The Common Cartridge (CC) standard distils state-of-the-art practice in online education and training into an easy-to-implement format for creating and sharing digital content. It defines an integrated approach to exchanging content exploiting:

• A consistent model for packaging content.
• Metadata (based on simple Dublin Core).
• Assessment (harnessing a commonly used set of question types).
• Additional features such as discussion topics and authorization for protected content.

The CC Alliance is an online community of vendors, user institutions and practitioners committed to advancing the use of the IMS family of content-related specifications encompassing:

• Common Cartridge (CC).
• Content Packaging (CP).
• Question & Test Interoperability (QTI).

Goals

• Encourage supply of CC, CP & QTI compatible products and services in the marketplace
• Facilitate adoption of CC, CP & QTI products by a worldwide community of education and training organizations
• Provide tools and content to enable interested organizations to develop CC/CP/QTI-enabled products that meet the compliance requirements set out by the IMS GLC membership

Benefits of Alliance Membership

• Promotion of compliant products and services in the online product & services catalog.
• Use of an approved product mark for appropriately tested products.
• Attendance at testfest events.
• CC news updates and discussion forum.
• Listing of support on IMS GLC web site.
• Use of CC Alliance logo on web and in literature.
• Notifications of new test cases and changes.
• Opportunity to participate in CC Alliance presence at conferences and exhibitions.

Current Resources available for community members

• Free-to-use CC Test System (under development for CP & QTI)
• Valid cartridge test data set
• Tools, test harnesses and sample code
• CC Alliance logo and marketing materials
• Access to unreleased draft specifications
• Open content example cartridges

"The cross platform compatibility offered by the Common Cartridge can energize the digital learning content market. The technology makes it viable to both extend coverage across the curriculum while simultaneously enriching the learner experience with access to specialized tools, simulations and assessments, all seamlessly integrated with the core content. Pearson Education has participated in the development of this specification and the trials to prove the technology and its application. We are now preparing titles for release in this format and anticipate its adoption by both a broad range of publishers and by institutions for in-house content development".
– David O'Connor, Senior Vice President of Core Technology Product Development, Pearson Education

"The Common Cartridge initiative is poised to be the most well-coordinated collaboration between the publishing industry and the LMS industry to date. Educational providers and their learners alike will benefit tremendously from this initiative as the quantity and quality of online educational resources will grow exponentially in the very near future.  We are proud to be amongst the earliest adapters of the Common Cartridge specification and have already worked it into our next generation platforms built for the Apple iPhone as well as the desktop via Adobe's Integrated Runtime."
– Edward B. Mansouri, CEO, Ucompass.com, Inc.

"The business need for the CommonCartridge is quite simple. If our industry can reduce obstacles for content interoperability investment in producing very basic online courses can shift towards designing courses that support the vision of personalized instruction around learning outcomes. Without a well established open standard for content and support from key educational technology players, we'll languish. Our strategy at ANGEL is to provoke this positive change by our commitment to shipping support for CommonCartridge. We challenge other industry players to match our pace for the good of the industry."
– Ray Henderson, Chief Products Officer, ANGEL Learning

"Common Cartridge is a standard whose time has come! Common Cartridge enables publishers to focus their valuable resources on delivering enhanced learning content depth and breadth, and less on packaging for compatibilities sake across many LMS solutions. It eliminates redundancy and allows for new innovations that will help accelerate and fully engage today's digital savvy, experientially-focused students."
– Curt Allen, President and CEO, Agilix Labs

"Cengage Learning is working to evolve the way that students learn by partnering with instructors to provide a wide range of digital content and services. The "common cartridge" extends the Cengage Learning focus to create, protect, and deliver quality content consistently across learning management systems for instructors and students. Cengage Learning has partnered to develop engaging products for this emerging standard and is actively testing our titles to prove compatibility. We are pleased to continue our support of the common cartridge standard."
– Jonathan Stowe, Senior Vice President, Academic and Professional Group, Cengage Learning

"Course management systems have become mission-critical applications in support of academic programs at universities. Common Cartridge will help enrich course sites and provide students with digital textbooks and supplementary materials for learning and assessment. The emerging Common Cartridge standard, by providing easy access and inter-operable tools, should increase student time-on-task, the factor most closely correlated with improved learning."
– Charles F. Leonhardt, Principal Technologist, Georgetown University