European Learner Mobility (ELMO) – how to make a difference with standards like MLO-AD, EuroLMAI, a.o.

For background information, see presentation of ELMO by Geir Mange Vangen (CEN WS-LT meeting i Lisbon, April 2012)

Ongoing ELMO Specification Work

TITLE:  ELMO - when specifications see the light.

This is a draft document in order to come up with a New Work Item proposal for implementation guidelines of WS-LT specifications in the context of RS3G practice. The draft is developed by Simone Ravaioli, Jad Najjar (the attachment) and to a lesser degree, Tore Hoel

Bottom line:

Bootstrapping the MLO and ELM (EuroLMAI) specifications toward adoption.

Aim

This CEN WSLT project work will drive the implementation of the EuroLMAI (EN 15981) and MLO (EN 15982) specifications into the RS3G Mobility Project (and other relevant use cases).

Assumptions and Rationale:

• Standards come through adoption.
• Adoption is only possible through implementation. 
• Implementation is the core business of the members of RS3G.
• RS3G is committed to facilitate student mobility and contribute to endorsing uniform adoption of standards.
• CEN WSLT has developed the MLO and EuroLMAI specifications which address key areas of mobility data (Learning Opportunites and Transcript of Records)
• RS3G Mobility Project aims to facilitate mobility by adopting "standard" specifications for an open, accessible and efficient implementation  

About RS3G 

RS3G is an international group of stakeholders of HE contributing to:
Facilitate student mobility and lifelong learning by:

• Building community to share news and experience in student systems
• Identifying and sharing opportunities to establish interoperability
• Providing expertise to the development of business cases driving specifications
• Contributing to, endorsing and facilitating uniform adoption towards standards 
• Fostering contacts with formal entities such as EC, EUA, ENQA, CEN
• Liaise with communities of interest like EAIE, EUNIS, TERENA
• Showcasing outcomes of RS3G activities

About the Mobility Project

Aim

Facilitate mobility - one of the main objectives of European Higher Education Area (as stated in the London Communiqué 2007, and emphasized in the Leuven Communiqué 2009)

Specific Objectives

• Interconnect European universities in a digital communication network
• Reduce administrative inefficiencies/problems in handling mobility data and procedures (intra-university)
• Streamline the communication flow among partner institutions (inter-universities )
• Digitize mobility documents (secure, authentic, transparent, tamper-proof)
• Produce reliable and accessible mobility statistics (EC interest)

Distinctive Traits

• The value of the project is directly proportional to  the number of active participants -the "network effect".
• Economies of scale could be triggered faster by  interconnecting the consortia and established implementers first - connect  one, serve many - the "Hub-and-Spoke" approach.  
• Adopting  "Standards" specifications for an open,  accessible and efficient implementation  
• Leveraging established Federated Identity Management  technologies.

Mapping the RS3G Mobility Model into MLO

Workshops

• ELMO WS Manchester 2012