Adoption
The most important objective of IMS member organizations is to realize maximum benefit from investments in technology. To achieve this, two objectives must be met:
- Ease of deployment by achieving high levels of interoperability in practice
- Effective, large-scale use toward strategic goals
IMS facilitates three types of activities that enable successful large-scale adoption of emerging educational and learning technology:
- Developer and conformance testing communities, known as “Alliances” that support the use of new specifications and standards in the marketplace.
- Learning Technology Adoption Groups that produce documents and prototypes that serve as information to the market and IMS members on how to make effective use of technology toward strategic goals. Learning Technology Adoption Groups are formal IMS project groups operating under the same participation and voting rules as interoperability project groups, but focused toward a different objective: adoption and effective use.
- Informal interest and implementation groups that play a critical role in facilitating collaboration between IMS members in adopting IMS specifications, and adoption practices, providing feedback on priorities of IMS project groups, and helping to manage the focus of the annual IMS Learning Impact conference and Summit on Global Learning Challenges.
The IMS Learning Technology Advisory Council (LTAC) leads many of the adoption activities. The LTAC is comprised of leaders from leading universities, colleges, and school districts from around the world. Adoption practice activities may be organized to serve the needs of a specific region or industry segment.