“Simple, clear and open”: Filtered supports first meeting of the Digital Learning Standards Forum
Myles Runham’s call for standards in L&D has kicked off a movement involving L&D practitioners and vendors including Coursera, Go1, Jam Pan, Skill Dynamics and Valamis.
“Standards are a hallmark of a mature industry, one where barriers are recognised and removed for the collective good and clarity is sought in the interest of common understanding,” writes Myles, ex-Head of Digital for BBC Academy and now an industry leader on using data to drive value from learning projects.
“Pre-digital L&D made impressive progress with standards. SCORM is the most obvious example. A great deal of time and money was saved in the creation and management of online training, allowing customers to commission with confidence and suppliers to manage their production to a known output specification.”
But progress on standards has now stalled. xAPI hasn’t been widely adopted and L&D lacks clear standards in six key areas:
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Interoperability
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Benchmarking and metrics
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Openness
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Skills and taxonomy
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Data ethics
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Accessibility
The task ahead is huge, so the first meeting, taking place on 1 December, aims to set some modest but vital foundations:
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Agreeing the purpose for the Forum - what we are trying to achieve
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Setting priorities and areas of focus - how and where can we make most progress?
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Agreeing next steps to develop and shape standards and extend our reach
Filtered is providing operational support to Myles to launch the initiative and welcomes the participation of its partner network and clients.
“Filtered is delighted to support this initiative because we see transparent standards as a platform for innovation in learning delivery,” comments Toby Harris, Chief Customer Officer at Filtered. “CLOs need learning programmes which are 10x more effective than the ones we have. Reinventing at the wheel with measurements is holding back the thinking we need.”
“We brought the Content Intelligence category to the market precisely to create transparent ways to benchmark and understand learning content, on which we spend billions. But the need for standards goes beyond content. We are 100% behind Myles and we’re impressed at the alliance he has already built behind standards.”
Supporters of the initiative, which has its first meeting on 1 December, include the CEOs of learning vendors like Filtered and Valamis and industry L&D leaders joining from companies including Dow Chemical, EDF, Heineken, NatWest and Novo Nordisk.
You can still register to support the initiative by contacting Myles directly or signing up here.