1. The Politics of E-Learning Standardization
Introduction
Technical standardization has been widely acknowledged as a new and growing area of
interest for social-theoretical and historical research. Processes and products associated
with the development of standards for the Internet, the World Wide Web and other
technologies have recently been subject to significant scholarly investigation and
scrutiny. As Feng observes, “scholars in various social science disciplines have shown
newfound interest in standards. …this is because standards,” Feng continues, “are no
longer seen as ‘neutral artifacts’ but as products of society” (2003).
The field of education, and particularly educational technology and distance education (or
“e-learning”), has also shown signs of a new interest in technical standards. One standard
for the classification of learning resources or “objects” (known as “metadata;” IEEE,
2002), and another for the interoperation of e-learning systems (or “architectures;” IEEE
2005) have been recently developed and widely promoted. However, unlike the social
sciences, the interest in standardization in e-learning has not been historical and
theoretical in character, but thoroughly economic and instrumental. E-learning standards
are frequently described in this context as a necessary precondition for the blossoming of
the new post-industrial, knowledge society or age: “common standards for metadata,
learning objects, and learning architecture are mandatory for [the] revolutionary…success
of the knowledge economy” (Hodgins & Connor, 2000).
Standards in e-learning contexts, unlike social science disciplines, appear to be generally
understood as “neutral artifacts.” In many cases, they are explicitly described as being
pedagogically --and otherwise-- “agnostic” or “neutral” (e.g. Wiley, 2005). It is the
intent of this paper to adopt the perspectives of socio-theoretical research in order to
explore the “non-neutrality” of standards as social artifacts --and to show that that they
are constructions that embody specific interests and agendas. In doing so, this paper will
give special emphasis to what is likely the most widely discussed and implemented e-
learning standard, the aforementioned Learning Object Metadata standard (also known as
IEEE 1484.12.1 or simply, the “LOM”). This paper will undertake this exploration by
considering a range of research on standardization, emphasizing their non-neutrality and
their eminently political nature.
Standards as Uniformity, Objectivity and Justice
There are many different ways of understanding the social and political aspects of
technical standards and standardization processes. An effective overview of a range of
such understandings provided in the literature of science and technology studies is
offered by Patrick Feng, in “Studying Standardization: A Review of the Literature.”
Feng’s overview proceeds from the initial recognition that social and political “meanings
and motivations of standardization are multiple and change over time” (2003). Among
others, Feng identifies three ways of understanding standards, their promise and peril: as
“uniformity,” “objectivity” and as “justice.” This paper will now briefly survey these
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2. three ways of understanding standardization, relating them, whenever possible, to
specific developments in e-learning standards.
The role of standards as instruments of uniformity can perhaps be most easily explained
through reference to their origin in the industrial age. Industrialization, as a shift from
local craftwork to mass production and trade, is bound up with the emergence of
standards enabling the production and distribution of uniform commodities. The
standardization of railway gauges, screw threads and scientific instruments occurring at
this time is not only an expression of the uniformity imposed by their mass production,
but is also necessary for the consolidation of regional and national trading networks
occurring simultaneously.
It is perhaps no coincidence that many have similarly argued that e-learning and
education generally would also benefit from a related transformation from a “cottage
industry” --with teachers each creating lessons and activities individually-- to a “mature
market” of goods and services. E-learning standards are often described as a significant
catalyst in this development (Mason, 2005). As in the industrial revolution, technical
standards would allow e-learning products and services to be offered as “globally
scalable solutions,” as uniform products created through a rational division of specialized
labour, made available across regional and national boundaries.
The association of technical standards with specialized labour, and its rational
(re)organization is an important consequences of their close association with uniformity.
