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Learning Analytics Policy – Looking for Input!

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I’m heading to LAK 17 in Vancouver, BC to help a great crew from many countries, in a workshop on learning analytics policy (LAP). Since learning analytics policy is evolving everywhere, we’re looking for input from people, everywhere. K-12, corporate, higher ed – all important.

There’s opportunity to contribute a paper for this event, so if you’re really motivated, go ahead and fill out this survey.  

Examples Please!

Researching this for the learning analytics community, what we really need are more examples. Answers to any of the following questions would be helpful in establishing a baseline of knowledge we are putting together.

  • What learning analytics policies have you encountered?
  • How did they affect your implementation?
  • What workarounds have you planned, knowing certain policies would need to be accommodated?
  • How did a policy affect your outcome?

Narrative descriptions, case studies or just links to the policy documents would all be helpful. Please, send me an email at megan@makingbetter.us if you have something to contribute! 

What is the plan for DISC, xAPI, and ADL?

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Towards the end of last year, our big announcement was the formation of the not-for-profit Consortium formed to handle the governance and address the evolution of xAPI with/for ADL. xAPI, being open-source and licensed as Apache 2.0, doesn’t require ADL’s permission for us to do this. That’s a feature, not a bug — we licensed xAPI in this way so that it couldn’t be trapped in US DoD the way SCORM was. All the same, ADL’s done an amazing job stewarding xAPI through its R&D roots to now and to whatever degree we can work in concert with ADL (and US DoD, by extension) it’s to our collective benefit to do so. Which is why we haven’t done a whole lot in terms of visible activity since the beginning of the year. We’ve worked out the details of what we’re going to take on with ADL so the connections between DISC and ADL can be very explicit, very concrete and very visible. ADL’s announcement about our collaboration can be found here.  Here’s a look at what we have planned over the next four years.

DISC’s Year-One Priority Outcomes

To ensure the interoperability of software and hardware that purports to be xAPI-conformant, DISC is revitalizing the xAPI Conformance working group and conducting a research effort to facilitate definition of the requirements for xAPI conformance. Concurrently, DISC will work with a stakeholder group to define requirements for software and hardware certification of xAPI conformance, and to make recommendations to ADL for a program that would confer certification on software and hardware with Learning Record Store (LRS) functionality.

DISC will develop and deploy a publicly available index of such certified LRS products for use by stakeholder involved in acquisitions.

The thing is, that focusing on LRSs is just the start. To make implementations of xAPI interoperable, we can’t limit the responsibility on LRSs. We also can’t focus solely on content for a lot of reasons. One lesson from the work done to test conformance and to certify content leveraging the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was that certifying work products, such as content, offered diminished return on the investment in capacity needed to efficiently certify such work products. After about two years of research and requirements gathering, we’ve determined that a program to certify professionals who create learning experiences leveraging xAPI, with practice-based evaluation of their work products, is an idea worth championing so DISC will work with a stakeholder group to define requirements for a such a professional, Learning Record Provider certification program. We’ll explore the requirements for the contents of a body of knowledge, the competencies needed professionally and the evaluation criteria. This will inform the requirements for a program that confers certification on professionals who demonstrate competence in creating learning record providers that work interoperably with xAPI-conformant LRSs.

And, just to make sure we’re all on the same page — this is all within year one, going into June(ish) 2017. Aggressive goals? Megan and I would say we’re assertive, but no less so than any other goal we’ve put out there (and met). We predict there are going to be some serious reasons why we need to get LRS certification ready for early 2017, in terms of catalysts that will drive market adoption of xAPI. The time is now, friends.

DISC’s Year 2-4 Activities

In our first year, DISC will establish a baseline for data interoperability of the xAPI specification itself. To strengthen that for the long-term, DISC is going to vet the impact of supporting JSON-LD on existing implementations of xAPI, and, should stakeholders choose to support JSON-LD, DISC will take on responsibilities to update any hardware, software and/or professional certification materials, processes, procedures and evaluation criteria to support that evolution. That seems really geeky, but it’s important that before we go bigger on professional certifications and larger services, we figure out what, if anything, we’re to do with JSON-LD as an industry. Three years ago, it wasn’t big enough for us to rally support to address it (argue about that all you want — it wasn’t). Now it clearly is, so we’re going to address it.

