Title: Interoperability for LMS: the missing piece to become the common place for e-learning innovation

Authors: Marc Forment Alier, Maria Jose Casan Guerrero, Miguel Angel Conde Gonzalez, Francisco Jose Garcia Penalvo, Charles Severance

Addresses: Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, c/Jordi Girona Salgado 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, c/Jordi Girona Salgado 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Universidad de Salamanca, Plaza de los caidos S/N. 37008, Salamanca, Spain. ' Universidad de Salamanca, Plaza de los caidos S/N. 37008, Salamanca, Spain. ' School of Information, University of Michigan, 1085 South University Ave., 417B West Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107, USA

Abstract: This paper speculates about the future of LMSs considering the upcoming new learning applications and technologies, and the different attitudes of learners and teachers, given their technological background described using the digital natives and immigrant|s metaphor. Interoperability is not just a nice feature to have, but a must have feature for LMS if these systems are going to be the common place where the ICT empowered learning innovation happens. After analysing some standards and initiatives related to interoperability on LMS, the authors present an overview of the architecture for interoperability they propose. This architecture is being implemented for the well known open source LMS Moodle.

Keywords: e-learning; Web 2.0; mobile learning; interoperability; learning management systems; LMS; electronic learning; online learning; m-learning; learning innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2010.034749

International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 2010 Vol.6 No.2/3, pp.130 - 141

Published online: 21 Aug 2010 *

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