Page 77 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

ICTs for a Sustainable World

2.2. Standards for technology-enhanced learning

As mentioned in the beginning of this section, NEWTON
platform aims to integrate and interconnect other existing
teaching platforms. For that reason, one of the targets of the
project is to be developed complying the most recent and
applicable standards.
From the point of view of TEL, there is a website from the
ITU (International Telecommunication Union) [19] and a
report on it (see figure 2) [4] which covers in its section 5 a
review of specific standardization activities for TEL. In this Figure 3. Items addressed for TEL standards [4]
report it is stated that “Learning technology standards do
not include instructional design, pedagogical norms, In the context of more specific technical standards related
cultural conventions, learning objectives or specific to mulsemedia and other next generation TEL strategies,
learning content”. However, it does consider the issues that there are some important standardization initiatives. One
are referred in Figure 3. example is the media context and control MPEG-V
In this report, it is also highlighted the importance of the standard (ISO/IEC 23005) [26, 27] , capable of supporting
Recommendation ITU-T F.742 [20] which describes mulsemedia applications, providing an architecture and
application scenarios of distance learning and deduces specifications to enable the interoperability between virtual
general requirements to be met by distance learning worlds (digital content providers of a virtual world,
services, and other important initiatives and groups gaming, simulation, etc.) with the real world (sensors,
working on the standardization of LTE. Some examples are actuators, vision and rendering, robotics, etc.). The
the “ITU’s Focus Group on Innovation is maintaining a multimedia content description MPEG-7 standard (ISO/IEC
living list of emerging ICT products and services” [21], the 15938) [28] is also to be mentioned in this context.
“ISO/IEC JTC1 Subcommittee 36: Information technology
for learning, education and training”[22] or the “The IEEE 2.3. Standardization for QoE evaluation in TEL
Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)”[23].
It is important also to mention, when talking about next Although some promising research related to the evaluation
generation technologies, the “IMS Global Learning of the learner experience when using digital learning has
Consortium (IMS GLC)” [24] a community of educational been done [2, 16, 29], no standardization attempts for
institutions, government organizations and equipment defining frameworks and procedures, as to have different
vendors which aims is to bring advances in technology in comparable results, have been published so far. Likewise,
order to improve educational participation. It is also remarkable efforts can be identified in the research
remarkable the work that is being done in LTSC related to literature that relates to the evaluation of the QoE when
“Augmented Reality Learning Experience Model”. This using mulsemedia (figure 4) and other next generation TEL
new LTSC working group is developing a standard model strategies [6, 7, 17, 30-32], but still neither general nor
for defining AR-based learning activities. Also of interest specific standards have been developed in this area.
in this context, is the “ISO/IEC 19796-1: Learning, However, the interest for the standardization that relates to
education and training- Quality management, assurance QoE in general us er applications is well evidenced
and metrics”[25] defined by the ISO/IEC JTC1 by the increasing number of dedicated standards [33-42],
Subcommittee 36. whereas the need for specific standardization for QoE
evaluation in TEL is underlined in [43]: “The absence of a
standard, comprehensive approach to evaluating
technology-enhanced learning (TEL) limits the utility of
individual evaluations, and impedes the integration and
synthesis of results across studies.”
Therefore, future work and novel proposals are needed to
standardize a framework and procedures for next
generation TEL strategies to better understand how new
generation learners would react to such experiences.
Furthermore, it would be of high value if such efforts had
also spread out to define and progress standards for unified
architectures of mulsemedia, gamification, augmented
reality and other next generation strategies for
interoperability between real and virtual worlds. For a plus
of value, these proposals could be accompanied with the
definition of QoE metrics (KQI and KPI) for the evaluation
of the quality of service (QoS) in these new emerging
Figure 2. Standards for technology-enabled learning [4] scenarios.

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