1EdTech Glossary

A generic term to describe digital spaces designed to help learners display their credentials and achievements. According to Jobs for the Future, a LER is “a comprehensive digital record of a worker’s skills and competencies. LERs can document learning wherever it occurs, and they may include records of people’s credentials, degrees, and employment histories.”

The 1EdTech Learning Design standard supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies in online learning. Rather than attempting to capture the specifics of many pedagogies, it does this by providing a generic and flexible language. This language is designed to enable many different pedagogies to be expressed. The approach has the advantage over alternatives in that only one set of learning design and runtime tools then need to be implemented in order to support the desired wide range of pedagogies. The language was originally developed at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL), after extensive examination and comparison of a wide range of pedagogical approaches and associated learning activities, and several iterations of the developing language to obtain a good balance between generality and pedagogic expressiveness. This standard was published in February 2003.

The global program (including annual conference and awards competition) which means to recognize and accelerate innovation within educational technology in ways which have an impact on learners. 

Example: The nomination period for the 2023 Learning Impact competition closed on February 28. Winners will be announced on June 7, 2023 during the Learning Impact Conference. 

Learn more about Learning Impact Awards and Reports.

The annual Learning Impact Awards are conducted to recognize outstanding, innovative applications of educational technology to address the most significant challenges facing education. Any product or service provider, educational institution, or training provider that meets the competition’s eligibility requirements can enter the competition. Entries are assessed for their impact on personalized learning, institutional performance, and the digital learning ecosystem. Award winners are announced at the annual Learning Impact Conference.

Learning Impact is 1EdTech's annual conference focused on digital innovation to improve access, affordability, and quality of education. This event held is held in June. At Learning Impact, meaningful progress to accelerate the deployment of an interoperable ecosystem is made together through a commitment to open standards.

The Learning Information Services (LIS) standard is the definition of how systems manage the exchange of information that describes people, groups, memberships, courses, and outcomes within the context of learning. It is a large set of services that include standard ways of exchanging data about people who are participating in learning; exchanging information for people attending courses; exchanging information about course structures; exchanging information about outcomes (grades) and providing processes for the transfer of large amounts of data. For more information, see Learning Information Services Background Information.

The role of a Learning Management System (LMS) varies depending on an organization’s objectives, online training strategy, and desired outcomes. However, the most common use of an LMS is to deploy and track online teaching, learning, and training activities. Typically, digital content or links to digital content are uploaded to the learning management system, which makes them easily accessible for remote learners. In many cases, the LMS, through standards-based integrations, allows the development, management, distribution, and use of online content through third-party applications and tools. The LMS is sometimes referred to as a virtual learning environment (VLE).

This 1EdTech standard aims to facilitate the discovery and retrieval of learning objects stored across multiple collections. In the context of this work, a learning object can be anything digital used for teaching, learning, or training. Learning objects can consist of simple assets (e.g. text, images, short videos) that can, in general, be rendered directly in a web browser, or more complex resources that usually consist of multiple components (e.g. text, images, simulations, videos, assessment exercises, etc.) that need to be combined in a precise way to provide end-users with a meaningful learning experience. Learning content specifications such as Content Package and Common Cartridge make it possible for such learning objects to be reused in different learning systems. This is achieved by packaging all the required components in a zip file together with a manifest describing how these components have to be rendered. As a result of this process where specifications have been applied, the content becomes more 'interoperable' and can be more easily exchanged and reused in learning platforms from different commercial vendors or in open-source learning (content) management systems that comply with the relevant content packaging specifications. The LTI Resource Search specification has superseded this work, and so the LODE standard SHOULD NOT be adopted.

This is a standard developed by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) for the description of learning objects. The LOM data model specifies which aspects of a learning object should be described and what vocabularies may be used for these descriptions; it also defines how this data model can be amended by additions or constraints. The formal description is published as IEEE 1484.12.1 with the XML-based binding published as IEEE 1484.12.3. 1EdTech Metadata specification is based upon the LOM information model but with a different, 1EdTech published, XML-based binding.

The terms LOR and CMS are sometimes interchangeably used in reference to the digital libraries.