Connectivity
Connectivity refers to the infrastructure and supporting services and standards that underpins effective and successful e-Learning. The Ministry of Education is involved in a strategic context in both national and international connectivity developments.
At a national level the major strategic driver for connectivity derives from the 2006 ICT Strategic Framework for Education. Examples of projects relating to New Zealand’s tertiary sector are the recently announced extension to the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) trial with selected schools and increasing use of KAREN to support services such as high definition video conferencing. The Ministry also commissioned a report to inform the future development of e-Learning standards in New Zealand. If you would like a copy of the report, please email tertiary.elearning@minedu.govt.nz.
At an international level the Ministry of Education has been closely involved in standards development through the IMS (Innovation Adoption Learning) Global Consortium. They are also participants (along with the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, Canada and the Netherlands) in the e-Framework.
The purpose of the e-Framework is to map the services, standards and specifications that are generic across the tertiary sector. These are the basis for building effective, efficient and interoperable technical systems to support learning, administration and research in tertiary educational organisations. The Ministry is also a participant in the Learning Federation which (under licence) provides free access to a range of digital content.
Many of the Ministry's international partners have developed a range of relevant and appropriate standards that can be used by tertiary education organisations as well as advice on how to set up robust and appropriate ICT infrastructures. These include the Australian Interoperability Standards and Flexible Learning Framework.
From the UK there are a range of standards available from the UK's Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards as well as the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC). More specific standards developed by JISC relate to information architecture and an associated glossary. They also provide information on managed online learning environments.