These standards, in the first place, should guarantee technical interoperability of data and services. It is important to note that these standards exclude educational standards, which are also needed, but should not to be confused with one another. The EPICC-project has contributed to the creation of IMS ePortfolio specifications.

The slow process of creating specifications

To enable technical interoperability, certain common denominators are needed. These are conceptual pieces such as data exchange format, for example, which explains what kind of elements are needed to import and export data from one application to another.

In terms of IMS ePortfolios specification, a data model for exchanging data has been conceived. Creating such specifications is time-consuming, as it is based on one hand on needs and requirements from the users in the field, and on the other hand on consensus making among all the stakeholders.

For the specification, the use cases came from the US, the UK and Australia. The practitioners and developers who contributed to the specification were Blackboard, IBM, Texas Instruments, Thompson Learning, Penn State University, University of California at Berkeley, EDUCAUSE, UK Center for Recording Achievement, UK CETIS, the EPICC-project, and there was a link with BSI UK-LEAP.

In the case of IMS specification, it was first formed in May 2003 and the Final specification was released in May 2005.

The IMS ePortfolio Specification includes the following parts:

• IMS ePortfolio Best Practice Guide (vocabs, suggestions)
  
• IMS ePortfolio Binding (how)
  
• IMS Information Model (what)
  
• IMS Rubric Specification

The following specifications are supported:

• IMS ACCLIP (Accessibility for LIP)
• IMS RCDEO Reusable Definition of Competencies and Educational Objectives
• IMS Content Packaging
• IMS Enterprise Data Model
• IMS LIP

Involving the user communities in specification building

The EPICC-project, apart from Andy Heath co-chairing the IMS workgroup with Darren Cambridge, organised two workshops with user communities. The idea of the first workshop was that it would result in a list of educational requirements that were to be translated to technical standards in order to promote the interoperability of ePortfolio software. The second one was called the eP Plugfest, where the real time interoperability was tested. This also contributed to the validation and evaluation of the current specification.

The first workshop was organised in Maastricht Medical School in May 2005. The goal of the workshop was two-fold: firstly to present to the participants the status of interoperability standards in the field of ePortfolios, and secondly to see to what extent these standards respond to the interoperability needs of the electronic portfolio systems of the invited participants drawn from the Higher Education field. Examples based on the current practice in the Medical community in the Netherlands were presented and discussed. You can find the workshop presentations here.

The eP Plugfest was organised in October 2005 in Cambridge. The event attracted about hundred delegates to test their e-portfolio applications and to follow the demonstrations of importing and exporting files from one e-portfolio system to another. Testing interoperability before end-users get their hands in applications is key to the success of e-learning interoperability.

You can find a full report of the ePlugfest
in Monthly insight ePortfolio plugfest: Real time testing of interoperability

More about the EPICC-project (end 12/05)
http://www.epiccproject.info

More about IMS specification at:
http://www.imsglobal.org/ep/index.cfm

Adoption Support:
http://support.imsglobal.org/eportfolio/

Open Source Portfolio Initiative:
http://www.theospi.org/