To strengthen data interoperability and to reinforce appropriate cybersecurity and information assurance practices in applications of xAPI within US DoD and other verticals, DISC intends to identify a profile of xAPI as an exemplar for US DoD and FedRamp such that it serves as a model for other xAPI stakeholder groups to use in extending the xAPI specification to work with various laws and policies with which xAPI may interact. In other words – FedRamp describes what US government needs in terms of security. Other nations — other organizations — may have more or different needs. So, by doing this, DISC would produce best-practice recommendations with the intent of providing advice for data privacy considerations around xAPI and how personal data ownership may be defined to inform cybersecurity and information assurance goals considering situation-appropriate operational, business and technical perspectives.

Help?

These are just the highlights. Megan and I had some incredible help organizing our scope and putting the mandate into actionable outcomes thanks to our friend and Project Czar extraordinaire, Wendy Wickham, as well as our Board of Directors.

Referencing our previous post, DISC activity is just the first topic we had to update you on. Next, we’ll talk to what we’ve been seeing drive xAPI’s adoption recently.

 

With Gratitude…

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Megan and I find ourselves grateful, as the year comes to a close. 2015 gave MakingBetter an amazing journey that was full of surprises. Most were wonderful and some were very scary. Through it all, we found ways to make our clients happy and successful doing work we believed in. When we had struggles and found roadblocks, we worked together to get over whatever the hump was and we got to a better place.

With Gratitude

We created things with great people. Our projects ranged from designing and developing custom reporting for software products, training providers and large enterprises. We launched an online journal, the xAPI Quarterly, kickstarting the publishing arm of our business, Connections Forum, and we ran our first events, xAPI Camps that each were co-created with our participants. In January 2015, we planned for one and as the year closed we had four with five more scheduled in 2016. Our next one at the Autodesk Galleria in downtown San Francisco, February 11. We celebrated another amazing year with the amazing community, Up to All of Us, which will convene again in Sonoma County, February 12-15. We started a non-profit. More on that in a minute.

Grateful to Make MakingBetter Happen

MakingBetter at the Grand Tetons

Megan came on full-time with MakingBetter in June, this year. We took our first serious vacation ever in July. We spent a lot of time with our families and friends. We lived and worked, together, on our own terms for the first time in our lives. We dealt with emergencies and surprise medical concerns. We innovated when we needed to and we stuck to tried and true processes when we needed to, too. We lived well in 2015. I say all this because it’s important to celebrate success and to make sure that credit goes where credit is due. I write tonight grateful for a true partner like Megan, grateful for each and every client we had this year, grateful for each and every person who’s influenced how we do what we do, grateful for our sponsors and our partners and especially…

Grateful for the xAPI Community

It’s the xAPI community I want to talk specifically to now. There are a myriad of reasons why 2015 was good for Megan and I, but the one reason that stands out is the incredible gains in xAPI’s adoption that happened this year. We know there’s been incredible growth in xAPI adoption. Our business boomed and so did that of many software vendors who create solutions that are tailored to meet some of the many things people use xAPI for. We know projects are already being planned for the beginning of 2016 at a scale that equals the whole of xAPI adoption in 2015. These are measureable outcomes of an open source community that has been lovingly and painstakingly attended by the US Department of Defense and its particular initiative, Advanced Distributed Learning. xAPI is in every way a stunning success. It is proving that open government practices, a pro-entrepreneurial approach and an authentic embrace of open source can stimulate innovation, enable implemented approaches to complex and serious challenges, and catalyze economic opportunities. It is far from the applied research and development activity it was four years ago. It is a mature spec that is growing its own industry.

