The UNFOLD project
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For some years there has been a widely held opinion that the first generation of open eLearning specifications, while valuable, had limited eLearning to a relatively simple, single learner, ‘deliver-and-test' approach, and are a step backwards if considered from a pedagogic perspective alone. A significant step forward was marked by the publication in January 2003 of the IMS Learning Design specification which enables flexible and sophisticated pedagogical approaches to eLearning, by providing support for:
• multiple as well as single learners and their coordination
• a wide range of present, as well as future, pedagogical models
• learning activities and learning services, as well as content.
When IMS publishes a specification a set of three documents are posted on their Web site, and the working group sits back for a well deserved rest, hoping that the rest of the world will pick up on their work and adopt the specification. Its fate may be to languish on a little visited web directory, or it may become universally adopted. Government agencies and influential commercial organisations, however, can and do promote specifications, and the most notable example is the SCORM, which has received over 84 million dollars from the US Government in funding for awareness raising and implementation, plus mandated compliance in Federal funded projects.
In this context the UNFOLD project was conceived of as a measure to promote and coordinate the adoption, implementation and use of IMS Learning Design and related specifications, as this appeared to be the best candidate for resolving the need for more sophisticated interoperability. This judgement has been confirmed by developments over the past three years.
Funding was obtained from the Technology Enhanced Learning Programme and the project started in January 2004. Participation has been open to all those working with the specification or thinking doing so, or carrying out research in the area. The first six months of the project was devoted to awareness raising, compilation and development of resources related to the specification, and a particular effort to reach other projects in the Technology Enhanced Learning programme, and other Framework 6 initiatives.
Many different professional groups have to be involved if the IMS Learning Design specification is to be successful in providing better learning opportunities, but often these groups are not in contact with each other. Those developing specifications do not usually work with authors of learning materials, and tools developers do not usually work with teachers and learners. If progress is to be made on these aims, then information needs to flow between these disparate groups of people. To meet this need the core activity of UNFOLD has been to support and facilitate Communities of Practice (CoPs) which are groupings of people who come together around common interests and expertise, creating, sharing, and applying knowledge within and across the boundaries of tasks, teams and organisations. The CoPs were launched in July 2004 with the establishment of three communities, for Systems Developers, Learning Designers and for Teachers and Learning Designers.
In practice the boundaries between CoPs has not always been completely clear, in part because the same people take up more than one role, but also because the development of basic tooling took longer than anticipated. Indeed it is only now, at the end of the project that a critical mass of Learning Designers is being established, and the first pilots with learners are being run. As a result much of the work done in UNFOLD involved groups of researchers working on various aspects of Learning Design, exchanging their results and insights.
