Date Issued: | 7th July, 2017 |
Latest version: | http://www.imsglobal.org/case/ |
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Document Name: IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) Service v1.0 Best Practices and Implementation Guide
Revision: 7th July, 2017
1. Introduction
1.1 Scope
1.2 References
1.3 Structure of this Document
2. Context
2.1 Assumptions
2.3 Conceptual Model
2.3.1 Exact Match Of
2.3.2 Is Part Of
2.3.3 Is Related To
2.3.4 Precedes
2.3.5 Has Skill Level
2.3.6 Exemplar
2.3.7 Replaced By
2.4 Logical Model
4. Use Cases
4.1 Reading a Competency Framework Item
4.2 Reading a Competency Framework Association
4.3 Read all Competency Framework Associations for a Competency Framework Item
4.4 Reading a Rubric
4.5 Reading a Competency Framework document
4.6 Reading all Competency Framework documents
4.7 Reading an entire Competency Framework Package
5.1 Get CFPackage
5.1.1 Sequence Diagram
5.1.2 Instance Data
5.2.1 Sequence Diagram
5.2.2 Instance Data
5.3 Referring a CFItem as in a Transcript
5.4 Exchanging a CFPackage Loading into an LMS
5.5 Rubric
5.5.1 Scenario
5.5.2 Instance Data
5.6 Loading Course-Level Competencies into a LMS
5.6.1 Scenario
5.6.2 Example Structure: Competencies Nested in a Course
5.6.3 Payload Example
5.7 Loading Outcomes from a Specialization into a Reporting Tool
5.7.1 Scenario
5.7.2 Example Structure: Specialization Outcomes for a Program Specialization
5.7.3 Payload Example
5.8 Aligning Assessments to Course Objectives and Institutional Student Learning Outcomes
5.8.1 Scenario
5.8.2 Payload Example for Get Package
6.1 CFDocument
6.2 CFItem
6.3 CFAssociations
6.5 CFDefinitions
6.6 CFItemTypes
6.7 CFConcepts
6.8 CFLicense
6.9 API
6.10 Derived CFDocuments and Third Party Use
6.11 Application Security Recommendations
6.12.1 K-12 Versioning Workflow Example
7. Real-World Scenarios and Pilot Descriptions
7.1 Smarter Balanced Content Spec Explorer
7.1.1 Content Specifications
7.1.2 Item Specifications
7.1.3 Achievement Level Descriptors
7.1.4 Example Case Data
7.2 Texas Education Agency & Houston Independent School District
7.2.1 Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)
7.2.2 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Assessed Curriculum Guides
7.3 Georgia Standards of Excellence and Gwinnett Competency Frameworks
Appendix A - Connections to Other Relevant Standards
A.1 Ed-Fi
A.2 CEDS
The Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) specification defines how systems exchange and manage information about learning standards and/or competencies in a consistent and referenceable way. The key aim is to replace the current ways of documenting and referencing learning standards and competencies, which are typically published as a PDF or HTML document intended to be read by humans, by one which is also machine readable both syntactically and semantically. This allows for "Common Alignments" for content and referenceable unique identifiers for use in certificates and transcripts. Further, using this new specification it will be possible to electronically exchange these definitions so that applications, systems and tools can readily access and manage this data. This includes LMSs, Assessment tools, Curriculum Management applications, certificate and competency based evaluation systems and any other tool, process or content that would need to align to or reference a competency or framework.
This document begins with an explanation of assumptions and key definitions and then provides examples of using the endpoints. The scenarios address each class within the specification. The In-Depth Best Practices more fully explain and provide examples of this specification in use.
The Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE)'s Task Force mission is to create a globally adopted technical specification and support shared tools within IMS Global community, that will enable trusted agents to manage and publish Academic Standards and Competency Framework Documents/Packages and educators, LMSs, and assessment providers to manage and use Competency Frameworks to align learning to standard outcomes (aka Competency Framework Items or CF Items) .
