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DISC

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

August 3, 2016 By Aaron

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.

 

Filed Under: DISC, Open Source, Standards

With Gratitude…

December 22, 2015 By Aaron

With Gratitude

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!

Filed Under: DISC, Experience API, Standards, Uncategorized

September Recap: xAPI Quarterly, DevLearn, Consortium

October 1, 2015 By Megan

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.’

Filed Under: Community, DISC, Experience API, This Month, xAPI Camp

The 3rd Gear

August 5, 2015 By Aaron

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. 🙂

Filed Under: DISC, Standards, Uncategorized Tagged With: adoption, consortium, xAPI

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