Grateful for xAPI’s Growth

xAPI Camp - DevLearn

xAPI is so successful that it’s actually becoming a challenge for ADL to support it to the scale it now demands. The Design Cohort program that began in 2013 became so well attended and populated that it couldn’t be supported by ADL anymore — they just don’t have the resources to do it on their own. The maintenance of the spec is labor intensive enough for the resources ADL has, that certification isn’t something they can handle on their own without stopping something else important. When SCORM was being created, it was an epoch ago for information and instructional technology, and ADL had over 40 engineers they could apply to SCORM alone. ADL now has dozens of high priority projects and there are maybe six full-time engineers they can resource for xAPI. Fortunately, those of us who brought to ADL the concepts that enabled xAPI’s creation knew that the day would come when specs and standards would need to move beyond ADL to truly mature. This is why open source was so crucial a path for xAPI. It’s because xAPI is licensed Apache 2.0 that anyone can take xAPI and mature it, and that’s just what we’re about to do, given ADL’s blessing and commitment to participate in the effort.

Grateful to Serve Our Community

The non-profit we started at the close of 2015 is the Data Interoperability Standards Consortium, or DISC (because, acronyms). There are many challenges to working with data: interoperability, security, privacy, professional competencies, validation, provenance, ethics, legalities, languages, formats, etc. We intend for DISC to offer the table where all communities of practice, individuals, organizations, governments and industries can work together to meet the complexities of working with data. It’s about more than xAPI, but make no mistake, xAPI is our priority in 2016. The transition from an ADL-organized xAPI Community to a DISC-organized xAPI Community will begin in the first quarter of 2016. By the middle of the year, we’ll have established working groups and special interest groups to explore ways in which xAPI may be extended as well as certification requirements. By the beginning of 2017, we’ll have a certification program in place and an array of tools that will make working with xAPI’s vocabulary much much easier.

That seems like a lot to get done in one year, and you’re right. It is a lot. But it will be done because it has to be done. xAPI is growing so much that if we don’t have certification in place by the end of 2016, we risk xAPI’s long term future. We predict a massive catalyst for international adoption to emerge by the end of 2016 in the way of procurement requirements for governments around xAPI, because having data that everyone can understand and can make use of is in the interest of public good institutions. When governments are a year away from requiring xAPI support and certified products are all that will be purchased, it makes right now the very moment where xAPI goes big. It is exciting, frightening and uncertain – and it’s fun, and this is what it’s like for us to be so fully invested when the stakes are this high. The fact that the stakes for xAPI are this high should be the reassurance everyone needs that xAPI really is a big deal and it’s worth our sweat to invest in its growth right now.

Grateful for a Future We Can Forge Together

Seattle Gathering

Because xAPI is open source, and because xAPI will have an organization that is focused expressly on its maturity, it’s going to get the chance to grow in a way that no learning technology has ever had the chance to do. Megan and I are proud to have an incredible team on DISC’s Board of Directors from around the world who represent years of extraordinary work in leading professional organizations, the science of learning analytics, the development of industry organizations, professional practice and xAPI itself. Very soon, we’ll announce our founding Board of Directors and post our by-laws, our 2016 goals and objectives and we’ll open membership. xAPI will forever be Apache 2.0 and we intend to ensure that it remain open source and cared for by an open community as long as it remains relevant. The organization we’re creating will finally structure how decisions about it are made, balancing the needs of those most invested in xAPI requirements with the needs of those most impacted by xAPI applications. Without the burdens and caveats that come with moving this activity into large spec and standards groups, as a community and an industry with many verticals, we can design our own future with xAPI.

Grateful for Your Help In What Comes Next

There’s been only a few sketchy roadmaps for what Megan and I have been doing together as MakingBetter. There are even fewer notes on what we’re about to do with DISC in forming an industry organization to support a major open source project with the cooperation of its stewards in the US DoD. But, this isn’t the first time Megan and I have had to work with a community to create something that didn’t previously exist. We’ve done it with Up to All of Us. We did it with growing xAPI into a fully realized community of designers, developers, content and data wranglers. We did it with figuring out how to fit open source for US government. And now we’re going to figure out, with the full interest by and for the community, how we grow the industry and professional practice around xAPI. It will require paying members and continued open community participation. It will require a level of dedication, enthusiasm and grit that hasn’t been demanded yet. Given all that, I’ve never been more confident in our abilities, all of us together, to figure this out. We’ve been able to plan and go off-plan and get this far. It stands to reason we’re going to go a lot farther together.