[CASE, 17a] | IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) Service v1.0 Final Specification, G.Nadeau, R.Grogan, C.Smythe and J.Hobson, IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc., July 2017, http://www.imsglobal.org/case/casev1p0/imscaseservice_infomodelv1p0.html. |
[CASE, 17b] | IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) Service v1.0 REST/JSON Binding Final Specification, G.Nadeau, R.Grogan, C.Smythe and J.Hobson, IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc., July 2017, http://www.imsglobal.org/case/casev1p0/imscaseservice_restbingv1p0.html. |
[CASE, 17c] | IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) v1.0 Conformance and Certification Final Specification, G.Nadeau, R.Grogan, J.Hobson and C.Smythe, IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc., July 2017, http://www.imsglobal.org/case/casev1p0/caseservicev1p0_conformancev1p0.html. |
The structure of the rest of this document is:
2. Context | A brief history of the changes taking place in education and the need for exchanging curriculur and instructional information; |
3. Getting Started | A description of how to get started implementing CASE; |
4. Use Cases | The underlying use cases considered for this initial version of the CASE specification; |
5. Using the Endpoints | Examples and explanation of the CASE endpoints; |
6. Other Best Practices | Contains recommendations and findings for individual fields defined in the CASE specification; |
7. Real-World Scenarios and Pilot Descriptions | Brief descriptions of how the CASE specification enables consistent digital standards interoperability between curriculum standards/competency framework developers, content publishers, and third party education vendors; |
Appendix A Connections to Other Relevant Standards | Details about and links to other related standards: Ed-Fi and CEDS; |
Appendix B List of Endpoints | The listing of CASE endpoints. |
Historically, education was restricted to a few people, scheduled at specific ages, confined to particular places, designed around specific topics, and assessed in common ways. Today, educational technology has helped enrich these practices; with more people learning about more things and in more ways than ever before. Yet, educators are challenged to orchestrate their programming across technologies due to restrictions in the exchange of curricular and instructional information. The CASE specification instantiates a reliable way to exchange such information amongst conformant tools.
Assumptions built into this specification:
1. Context. Globally, educators are focusing on student learning outcomes. In the US, states are required by Federal statute to publish and update K-12 academic standards documents. Increasingly, higher education institutions are incorporating competency frameworks in their curricula and the relationships between courses, course modules and competencies require exchange between institutional systems. More generally, education and human capital standard setting entities of all types publish competency frameworks in multiple formats. It is the expectation that these standards be used to develop courses of study and to which curriculum materials and assessments will be aligned.
2. Competency frameworks are published in html/pdf/print for humans. When a framework is adopted and published, it is typically published as pdf or html and need to be translated by 3rd party entities to be used by assessment, content, and learning management systems. Typically these documents include some form of outline or table structure and include some type of grade or level banded human coding scheme to reference a specific skill, domain or standard.
3. Derivative frameworks. The use of human-focused documents and coding schemes creates inconsistency when referencing or aligning to frameworks. These problems are greatly exacerbated by questionable versioning and by the need of school districts, vendors, and individual educators to create derivative frameworks that group, unpack, and extend the original documents to support instruction and assessment.
4. A technical standard is needed. These translations do not have a standard technical format nor consistent identifiers. Without a suitable standard, it becomes impossible to align learning resources to competencies or academic standards so they can be more easily discovered and aligned with competency-based assessment results. This has been referred to as the "Common Alignment Problem."
5. Inconsistent terminology. Many educational technologies are highly developed to support the terminology of their customers' specific use case. For example, one tool may characterize their work in relation to 'objectives' and another as 'goals'. A key assumption of CASE is that these terminology differences can be a codified as a property of a statement and valuably exchanged amongst conformant tools.
6. Scope of this specification. What is needed is a standard technical specification and shared technical solution that enables trusted entities to publish Competency Framework Packages that parse learning standard documents (CF Docs) into network resolvable learning standard items (CF Items) that can be associated via hierarchy, progression, and derivation (CF Associations) and used to enable the creation of Derivative Frameworks while maintaining the ability to affect Common Alignments.
7. Global P-20+ impact of this specification. While the needs of primary education drove much of the work, the intent of the spec and of primary education is to prepare students for secondary education, postsecondary and career, as well as professional growth thereafter. Competency-based education programs often use multiple tools to assess students and a common specification for exchanging competency frameworks and rubrics is needed. Moreover, most all educational providers are seeking evidence of student learning outcomes.
