Roughly, the basic concept of IMS Learning Design (LD) is that it allows to describe how people take up roles and then carry out activities with educational resources. Once this description is produced, it can then be fed into an application, which delivers the learning activities through the web to learners, and coordinates the activities of the learners and teachers through the duration of the course.

An EU funded project called UNFOLD is working on IMS LD. Its "aim is to promote and encourage the development and use of eLearning systems that implement a wide range of pedagogic approaches as represented by the IMS Learning Design specification".

The latest activity was an online chat on "The Learning Design Update". The discussion took place around a recent paper by Dr. Bill Olivier describing what has been achieved with regard to implementation since the IMS LD specification was delivered. The paper and the details of the discussion are available at http://www.unfold-project.net:8085/UNFOLD/about_folder/events/billjuly04/.

The UNFOLD website also provides on-line support for the three Communities of Practice which we have set up:

• Systems Developers
• Learning Designers
• Teachers and Learning Providers.

In addition to the on-line activities, the Communities of Practice will also meet face to face four times a year, and the first meeting will be conveniently located at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona on September 8-9-10 2004. Information about the meeting is available at http://www.unfold-project.net:8085/UNFOLD/about_folder/events/f2fbarcelona/


More information:

UNFOLD project website:
http://www.unfold-project.net

Last year, Monthly Insight to Interoperability condicted an interview with Dai Griffiths from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain on the relevance of IMS Learning Design to teachers.

A general introduction to IMS LD is provided by in a briefing produced by CETIS, the UK Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards, which is based at UNFOLD partner Bolton Institute.

An interesting recent development is that Blackboard has announced support for IMS Learning Design.