Megan and I are staking our business on xAPI. We’re staking our families on xAPI. We’re committing our lives over the next couple of years to the community and industry around xAPI and we are grateful to do so.

We wish you all the best for this holiday season and for the new year to come. We’ve loved hanging with you. We’ve loved working with you. We’ve learned so much in doing so and we can’t wait for the next level shit about to happen!

More soon!

September Recap: xAPI Quarterly, DevLearn, Consortium

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September was one hell of a month. We…

1. Introduced the xAPI Quarterly

This is a journal we will be publishing four times a year. We will publish the newest information around xAPI. This will be the space for you to find out what’s happening and what’s changing. We will ask many of our xAPI Camp presenters to extend their messages into articles, helping xAPI Camp discussions live outside of the rooms where the event happens. Writers will come from everywhere, please reach out if you have an article in your head that needs to get out 🙂

This inaugural issue includes articles on xAPI security, instructional design forays into xAPI, best practices for major authoring tools (Storyline, Captivate, and Lectora), information on an xAPI Consortium in the works (see #3!) and much more.

Take a look at the table of contents here

2. Ran xAPI Camp – DevLearn

Happy xAPI Campers
Happy xAPI Campers

Whoa. Keanu whoa. This event blew us away. Another sold out house. Another amazing group of speakers. Another engaged and motivated audience. Another group of generous sponsors. We really can’t ask for more than this. The xAPI community never ceases to amaze and this was proof beyond doubt that you are THE BEST PEOPLE anyone could ask to work with.

All of the slides collected from the event are in the xAPI Camp Archives

3. Started a non-profit!

Wah? Yeah, we’re right there with you. This is big and we’re just getting started. There is now a non-profit corporation in the state of Pennsylvania called the Data Interoperability Standards Consortium, this is the way forward for the work we need to do as a community and industry.

This is explained in more detail right here.

And to October we say, ‘bring it on.’

xAPI Camp – DevLearn 2015 is ONE DAY AWAY

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We aren’t freaking out — we are FREAKING EXCITED!!! The first xAPI Camp at DevLearn, the first of four events we’re putting on hosted by The eLearning Guild, is nigh upon us. The Guild helped us launch xAPI at mLearnCon back in 2012 and they have been a steadfast supporter of xAPI. Last year was the first year there was an official xAPI Track at DevLearn and, together, we are upping that ante again (…in Vegas).

The eLearning Guild is a terrific host and partner in making xAPI Camp available to attendees as a pre-conference event. We have had so much incredible support from the community, I’d like to take a moment to let you know who’s really helping make xAPI Camp possible.

Partnering Organizations

The eLearning GuildRiptide ElementsMakingBetterAdvanced Distributed LearningLACE

With the Guild, we at MakingBetter have three other partners we’re super happy to work with.

  • Riptide Software has been a big supporter of every xAPI Camp with really compelling cases studies and incredible enthusiasm over the mission of getting people into the conversations they need to have around xAPI. They don’t have a booth at DevLearn, but Nick Washburn, the Director of Riptide’s Learning Division, will be with us on Tuesday and you should definitely give him a high-five.
  • Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) continues to be a huge supporter of the community as the current stewards of the spec itself. We are so happy that Andy Johnson and Craig Wiggins will be with us on Tuesday and throughout the week at DevLearn. We may even be doing karaoke Tuesday night, after xAPI Camp, because that is how we roll.
  • Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) is a European Union (as in EU-funded) project involving nine partners across Europe. They are passionate about the opportunities afforded by current and future views of learning analytics and educational data mining. We could not be more ecstatic about their partnership. Fabrizio Cardinali will be there Tuesday and all week.

