Monday, January 9, 2012

Common Cartridge

If you noted when I posted the update on the MERLOT Content Builder, one of the new features was "Common Cartridge."  That term is not very meaningful for most nurses and nurse educators - YET.  It refers to a standard similar to SCORM (shareable content object reference model) - but supposedly better.  It is difficult to get excited about standards except when they help with interoperability.

Common cartridge should be really helpful for colleges and universities who change learning management systems.  For example the University System of Georgia is changing from BlackBoard Vista to Desire 2 Learn. Of course, Vista has been retired, so it is not compliant with Common Cartridge.  Without having the experience, it is difficult to talk about the concept except theoretically.

For more information on Common Cartridge, read Doug Lederman's 2006 article in Higher Ed at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/09/cartridge 
Michael Feldstein also has a 2006 blog on the topic at http://mfeldstein.com/why_teachers_unions_should_demand_support_for_the_ims_common_cartridge_stan/

Note those two articles were written almost seven years ago.  The process to disseminate the standard has been very slow.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium website has lots of information about the standard at http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/alliance.html 


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