8. Employers. Increasingly, employers need to exchange CF Items across technical systems to manage job applicants, document performance reviews, support performance management, and share career achievements. The CASE specification assumes the exchanges supporting instructional and curricular management in educational settings will support similar employer use cases and facilitate future system integrations, such as via extended transcripts.
Term |
Definition |
---|---|
Competency Framework |
A set of statements created by and articulating skills and/ specific knowledge. (AKA: Learning Standards, Curriculum Framework, Skills). Competency frameworks are essential to support: 1. standards-aligned instruction, 2. alignment of digital materials to assessment results 3. personalization of learning based on competency reports |
Standards Setting Entity |
Any entity (education agency, higher education institution, workforce cluster, education service provider, or individual educator) that sets learning, achievement, or competency standards or targets. |
Conceptual data model |
A representation of the major information, entities, and relationships that exist in the world, without attributes and with relationships shown as one-to-one only. |
Logical Data Model |
Based on the information, entities, and relationships in the conceptual data model, this is a system-agnostic representation that contains attributes, shows cardinality, and uses the commonly-used names for all entities. |
Canonical |
A single source, often the pdf or html that represents the policy approved. |
Authoritative |
A source approved by the authorizing agency |
Trusted |
While not formally approved by the authorizing agency, it represents the best known source |
Competency Framework Package (CF Pkg) |
A set of CF Doc, CF Items, and CF Associations released by a standard setting entity, publisher, institution or other. |
CF Doc |
A document that acts as a container for a collection of learning standard items, typically arranged in a hierarchical structure or classification scheme, reflecting expectations of learner competencies within a single subject area covering one or more levels. |
CF Item |
A statement that can be associated with other statements or documents to form a framework. Multiple stakeholders use such statements to document educational context for their offerings. These statements can specify multiple levels of granularity and take on specific meaning relative to their local utilization Content that either describes a specific competency (learning objective) or describes a grouping of competencies within the taxonomy of a Learning Standards Document. Educational standards are the learning goals for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. Education standards, like Common Core, are not a curriculum. Local communities and educators choose their own curriculum, which is a detailed plan for day to day teaching. In other words, the learning standards are what students need to know and be able to do, and curriculum is how students will learn it. Synonyms include: competency, learning or academic standard, sub-competency, goals, skills, program learning outcome, specialization learning outcome, co-curricular item, objective, goal, benchmarks, strands, outcomes, targets, and knowledge, skills and abilities |
CFAssociation |
A relationship between two CF Docs or two CF Items that includes: Exact Match Of Source, Is Related To, Is Part Of, Replaced By, Precedes, and Prerequisite. |
Learning Targets |
(AKA CF Item) An entity that specifies the learning that is intended for an individual learner and the success criteria use to indicate progress toward the learning goal. In the formative assessment process, a learning goal exists within the framework of a Learning Progression / Competency-based Pathway defined within the context of Learning Standards |
CF Rubrics |
An entity that includes information about an instrument used to communicate expectations of quality around a task, product, or performance and/or used to delineate consistent criteria for grading. |
The conceptual model shows the relationship between a CF Doc and a taxonomy of CF Items.
Relationships within a CF Doc such as parent/child relationships other relationships are expressed through the CF Association and CF Association Types. This enables a package to be created with all CF Items properly associated with an CF Doc.
Figure 2.1: Competency Framework Conceptual Model
Additional CF Association Types are used to model the relationships both between CF Items in a particular CF Doc and other CF Packages. The same association types can be used to model the relationships within IMS Global's Extended Transcripts and CF docs.
Key Insight. The key insight to this specification, which distinguishes it from the core element definitions that were used from CEDS , is the recognition and modeling of the relationship between source and derivative Competency Frameworks.
Particularly in the United States primary and secondary education, there is a multi-layer, complex taxonomy of education agencies interacting with a marketplace of vendors, each with overlapping layers of authority and organization. A Competency Framework may not exist in a vacuum. Data representing the relationship between these entities is often as important as the Competency Framework itself.