Our Sponsors

BrightwaveCognitive AdvisorsHT2OnPoint DigitalRISCRustici SoftwareSkillawareTorrance LearningTrivantisTES

Organizing events like xAPI Camp take an incredible amount of work, especially in the context of a major industry event like DevLearn. We are so thankful our sponsors make it possible to produce an event that is high quality and super valuable for its participants. Everyone involved agrees to put the bigger goals for xAPI above pitching products and services, which is a big reason why they’re growing. Not just anyone gets to sponsor — we accept sponsorship from vendors and organizations that are really the best-of-breed when it comes to xAPI. And for DevLearn, we have a great list:

  • Brightwave is out of the UK. In August, CTO Jonathan Archibald and I had a great chat about xAPI. While they don’t have a booth, their Project Account Manager, Colin Welch, will be out and about at DevLearn all week.
  • Cognitive Advisors is among the first wave of adopters of xAPI. My wise friend Marty Rosenheck will be joining us on Tuesday. He and Colleen Enghauser will be at their booth in the Expo Hall all week, #238.
  • HT2 is out of the UK. Always pushing us to be more creative and innovative, CEO Dr. Ben Betts and James Mullaney will be around on Tuesday and all week. They have a booth at DevLearn’s Expo Hall, Booth 414.
  • OnPoint Digital has people around the world, in beautiful Savannah, Georgia and Middle Earth… I mean, New Zealand. They have a long history pioneering work in mobile learning and are among the first to adopt xAPI. Mike Palmer and Robert Gadd are likely to be around Tuesday and all throughout the week. OnPoint has a booth at the Expo Hall, Booth 113.
  • RISC Inc., really gets high stake compliance and advance xAPI and, notably, CMI5. Art Werkenthin will definitely be with us on Tuesday, and you can find him, Duncan Welder and Jon Campbell all week at Booth 412.
  • Rustici Software almost needs no introduction as they prototyped and developed innovative work that eventually became xAPI. Continuing to support the community, you’ll find TJ Seabrooks with us on Tuesday.
  • Skillaware leverages a few interesting specs and standards, like BPML, DITA and xAPI, in compelling ways. Based out of Italy, you’ll find Fabrizio Cardinali of LACE with us on Tuesday and at the Skillaware booth, #214.
  • TorranceLearning won the Hyperdrive at last year’s DevLearn event with an impressive case study, merging xAPI with RFID at a Hands-on Museum. You’ll find Megan Torrance at her own workshop on Tuesday, sneaking in to speak with us. She’ll also be at her booth all wee, #416.
  • Trivantis, providers of Lectora, are the first Authoring Tool vendor to support xAPI Camps and we are very happy to have them join us. CTO John Blackmon will be with us on Tuesday and at their booth all week in the Expo Hall, #239.
  • Training Evidence Systems (TES) is out of Australia and has interesting work around mobile and performance coaching with xAPI. They can’t make it to DevLearn this year, but you should definitely reach out to Nick Stephenson on Twitter.

What’s Coming at xAPI Camp?

You can check out the agenda and the speakers here. We have a few surprises we’re going to share tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure some of the participants have some surprises to announce, too. Stay tuned — follow along with the hashtag #xAPIcamp.

xAPI Camp CSTD: Toronto is the new Brooklyn

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There’s a band called JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound who are determined that Baltimore is the new Brooklyn, but we’re nominating Toronto. We’re taking xAPI Camp to Toronto on November 17th, 2015 and we are excited about it, to boot. This camp will be co-located with the Canadian Society of Training and Development’s annual conference. The CSTD 2015 Conference & Trade Show runs 11/18-11/20.

This is the first camp outside of the US and the Canadian following of xAPI is strong. There are many companies using xAPI and building tools with xAPI in Toronto, but also through the rest of Canada. We’re also excited to welcome Myra Travin back as a speaker, she will be taking the Learning Ecology Framework a step further going into the Personalization Data realm.  

As Aaron comes up Strange Brew references and I try to stop Aaron from asking every single person in Canada to bring him Ringolos, we want you to get involved.

Attend

The registration page is here. You get a good discount on the camp if you’re attending the CSTD conference (we’ll be speaking at the main conference, too). At the Camp you will spend part of the day listening to short presentations and part of the day working in breakout groups. Bring your problems, bring your challenges — don’t feel like you don’t know enough to participate. There will be plenty of time and people to help you along your own path.

Speak

We’re accepting speaking proposals through 10/5. Submit your proposal here. We’re looking to continually stay on the edge of what’s happening with xAPI at each event. These will again be short, to the point, no filler presentations (about 10 minutes.) We’re looking for new case studies with tangible outcomes, big ideas, and big challenges.

