More Scenarios

Integrated search, licensing and fulfilment
Ivan's team needs to find existing resources on food processing, get copies and take out licenses to adapt and use them to develop new content for a big training contract they have just been awarded.
Transfer of learning content
Eric needs to move a whole lot of online courses to a new learning management system in a hurry.
Personalised news from multiple sources
Kate is a busy head of department – she needs a more efficient way of finding out what happening in her industry area.
Using web services to build a website for a specific client group
Bill wants to set up a website for his national network of building and construction teachers on a limited budget.
Streamlining information management
Mary needs to manage the training materials her company owns and promote them to various audiences without having to manually transfer data into different formats.
Simplified access from multiple locations
Tran is a motor mechanic who needs to get access to several different online courses and web resources without the hassle of lots of passwords and user names.

Integrated search, licensing and fulfilment

Ivan is the project leader for a consortium developing materials to support the new Certificate III in Food Processing. Ivan needs to find all the existing materials that his team might be able to use or adapt to deliver the training online to employees in a nationally franchised chain of bakeries.

Ivan goes to the new network of resource repositories and searches for relevant resources. Ivan prints out summaries that include descriptions of the resources and their pricing and licensing conditions.

After a team review meeting, Ivan goes back to the website and selects the material the team has decided to review in more detail. Some of the materials can be downloaded once licences are completed, others are available for single copy sales. Ivan agrees to the familiar AEShareNet licensing conditions where necessary, authorises a single credit card transaction, and downloads a single Zip file that contains all the resources.

To make this a reality needs:

An agreed distributed search protocol that queries a number of different suppliers in real time to respond to Ivan's searches.
Agreed metadata that includes both descriptions of resources and standardised summaries of purchase and licensing conditions.
Business arrangements in place which allow a single credit card payment to be collected by a payment consolidation service and distributed among the various organisations Ivan is contracting with to get the materials.
A web service which can purchase the materials available electronically, transfer them to a single site and consolidate them into a single Zip file for Ivan to download.

What's already happening?

The VET Learning Objects Repository provides a distributed search for resources across a national network of resource suppliers.
Vetadata, the VET metadata application profile, facilitates standardised cataloguing of materials.
The AEShareNet Instant licences have no licensing costs and make the licensing conditions transparent.
AEShareNet provides a full online e-business platform that can manage purchase orders, single payment for all services, and full invoicing, and is investigating a seamless link to purchase and supply.
The AEShareNet E-licence allows for multiple itemised purchases involving any variety of media.

Transfer of learning content

Eric works in the IT support unit at Western Plains TAFE. Western Plains has just been amalgamated into Western Plains University and the university has said that next year the university's learning management system will be used for all online delivery. Eric has been given the job of moving all the existing online courses to the new learning management system. Fortunately both the TAFE and Uni learning management systems import and export SCORM compliant content. Eric is able to export each course as a single file and import it into the University system. A few years ago when the TAFE had to transfer content from an earlier learning management system, teaching staff had to cut and paste the text from each screen into the new system.

To make this a reality needs:

Learning management systems need to support the SCORM standard, and in particular the IMS Content Packaging specification for both import and export of whole courses or units.

What's already happening?

The series 7, 8 and 9 Toolboxes are providing SCORM compliant content and several Toolboxes previously developed are being repackaged into this form.
Learning objects in the repositories forming the VET Learning Object Repository Network use IMS Content Packaging.

Personalised news from multiple sources

Kate is the head of department for Hospitality and Personal Services at SouthMetro TAFE Institute. She needs to keep up to date with information about news and new learning resources in areas in which her department teaches. At the moment she gets lots of email lists from various organisations and they include a lot of information of no interest to her.

Kate goes to the new release of the VET Portal and on the customisation page selects the areas she is interested in. She chooses news on policy areas from DEST, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework and the new national Skills Council. She selects the industry areas covered by her department and selects to receive news about new learning resources released in these industry areas from AEShareNet, ATP, and the Skills Council as well as new EdNA Online items in these industry areas.

As a result she receives a single email every week with summaries and links to news and resources from all the selected organisations. (She could also have chosen to receive the same information as a personalised webpage with an email summary reminder, or as an RSS feed to display this information in her news reader.) As a result she saves time by not scanning information of no interest to her, and gets all the leads to follow up in a single email.

