A critical success factor for e-learning is the possibility to share, collaborate, twin, and move people and resources within a country or region and across Europe. The sharing of education related data and services makes them less costly, increases the supply, enhances the quality through incremental improvements, and allows a shorter time delivery. However, sharing of data, content, tools and services can only be achieved when clear agreements are made between all parties concerned. The more global this agreement is, the greater the benefit. The practical implementation of this is interoperability in different areas, such as learning content and repositories, accessibility, assessment, administration, learner information, quality, and learning activity. However, interoperability is not only about technology or standards. As practitioners find out, putting standards to use by, for instance through application profiles, and the learning and political dimension are of equal importance.

This publication will give the reader an introduction to this complex field of standardisation in e-learning by discussing the state of the art, the main issues and recommendations for the future. It is the result of in various in depths discussions with experts in interoperability in Europe and abroad. I would like to thank the following persons that took part in these in depth discussions:

Michel Arnaud, Kathryn Chang Barker, Thomas Barefoot, Andrew Baxter, John Arthur Berg, Jerome Bertoneche, Darren Cambridge , Lorna Campbell, Eduardo Cascallar, Mike Collett, Adam Cooper, Sarah Currier, Bobby Elliot, Fabrizio Giorgini, Zinan Guo, Simon Grant, Jim Greer, Andy Heath, Tore Hoel, Jeff Kahn, Wilbert Kraan, Minna Leikas, Oleg Liber, Selwyn Lloyd, David Massart, Rory McGreal, Bill Olivier, Abelardo Pardo, Vicente Paredes, Fredrik Paulsson, Philippe Portelli, R. Michael Reed, Robby Robson, Stephen Rogers, Juan Santos, Mariana Sanz Prieto, Sondre Skaug Bjørnbekk, Niall Sclater, Peter Sloep, Angela Smallwood, Scott Thorne, Iain Tulloch, Scott Wilson, Mark Ward

In addition the authors are in debt to the many discussion with members of various national and international standardisation bodies and consortia.

Frans Van Assche
Brussels, December 2006