Not to worry if you can’t do Toronto, we’re also accepting proposals for San Francisco in February, Orlando in March, and Austin in June.

Sponsor

Get in touch! We love making our sponsors part of this experience. A lot of what’s happening with xAPI is because of the work our sponsors do. We’re looking forward to celebrating this rapidly changing world together.

 

The 3rd Gear

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Cruising down a highway through Montana in a '15 Ford MustangAs xAPI shifts into 3rd gear, with an early majority comes a need for a consortium that will steward xAPI into perpetuity — a table for other industries to sit and work out the ways xAPI will meet their particular needs. I’m talking about HR systems, medical devices, folks who make beacons and sensors, manufacturing, energy companies, engineers, school administrators. There are other groups who we aren’t talking with already and they’ll make their needs known. We’ll have certification tests. This will make it easy for folks buying software or hardware to see a stamp of approval — a neutral third party guarantees a product is 100% Grade A xAPI. With it, the industry that makes xAPI software and hardware will have to grow up. With it, new job titles, new practices, new competencies and new goals will be born out of those titles, practices, competencies and goals we already have, from wherever we are are.

Megan and I had a great, long, long-overdue and well-earned vacation road-tripping through mountains before and after xAPI Camp – Amazon. Reflecting now it couldn’t be a more apt way for us to vacation and get ready for what’s coming. xAPI is gaining highway speed. It’s gonna be surprising and exciting. We’re going to work harder than ever to keep apace with adoption, solidifying what we have and making it flexible for even more adoption. With every climb, we’re going to see something way more epic than before.

In Arapahoe, view from a windshield about to turn into a curveSo I say, “Welcome,” to the coming early majority. Welcome to xAPI.

Thank you to everyone who makes xAPI Camp happen. Our hosts. Our supporters and sponsors and partners. Our speakers! Brian Dusablon, who’s one of the best Experience Ninja around, working invisibly behind the scenes to make each event amazing for our participants. And to our participants: you are creating an active and vivrant community that is going to transform multiple industries. Through your activity and participation, you’re building something huge that’s purely driven by a shared goal: to improve ourselves, the places we work and the world we live in.

Let’s go, team. We all got work to do. We now have more horsepower and we’re gaining speed. Let’s keep our eyes on the road ahead and not just the mile marker we hit.

Put the pedal to the metal — and hang on. 🙂

xAPI Camp – DevLearn: Call for Proposals Ends 8/10

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The next xAPI Camp is taking place at DevLearn on September 29, 2015. We have a number of proposals already, but we want to see more.

We are looking for brand new stories of you or your company using xAPI. We’re looking for new lessons learned. We’re looking for big ideas and big challenges that will blow minds and spark a multitude of conversations — not just during xAPI Camp but all week long at DevLearn. We want stories to inspire, to caution, to support and to challenge us all to be doing better.

Our presentations run from 7-12 minutes long. We will be strict about that in delivery, but incredibly supportive to help you shine.

There’s no guarantee of selection if you submit something and sponsorship is not considered for selection — we welcome vendors, consultants and stakeholders to present as well as practitioners, designers, engineers, managers and leaders. You can propose multiple topics.

We’ll give honest feedback on how to improve your proposals, whether we accept them or not. We’re looking to curate the best possible experience for all participants, including our presenters. In every way we want you to be part of it and we want to make being part of it — even the proposal process — worthwhile. You’re taking the time to share your very best. We’re curating ideas and expertise for a specific experience design. You’re taking this seriously. So are we.

Presenting at an xAPI Camp puts you in the vanguard of the vanguard of where learning, design and technology meet. There’s no pitching. We’re not advertising our services. We’re creating the space and the reason to have serious, relevant conversations that need to happen with trusted expertise so people can get answers and take action on their next steps to work with xAPI.

Are you up for it? Because we need you — especially if you don’t think you’re up for it.

But… if you want to be considered for DevLearn, we need those proposals submitted by Friday, August 10. All speakers and sponsors will be announced on or before August 15, 2015.