Figure 2.2: Conceptual Model of Derivative Frameworks
One clear example of this relationship is provided by IMS Global member Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and its Content Specifications that drive the SBAC Assessment design:
Figure 2.3: SBAC Assessment Development Overview
SBAC has created a taxonomy of Claims and Targets that has a known and important relationship to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) . In order for content that has been tagged to the CCSS to avoid costly re-tagging to SBAC's Content Specification Claims and Targets, the relationship between each SBAC Learning Target and CCSS Statement must be preserved.
A second example comes to us from IMS Global Member Houston Independent School District (HISD). HISD receives assessment results from data multiple sources. At the same time, HISD has adopted content which has been ingested into a Learning Management System via Common Cartridge.
Figure 2.4: Examples of HISD's multiple learning standards frameworks
Up until this point, HISD has not been able to easily correlate assessment score results with supplemental content to support differentiated instruction and move towards personalized learning. Helping to drive this specification, Houston's Office of Assessment is piloting this CASE specification as a mechanism to
Figure 2.5: HISD's Conceptual Model of Frameworks relationships
Figure 2.6: Georgia Learning Standards current data structure
Association Types. To represent these relationships both within a Framework and with derivative Frameworks, the following Association Types are used:
Equivalent to, for purpose of mapping. Used to connect derived CF Item to CF Item in original source CGF Doc (e.g. Common Core State Standards). In the example below, TEKS Student Expectation in Algebra 1 A.3(B) is an Exact Match of the same statement in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), which is the state's student testing program, Algebra 1 Assessed Curriculum Guide.
Figure 2.7: Demonstration of Exact Match Of within Public Consulting Group's OpenSALT tool
Figure 2.8: Demonstration of Exact Match Of within Public Consulting Group's OpenSALT tool
The origin of the association is included either physically or logically in the item at the destination of the association. This classifies an item as being logically or semantically contained as a subset of the destination . In the example below, the Measured Common Core Skill is the underlined portion of the full Common Core statement which is measurable. As such, it Is Part Of the full statement
Figure 2.9: Example of Is Part Of within a Common Core Learning Standard
The origin of the association is related to the destination in some way that is not better described by another association type. In the example below, the each grade specific standard Is Child Of the Anchor Standard node above it and Is Related To the general Anchor Standard statement that spans all grades.
Figure 2.10: Example of Is Related To within Common Core Learning Standards
The origin of the association comes before the destination of the association in time, sequence, learning progression, but not just in list order (list enumeration is used for that). In the example below, RF.K.1 Precedes RF.1.1
Figure 2.11: Example of Precedes within a learning standard framework
The destination of this association is understood to define a given skill level i.e. Reading Lexile 100, Depth Knowledge 2, or Cognitive Level (Blooms Taxonomy) etc. The example below shows how Norm Webb Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Has Skill Level association to Learning Targets.
Figure 2.12: Example of Has Skill Level within a learning standard framework
The destination of the association is a learning resource (or any "thing" such as a URL, file or reference to a physical tangible thing) that exemplifies this standard. In this case, the destination need not be another item, but can be any URL that points to the resource in question. In the example below, Talking to Text and Book Club Discussions are Exemplars of the learning standard.
Figure 2.13: Example of Exemplars within a learning standard
The origin of the association has been supplanted by, displaced by, or superseded by the destination of the association.
The CASE logical model is described in the CASE Service v1.0 Final Document [CASE, 17a].
The CASE specification allows providers of learning standards, competencies and rubrics data to make Competency Framework data available to service consumers.
Getting started as a Consumer with CASE begins with accessing a service provider URI endpoint. The endpoints are discussed in detail in Section 5.
In order to get a list of available CFDocuments from a service provider, you would call the /CFDocuments endpoint:
Figure 3.1: Request for /CFDocuments endpoint example
From this payload, you could access a CFPackages endpoint for a document:
Figure 3.2: Accessing CFPackages endpoint
The CFPackage payload will include all the information a consumer would need ingest the standards metadata and create relationships via CFAssociations.
