These advances have made possible the emergence and expansion of successful federations and alliances of learning object repositories such as the Learning Resource Exchange, ARIADNE, GLOBE, and more recently the Learning Registry. The evolution and adoption of standards such as the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM), the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and the Simple Query Interface (SQI) provided the building blocks for these successes. More recent developments in this field include the definition of a Simple Publishing Interface (SPI) and the ongoing work within the IMS Global Learning Consortium on the Learning Object Discovery Exchange (LODE) specification to facilitate the discovery and retrieval of learning objects stored across more than one collection. The development of best practices (for example by projects like ASPECT and ICOPER), enabling more efficient use of these standards and specifications, has also proven instrumental for current learning content retrieval infrastructures.

However, newly emerging practices emphasizing community driven learning necessitate that researchers and practitioners approach the concept of “learning resource” as a more expansive category that includes people, events and tools. Seen from this perspective, it is imperative to extend currently available tools, specifications and techniques to support the integration and interoperability of three components. The first of these components will remain content in learning object repositories. The second component can be people themselves who often play more than one role in learning and teaching (teachers, co-learners, coaches, tutors, subject experts, museum curators, community groups, etc.) and events relevant for teaching and learning. Tools and services are the third component. These may include authoring tools; synchronous and asynchronous communication and collaboration tools; learning planning and management tools; interactive learning and teaching devices including whiteboards, response systems and scientific input devices such as data loggers; resource discovery and information management services etc.

To further developments in this field, the main goal of this international workshop is to offer a forum where researchers and practitioners can discuss theoretical aspects, open issues, and innovative approaches and share the latest advances in the state of the art and practices for exchanging and describing learning content, roles, actors, tools and services. This year's workshop will include presentations of both long and short refereed papers as well as panel discussions and a keynote presentation.

Learn more on the SE@M website (http://seam.eun.org/)