As Slaton and Abbate explain, "the adoption of standards may simplify some aspects of
[a] system while creating a demand for more skilled labor elsewhere" (Slaton & Abbate,
2001, p. 96). Information specialists who have worked, for example, on the
implementation of the Dublin Core or the IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard will
likely have first-hand knowledge of the labor-intensive requirements and challenges that
these standards can introduce. The ability of standards to re-order labor relations is also
illustrated in the way that the standards-based technology of the Web has enabled
international reorganization or outsourcing of service jobs, and the sale of courses or
course components between various educational institutions
However, as indicated at the outset of this paper, the standardization of e-learning
technologies is generally not understood in terms of industrialization, but as being
associated above all with post-industrial transformation. It is in the context of the
postindustrial that Feng’s conception of standards as objectivity is perhaps most readily
understood. Terms such as “post-industrial” or the “knowledge” or “information age” are
commonly used to designate an economic and social order in which knowledge and
networks are paramount, and for which customization and flexibility --rather than mass
uniformity-- are most characteristic. Those advocating the use of e-learning standards
also depict a flexible and customizable combination of standardized functions and
content as the desired outcome this standardization. However, many also recognize that
the final result of such a standardization process remains uncertain, with a possible
outcome being a “neo-industrial” uniformity --rather than post-industrial flexibility:
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3. many of those involved hope that the interoperable infrastructure that the
standards enable will provide end users with much more flexible environments
and will enable [education and research] on a dramatically larger scale than ever
before. At the same time, there is some apprehension that the final result may be
an increased commercialisation of education, which could herald the ‘neo-
industrialization’ of academia. (Duval, 2002)
The two scenarios of (neo)industrial uniformity and post-industrial flexibility are not
mutually exclusive. In fact, it can be argued that the two are closely and necessarily
bound together: the flexibility made possible by standards on one level requires strict
uniformity and homogeneity on another. Ultimately, all standards --regardless of their
individual emphasis on industrial uniformity or postindustrial flexibility-- “aim at making
actions comparable over time and space” (Berg and Timmermans, 1997, p. 273). In the
case of the Internet, these actions become interoperable --and in some cases, identical--
rather than simply “comparable:” The contents of an email from Boston can be read on
an email client in Bejing; a digital resource in from Turin can be combined with or
substituted for a learning object from Toronto. Speaking specifically of the standardized
Internet protocols mentioned above (TCP, IP, etc.), Alex Galloway describes the mutual
implication of flexibility and homogeneity as follows: “in order for protocol to enable
radically distributed communications between autonomous entities, it must employ a
strategy of universalization, and of homogeneity. It must be anti-diversity” (Galloway,
2004, p.142). This uniformity, homogeneity or even identity is an important part of what
is implied in the term “objectivity.” As will be discussed further below, this uniformity
has a significant, albeit indirect impact on the practices it so “flexibly” supports. Simply
put, it has the ultimate effect of valuing forms of knowledge that are universal, modular,
and interchangeable, at the price of knowledge and practices local and contextually-
dependent. And education, as will be shown below, is in many ways profoundly local
and contextual in character.
The notion of knowledge and comparability that can be brought to bear across space and
time can, of course, present great positive potential when understood in terms of justice.
One simple illustration of this potential goes back to a time prior to the post-industrial
and industrial eras, to the age of feudalism and craft practices in manufacture and
agriculture. Describing the pre-industrial, localized measure of rents and feudal dues in
the form of bushels, Porter explains how
during the early stages of the French Revolution…measures were among the most
frequently mentioned [peasant] grievances. The local bushel…had been growing
ever larger, to the profit of seigneurs. It was time to declare a single, true bushel,
valid for the whole of France. (Porter, 1995, p. 25, emphasis added)
The introduction of such a standardized measure can be seen as presenting a powerful
instrument for economic justice on the part of France’s disenfranchised peasants.
Another, more recent example of the function of standards as an instrument of justice is
provided by quality assurance standards; specifically by the widely-implemented and
-certified ISO 9000 standard series. As ISO (the International Organization for
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4. Standardization) itself explains, the purpose of this group of standards is
to provide a set of requirements that, if they are effectively implemented, will
[ensure] supplier[s] can consistently provide goods and services that: Meet
[customer] needs and expectations and comply with applicable regulations (ISO,
2005)
By thus regulating the provision of goods and services between suppliers and business
customers in different points in space and time, these ISO standards can be seen as
arbitrating kind of economic justice, albeit narrowly-defined. This scope and ambition is
broadened considerably in the more recently developed ISO 14000-series standards for
“environmental management.” This series of standards
specifies requirements for establishing [a corporate] environmental policy,
determining environmental aspects and impacts of products/activities/services,
planning environmental objectives and measurable targets, implementation and
operation of programs to meet objectives and targets, checking and corrective
action, and management review. (ISO14000.com, 2005)
The potential of standards to address issues of social, environmental, labour and other
forms of equity and responsibility has just begun to be explored in the standardization
world in general. This same potential has not yet been the focus of any e-learning
standards in particular. One important exception to this comes in the form of a number of
incipient “accessibility” standards in e-learning. These identify the assistive and adaptive
capabilities of e-learning resources and systems, and systematically enumerate user
interface preferences (e.g. for visible enhancements or audio translation). This suite of
standards, or rather, specifications, holds out the promise of enabling equitable access to
e-learning and other systems --regardless of the physical circumstances under which this
access may occur.
Conclusion
As indicated earlier, the domains of education and learning can be understood as being
especially local, heterogeneous and contextual in ways that few other organized activities
are. Evidence of this situated and heterogeneous character is provided perhaps most
powerfully by the persistence of pre-industrial craft practices in education. These
practices --to be found in many areas of educational activity-- have survived successive
waves of industrial and post-industrial transformation, which have otherwise been so
important for standards related to measures, materials, quality and communication itself.
The local and contextual networks in education also appear to be continuing in their
resistance to rationalization and re-engineering introduced in the form of standardized
content and processes. Local, situated knowledge of how, for example, to teach a
universal scientific principal such as a=πr2 (i.e. the area of a circle) in a class or to a
particular student is not likely to be trumped even by the most well designed learning
object or standardized practice for such a teaching process. This is despite the fact that
arguments for institutional efficiency and cost-savings in such cases appear, as Stephen
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5. Downes (2001) puts it, “relentless.” The resistance of educational practices to this
relentless logic it is not simply a function of institutional inertia or worse yet, of teachers’
or curriculum designers’ entrenched interests (e.g. Papert, 1998). Instead, an important
part of it arises from local and situated nature of education itself.
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