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ADL Working Groups

DoD-Only Working Groups

Community Working Groups

The ADL Initiative participates in community working groups that are advancing the state of distributed learning.

Professional Societies and Standards Bodies

The ADL Initiative belongs to, or otherwise actively participates with various professional societies and related standards/specifications organizations.

Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) Project

The CEDS project is a U.S. national collaboration to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange, comparison, and understanding of data within and across P-20W (early learning through postsecondary and workforce) institutions and sectors. The CEDS Community provides stakeholders with the opportunity to gather virtually to discuss using CEDS as well as to contribute to the CEDS standard development. There are two CEDS communities: 1) Using CEDS Community (which facilitates discussion about the standard, the tools, implementing CEDS, best practices, and anything CEDS related) and 2) CEDS Open Source Community (which facilitates development of the CEDS warehouse and contribution of code to the CEDS Open Source Repositories for stakeholder use). The ADL Initiative collaborates with CEDS in many IEEE standards-based efforts. The CEDS Community is open to anyone with an interest in sharing information and gathering input on CEDS. Learn more about CEDS.

Human Resources (HR) Open Standards Consortium

The HR Open Standards Consortium is an independent, non-profit, volunteer-led organization dedicated to the development and promotion of a standard suite of specifications to enable human resource related data exchanges. The Consortium develops and updates specifications and standards to meet industry needs with input from its working group. Working group members include technical experts, business analysts, and other HR stakeholders. Both Consortium members and non-members can participate in the working group. The ADL Initiative is considering HR Open Standards Consortium as a source of interoperable technical standards for any efforts involving human resource data. Learn more about the HR Open Standards Consortium.

IMS Global Learning Consortium

IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global/IMS) is a nonprofit, member organization whose mission is to advance technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment to ensure that the learning impact of technology-enabled education is achieved around the world. The ADL Initiative participates in various aspects of the IMS work, from standards creation to adoption of learning technology innovation to large-scale deployment of technology to achieve learning. Learn more about the IMS Global Learning Consortium.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)

The IEEE LTSC is chartered by the IEEE Computer Society Standards Activity Board to develop internationally accredited technical standards, recommended practices, and guides for learning technology. The LTSC played an important part in helping the ADL Initiative create the internationally adopted SCORM® standard for eLearning content. The ADL Initiative is a voting member of the IEEE LTSC and contributes to several working groups focused on learning technology standards. Learn more about the Learning Technology Standards Committee.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 IT for Learning, Education and Training

ISO/IEC JTC 1 is a joint technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. ISO SC36 is a standardization subcommittee that develops and facilitates standards within the field of IT for learning, education and training (LET). The ISO SC36 officially published SCORM® 2004 4th Edition as an ISO technical report in 2009. Learn more about ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 IT for Learning, Education and Training.

National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Community

NIEM is a common vocabulary that enables efficient information exchange across diverse public and private organizations. The NIEM model defines agreed-upon terms, definitions, relationships and formats—independent of how information is stored in individual systems—for data being exchanged. NIEM connects communities of people who share a common need to exchange information in order to advance their mission.

The NIEM Community includes domains and communities of interest (COIs) that represent a large, diverse user base. Domains manage reusable, community-specific content in the model and participate in NIEM governance at large. COIs collectively define their needs, work with established domains to develop exchange content, and standardize their information exchanges to NIEM. The ADL Initiative is exploring collaborative efforts with NIEM communities to establish best practices for learning across the DoD and the Federal Government. Learn more about NIEM.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

NIST is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce with the mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. NIST is continually improving the U.S. measurement system, developing new technologies, fostering standards, and providing both the business and technical evaluation tools needed to produce quality products and organizations. NIST frequently convenes stakeholders to identify and solve precompetitive technical challenges in a range of sectors. These public working groups conduct research and testing, product development and/or development of technical roadmaps. Learn more about NIST.

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC)

PESC is a nonprofit, membership driven, standards setting body for global education data. Membership includes data, software and education technology service providers; local, state/province and federal government agencies; schools, colleges and universities; college, university and state systems; commercial and nonprofit organizations; and national and international nonprofit associations and foundations. PESC focuses on interoperability to enable cost-effective connectivity between data systems, which accelerates performance and service, simplifies research and data access, improves data quality along the education lifecycle, and secures mobility of education data around the world. All groups and committees are chaired by PESC members and participation in most groups and committees is limited to PESC members. The following groups are open to the general public: Academic Credentialing & Experiential Learning, Canadian PESC User Group, GEO Code Workgroup, and JSON Task Force. The ADL Initiative collaborates with PESC in many IEEE standards-based efforts. Learn more about PESC.

T3 Innovation Network

The T3 Innovation Network supports the digital transformation of the talent marketplace by exploring emerging technologies and data standards to better align education, workforce, and credentialing data with the needs of the new economy. This open network is comprised of more than 500 organizations which include associations/collaboratives, business, government, higher education, foundations, nonprofits, and technology vendors. These groups are working together to change the way educational and workforce data are provided, accessed, and used through advanced technologies like AI, blockchain, and others to create an open and decentralized public-private data ecosystem.

The T3 Innovation Network’s projects have focused on building the infrastructure to support competency-based learning and developing guidelines to empower learners and workers. Pilot projects are organized into three specific areas of focus: Open Data Standards, Competency-Based Learning and Hiring, and Empowering Learners and Workers.

The T3 Innovation Network also supports the development and initial pilot testing of a Learning & Employment Record (LER), a digital record of learning and work that can be linked to an individual and combined with other digital records for use in pursuing educational and employment opportunities. The ADL Initiative is a member of the T3 Innovation network and supports the Network’s work to achieve harmonized universal learner records and HR-data interoperability across learner, worker, and military domains. Learn more about the T3 Network and how to get involved.