At this point, you could import the entire json payload into the consumer and parse the data to display the standard in your native interface or store the data to use for alignment metadata within your object repository.
To access the associations for a specific CFItem, you would call the CFAssociations endpoint:
Figure 3.3: Requesting CFAssociations endpoint
At this point, as a service consumer, you would have the necessary data to make basic relationships both within and across standards as well as the descriptive metadata to display within your system.
The following Use Cases are supported:
A student dashboard needs additional information relative to a particular competency managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Reading a Competency Framework Item |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) a single Competency Framework Item from another organization or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be an external vendor, LMS, another institution, employer, organization, an internal institutional application, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to Get CFItem. Student dashboard needs competency information and makes request by CF Item sourcedId. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the URI of the Provider's CF Item along with the service endpoint. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer only supplies the CF Item sourcedId. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Item by the CF Item sourcedId. All necessary data points associated with the CF Item included in the payload. 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer. a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Successful Conditions: |
CF Item Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
An adaptive learning tool needs additional information concerning a particular competency association managed in a secondary tool or a student dashboard needs to identify the program outcome associated with a particular competency.
Use Case Title: |
Reading a Competency Framework Association |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) a single Competency Framework Association from another organization, or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be an external vendor, LMS, another institution, employer, organization, an internal institutional application, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to get a specific CF Association. Student dashboard needs a specific relationship (set of information) for a CF Item, such as an Academic Program, and makes request by CF Association sourcedId. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the sourcedId of the Provider's CF Association along with the service endpoint. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer only supplies the CF Association sourcedId. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Association by the CF Association sourcedId. All necessary data points associated with the CF Association included in the payload. 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
CF Association Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
A learning module needs to be configured relative to a competency's hierarchical relationships managed in a secondary tool.
A student dashboard needs to display all of a competency's associations managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Read all Competency Framework Associations for a Competency Framework Item |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) all Competency Framework Associations from another organization, or internal system for a specific CF Item. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be an external vendor, LMS, another institution, employer, organization, an internal institutional application, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to get all CF Associations of the CF Item. Student dashboard needs all the relationship information for a CF Item, such as an Academic Program, and makes request by passing the CF Item sourcedId. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the sourcedId of the Provider's CF Item along with the service endpoint. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer only supplies the CF Item sourcedId. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Item and CF Associations by the CF Item sourcedId. All necessary data points associated with the CF Association and CF Item are included in the payload: a. CF Item (queried) returned in payload b. CF Association records (associated to the CF Item) returned in the payload. 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
CF Item and all associated CF Association records included in payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
· CF Item and CF Associations Payload is not successfully transferred.
|
A student dashboard needs to display a specific rubric managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Reading a Rubric |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) a specific Rubric from another organization, or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be Vendor, LMS, Institution, Employer, Organization, Internal, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to Get a Rubric. Student dashboard needs a specific Rubric, and makes request by Rubric sourcedId. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the sourcedId of the Provider's Rubric along with the service endpoint. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer only supplies the Rubric sourcedId. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the Rubric by the CFRubric sourcedId. All necessary data points associated with the Rubric will be included in the payload, including the following. a. CFRubric, CFRubricCriterion, and CFRubricCriterionLevels data. i. A CFRubric may have multiple CFRrubricCriterion ii. A CFubricCriterion may have multiple CFRubricCriterionLevels Note: This leads to a multiplicity effect in number of records within the payload. b. Any related CF Items sourcedIds (or fully articulated object), if available. i.CFItem related to CFRubricCriterion directly ii.Only one CF Item can be related. c. CFDocument Title and sourcedId. d. CFRubric Title and Description e. CFRubric lastChangeDateTime 3. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 4. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 5. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
Rubric Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
A student advising tool needs to access a program's competency framework document managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Reading a Competency Framework Document |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) a specific Competency Framework Document from another organization, or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be Vendor, LMS, Institution, Employer, Organization, Internal, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to Get a CF Document. Student advising tool needs to get a CF Document. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the sourcedId of the Provider's CF Document along with the service endpoint. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer only supplies the CF Document. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Document by the CF Document sourcedId. All necessary data points associated with the CF Document will be included in the payload. 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
CF Document Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
A learning management system needs to be configured relative to competency framework documents managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Reading all Competency Framework Documents |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) all Competency Framework Documents from another organization, or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be Vendor, LMS, Institution, Employer, Organization, Internal, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to Get all CF Documents. LMS needs to get all CF Documents from another system. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the Provider's End Point. Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Documents. All necessary data points associated with the CF Document will be included in the payload. 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a2. Within the request the consumer includes defined query parameters for pagination, sorting, etc a3.1 Producer generates the payload according to the query parameters requested. a3.2 Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
CF Documents Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
A learning management system needs to be configured relative to a program's competency hierarchy and associated rubrics managed in a secondary tool.
