In order to capture current educational practices in eLearning courses, more advanced `learning design' capabilities are needed than are provided by the open eLearning specifications hitherto available. Specifically, these fall short in terms of multi-role workflows, collaborative peer-interaction, personalization and support for learning services. We present a new specification that both extends and integrates current specifications to support the portable representation of units of learning (e.g. lessons, learning events) that have advanced learning designs. This is the Learning Design specification. It enables the creation of a complete, abstract and portable description of the pedagogical approach taken in a course, which can then be realized by a conforming system. It can model multi-role teaching-learning processes and supports personalization of learning routes. The underlying generic pedagogical modelling language has been translated into a specification (a standard developed and agreed upon by domain and industry experts) that was developed in the context of IMS, one of the major bodies involved in the development of interoperability specifications in the field of eLearning. The IMS Learning Design specification is discussed in this article in the context of its current status, its limitations and its future development.

The provision of lifelong learning facilities is considered to be a major new direction for higher and distance teaching educational institutes catering for the demands of industry and society. ICT networks will in future support seamless, ubiquitous access to lifelong learning facilities at home, at work, in schools and universities. This implies the development of new ways of organizing learning delivery that goes beyond course and programme-centric models. It envisions a learner-centred, learner-controlled model of distributed lifelong learning. We present a conceptual model for the support of lifelong learning which is based on notions from self-organization theory, learning communities, agent technologies and learning technology specifications such as IMS Learning Design. An exploratory implementation has been developed and used in practice. We reflect on the findings and future directions. Lifelong Learning Networks Both higher and distance education are currently exploring the new possibilities offered by eLearning. Today we find new, collaborative initiatives such as virtual universities, consortia and digital universities, which aspire to share learning resources, increase the quantity and quality of educational services, and explore

Crucial in any learning process are the activities that learners undertake: reading, thinking, discussing, exploring, problem solving, etc. When learners are passive you cannot expect them to learn much. The primary role of any instructional agent, whether it is a teacher, the learners themselves or a

The IMS Learning Design specification (LD) was introduced as an answer to the shortcomings of existing learning technology specifications. The main difference with existing specifications is that LD is an abstract, conceptual model that is able to express various pedagogical approaches whereby content can be adapted to personal needs and assessments can be integrated. In this article we evaluate the pedagogical expressiveness of LD by taking a set of 16 lesson plans and expressing them in LD. We use three different methods to identify difficulties in expressing the lesson plans in LD. Difficulties identified included circulating a document within a group, giving instructions prior to the start of an activity, random assignment of a group member to a role, group formation at runtime, creation of an inventory to map preknowledge, learning objectives and learning achievements, and a way to communicate information on how to deliver a lesson to a teacher. We did not find situations that were impossible to express with LD. The difficulties found are elaborated and suggestions to handle them are given. The methods used are compared and suggestions are given for further research.

In assessment the tendency is no longer focused on massive standardized testing with multiple choice questions based on knowledge acquisition. In the new learning approach assessment is integrated in learning and instruction and addresses the complex traits (the abilities, the characteristics in a specific domain) of students. To fit this new approach, new types of assessment are developed, like peer assessment or competence assessment. The development of these new assessments is an expensive and intensive activity. Exchange initiatives enable the re-use of materials that are developed by others. But several questions arise: Must assessments be completely re-used, and if not, what parts of an assessment can be re-used, and is re-use limited to particular item formats? In this article we present a conceptual model (an ´educational model') for assessment, cast in a UML class model, that offers to support both new and traditional assessment types. The model is validated against the theory of Stiggins (1992) according to the development of performance assessments, the four processes framework of Almond, Steinberg and Mislevy (2001, 2003) and the QTI specification. The educational model for assessment gives new input to the alignment of the teaching, learning and assessment.