries, on the basis of one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system. IMS GLC is a Category A Liaison.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) publishes K-12 curriculum standards to help guide the integration and application of tools and curriculum that are aligned with teaching and learning goals. The goal for ISTE and IMS collaboration is to help districts create a framework for technology adoption for teaching and learning that addresses both the critical infrastructure and pedagogy factors.

MacArthur Foundation is one of the nation's largest independent foundations. Through the support it provides, the Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides information to the public, primarily through support for public interest media. IMS and the MacArthur Foundation are participating in ongoing collaboration to evolve Open Badges as part of the IMS Digital Credentialing Initiative to fit the needs of educational institutions and corporations.

MERLOT is a community of educators in higher education who collaborate to develop and disseminate high quality online resources for faculty to incorporate into their courses.

Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes openess, innovation and participation on the Internet. Mozilla is best know for the Firefox browser, but they advance their mission through other projects. IMS and Mozilla collaborate to extend the work around Open Badges to unlock the full potential of the web by making it easy for users to get recognition for skills they learn online and offline.

Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) accelerates educational innovation through applied technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States. IMS is collaborating with NGLC, EDUCAUSE and ELI to align the IMS Centers of Excellence to help institutions of all types leverage innovative integrated digital curriculum, tools and data to achieve affordable student success.

Online Learning Consortium (OLC) The Online Learning Consortium is the leading professional organization devoted to advancing quality online learning providing professional development, instruction, best practice publications and guidance to educators, online learning professionals and organizations around the world. OLC and IMS are collaborating to align the IMS Centers of Excellence with OLC's Digital Learning Innovation Awards.

The Learning Counsel is a research institute and news media hub, focused on providing context for the shift in education to digital curriculum. Our membership is comprised of over 170,000 Superintendents, tech and instructional administrators, curriculum specialists, thousands of publishers, and interested enthusiasts anywhere in the teaching and learning field. IMS and The Learning Counsel collaborate in various ways to promote the importance of interoperability as K-12 districts transition to digital.

WCET is a national, member-driven, non-profit which brings together colleges and universities, HED organizations and companies to collectively improve the quality and reach of e-learning programs. WCET and IMS actively pursue joint activities to raise awareness for the importance of open standards to enable educators to innovate with open digital content and educational technologies to improve outcomes.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) establishes specifications for the web. It is responsible for specifications such as HTML, XML, and RDF. It is not accredited but its specifications constitute industry standards. W3C creates specifications at a lower level than IMS. For example, IMS uses XML as a language for representing meta-data, profiles and other structured information.