Do the architectures support the needs of lifelong learners?
CETIS Director Bill Olivier, among the delegates at the event, made a plea on behalf of the lifelong learner: “Current architectures don’t serve lifelong learners needs. All have an institutional viewpoint. Lifelong learners pass across multiple institutions across their life: at the moment the fundamental problem is that each institution have a portion of the lifelong learner’s progress.” Noting a mention by Dan Rehak of the idea of student ‘smartcards’ providing access to personalised learning experiences, Olivier commented that “[the smartcard] model is the first glimmer of a Personal Learning Management System that complements the web LMS. We have to find a way to let learners have their own information.” “The advantage of functional models is that they don’t specify the boundary between servers and the learner’s system. This is the lesson of peer-to-peer: not to conflict with client-server systems, but to find out how they can work together.” Olivier warned against designing with