A course needs to be configured relative to the competencies, rubrics, and criteria associated with a competency framework document managed in a secondary tool.
A curriculum management tool needs to be configured relative to the contents of a competency framework managed in a secondary tool.
Use Case Title: |
Reading an entire Competency Framework Package. |
Brief Description: |
A organization reads (GETs) all Competency Framework records associated with a CF Package from another organization, or internal system. |
Actors: |
Provider and Consumer - for example, could be Vendor, LMS, Institution, Employer, Organization, Internal, etc. |
Trigger: |
Consumer 'calls' the Provider's service to Get a CF Package LMS needs to get an entire CF Package, including CF Document, CF Items, CF Associations, CF Definitions, CF Concepts, CF License, CF Association Groupings, CF Subjects, Rubric part, Rubric, RubricCriteria, and Rubric Levels, from another system. |
Preconditions: |
Consumer knows the CF Document sourcedId Authentication/Authorization provided. |
Primary Flow: |
1. Consumer system/service will initiate a call to the Provider's system/service. 2. Consumer will request a payload from the Provider where the Consumer provides the CF Document sourcedId. 3. Compliant JSON payload will be generated by Provider based on a lookup of the CF Packages. All necessary data points associated with the CF Packages will be included in the payload. a. CF Document (of sourcedId provided) b. CF Items c. CF Associations d. CF Definition e. CF Concept f. CF License g. CF Association Groupings h. CF Subjects i. CF Rubrics i.CF Rubric Criterion 1. CF Rubric Level 4. Provider sends the payload to the Consumer. 5. Consumer receives the JSON payload. 6. Consumer processes the payload successfully. |
Alternate Flow: |
a3. Error occurs, and Provider replies with an error including a payload using the imdx_StatusInfo structure to the Consumer a6. Error occurs, and Consumer replies with error code to Provider. |
Success Conditions: |
CF Package Payload is successfully transferred from Provider to Consumer via CASE compliant services. |
Exception Conditions: |
|
For the purposes of describing the endpoints and their use, we will consider a rudimentary CF Package that contains a document, two top level items (Brother and Sister) each with one sub item, Son and Daughter respectively, and one association between them (Cousin) (See on https://salt-demo.edplancms.com/cftree/doc/175 ):
Figure 5.1: Sample CF Package represented in Public Consulting Group's OpenSALT
The fundamental operation when working with CASE is "Get CFPackage" which is asking an endpoint for an entire framework, the document and all related items, associations and vocabularies.
The Get CFPackage API get for this is https://salt-demo.edplancms.com/ims/case/v1p0/CFPackages/a5499b1c-bdc8-4227-90ec-e130bdce4d67
Figure 5.2: Get CFPackage Sequence diagram
|
An application (Consumer) will want to get a CFItem under many circumstances, such as in the context of processing a transcript or when a CMS or LOR loads a resource containing an alignment tag referencing a CFItem URI and/or UUID. The orchestration look like this:
Figure 5.3: CFItem Sequence diagram
{ |
Digital credentials increasingly contain competency statements. When those competency statements have CFItem URIs, services can help interpret the competency statements by reading the CFItem payload. Such as, a competency statement may have an association to a competency in a third-party framework. For example, a student's transcript may contain a record for the CFItem fullStatement "Communicates effectively", which also has the following CFItem URI "http:asdfasdfasdf.acomcasdihaods". Referring to a CFItem in a transcript should be a simple as including the CFItem URI and ID (usually the same) in the transcript. Additionally, the transcript should include a reference (URI) for the document and/or package from which the item(s) are referenced from.