To make this a reality needs:

Agreement among the key information providers on a common set of categories for general news (eg policy, research, job vacancies) and a common set of headings for industry areas.
Each organisation providing information has to add metadata tags to its news and new resource items to the agreed heading structure (either manually allocated at the time the item is created, or in the case of learning resource perhaps generated automatically from NTIS codes).
Each information provider has to provide its items in a standard machine readable format (probably RSS).
A service needs to be established which combines the various news feeds and allows individuals to create an account and create a customisation profile. The service then needs to match the news items with each user's preference and create a customised email, webpage or RSS feed according to the user's preferences.

What's already happening?

EdNA Online and NCVER provide RSS news feeds.
A number of VET organisations have agreed to standardise the industry sector headings used by MyFuture. This vocabulary has been incorporated into Vetadata, the VET metadata application profile.
EdNA Online harvests the AEShareNet catalogue.
The AEShareNet database allows learning materials to be catalogued by NTIS codes.

Using web services to build a website for a specific client group

Bill is the part-time coordinator of a national network of teachers and trainers in the building and construction industry. He would like to set up a website to provide services to the members of the network but does not have any technical expertise and has a limited budget. Using a variety of web services provided by different organisations he is able to get a consultant to assemble a website which combines:

Information on new training resources in the building area released by ATP, AEShareNet and the new national Skills Council.
A search for training materials function which access the EdNA Online database but restricts the search to VET sector materials.
Discussion forums provided by EdNA Online.
News and events information for members of the network which Bill enters himself on a form on a password protected page on the website.

To make this a reality needs:

Agreement among the key information providers on a common set of headings for industry areas (so that they all have a category for "building and construction" with the same subheadings).
Each organisation providing information on its new learning resources has to add metadata tags allocating resources to the agreed heading structure.

What's already happening?

EdNA Online already provides both its search and browse functions in a way which can be used by other websites.
EdNA Online harvests the AEShareNet database.

Streamlining information management

Mary is Manager of Content for eCustomTrain, a small Australian commercial publisher which manages a portfolio of text books and short online courses in information technology and customer service subjects. Traditionally they have sold their print training materials as class sets and delivered the online courses through their own learning management system but now want to offer this material for licence to other training providers and to access international markets more easily. Mary also has to implement a new cataloguing and content management system and wants to ensure that information about the textbooks and courses they have developed only has to be entered and maintained in a single location.

Using several published standards and guidelines Mary is able to write a tender document to commission a new content management system which:

Places metadata in the pages of the online catalogue which advertises their textbooks and courses.
Maintains a constantly updated list of current NTIS codes so that her cataloguer can easily tag their textbooks as relevant to particular Training Packages and units of competency.
Automatically uploads to the AEShareNet website any changes to catalogue entries for material they are offering for licence through AEShareNet.
Produces an RDF file describing their materials which is harvested by EdNA Online and is also sent to an international publishing house with whom they have a partnership agreement.

To make this a reality needs:

NTIS codes to be available online as a web service.
AEShareNet to publish documentation of an API for uploading material registrations.

What's already happening?

The VET Learning Object Repository Network has developed implementation guidelines for organisations setting up repositories.
The TAFEVC flexible learning materials (ex Tafe Frontiers) catalogue is maintained in the ATP database which both uploads to the TAFEVC website and produces data to populate the catalogue on the ATP website. It also feeds the AEShareNet Local System software to upload to the AEShareNet website.

Simplified access from multiple locations

Tran is a motor mechanic currently enrolled in Certificate II in Automotive (Electrical - Accessory Fitting) at Black Stump TAFE. He is completing some units online. Sometimes he accesses the online units at TAFE, sometimes at home, and occasionally from the office at work when it is quiet. Tran installs GPS tracking units in fleet vehicles for a large mining company working in the area and this is not well covered in the course delivered by Black Stump. Tran heard that a specialist unit in this was offered online by a small private RTO in another state and has enrolled in just that unit. As part of this he has been given password access to the manufacturers intranet in Singapore.

Tran used to have different logins and passwords for the two providers and the intranet but kept having to login as he timed out switching between different sites. Now he can use a single login which covers all three and can access his online courses wherever he is accessing the Internet from.

To make this a reality needs:

Agreement on a standard for single sign-on across multiple services in the VET sector nationally (and preferably across all of education and training).
Establishment of a web service which would allow user authentication profiles to be created which are able to be accessed by the various learning management systems to authenticate Tran's access rights.

What's already happening?

The COLIS project has created a test-bed which implements single sign-on across multiple services.