To interpret the meaning of the competency statement, services may look up the Sequence of figures
Before loading a Common Cartridge or Thin CC into an LMS, all learning standards alignments in the cartridge should be loaded into the LMS beforehand, or as part of the cartridge loading sequence. The LMS will need the CF Package URI in order to request the CF Package from the service endpoint. This can be done manually, prior to loading a CC or Thin CC file, or the LMS can use some business logic to determine if a package being loaded is aligned to a CFPackage that is not currently resident. If that is the case, the LMS (Consuming application) would use a process like this:
Figure 5.4: Exchanging a CFPackage Loading into an LMS
The json payload is ingested and parsed into the data structures native to the object repository and displayed for use in aligning content and/or displaying the standard descriptions.
Figure 5.5: Ingesting a json payload and parsing into data structures
An assessment specialist wishes to populate a scoring guide tool with a rubric authored in a 3rd party authoring environment.
Figure 5.6: Rubric with aligned competencies
|
A university administrator wishes to populate a learning management tool with a set of curricular competencies managed in a separate curriculum authoring tool.
Course: MSN6414 - Data management and health care technology
Competencies:
|
Advice: In this scenario, a CF package can be defined to exchange these competencies between the tools. A CF Document is defined for the course and each competency references this document directly via a CFDoumentURI.
A university administrator wishes to populate an enterprise reporting tool with a learning outcomes of a particular specialization managed in a separate curriculum authoring tool.
Specialization: Nursing Informatics
Specialization outcomes:
|
Advice: In this scenario, a CF package can be defined to exchange these specialization outcomes between the tools. A CF Document is defined for the specialization and each specialization outcome references this document directly.
An instructional designer wishes to document how course assessments relate to course objectives and institutional student learning outcomes managed in a separate curriculum authoring tool.
Figure 5.7: Institutional student learning outcomes associated with course competencies
|
Advice: In this scenario, a CF package is defined with two separate documents. The institutional student learning outcomes document contains CF Items at two hierarchy levels a group level and a outcome level. The ASTR1304 document contains objectives. The assessment tool reads the payload to populate the grid and supports users in documenting how assessments are associated with CFItems in each of these documents.
This section contains recommendations and findings for individual fields within the specification.
Definitions and examples are provided [???]here, earlier in this document.
Versioning overview. Versioning is to be managed by new CFDOC definitions. Given the three defined Adoption Status values, this means that for each status only specific functions should be allowed per the specification.
|
Core CRUD Functionality |
Definition CRUD Functionality |
||||||
Adoption Status |
CF Doc |
CF Item |
CF Association |
CF Concepts |
CF Subjects |
CF License |
CF Type |
CF AssocGrouping |
Draft |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Adopted |
No* |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Deprecated |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
*With exception for a Last_Change_datetime
Explanation |
Most Current CF Doc Adoption Status |
Additional Notes |
Subjects Hierarchy Defined |
N/A |
Pre work required for CF Doc Definition |
Concepts Hierarchy Defined |
N/A |
Pre work required for CF Doc Definition |
CF Types Defined |
N/A |
Pre work required for CF Doc Definition |
CF Assoc Groupings Defined |
N/A |
Pre work required for CF Doc Definition |
License Defined |
N/A |
Pre work required for CF Doc Definition |
New CF Doc Defined - 'Math 2016' |
Draft |
|
New CF Items Defined |
Draft |
|
CF Types Amended |
Draft |
|
New CF Associations Defined |
Draft |
|
CF Doc Published |
Published |
Once published, defining attributes are still editable in order to allow for refinement without directly changing the LS Doc |
CF Assoc Groupings Amended |
Published |
|
New CF Associations Defined |
Published |
|
Concepts Hierarchy Amended |
Published |
|
New Derived CF Doc Defined - 'Math 2017' |
Draft |
New Version of the standards is now a new derived LS Doc |
New CF Associations Defined as Replaced By in 'Math 2016' |
Draft |
|
CF Items amended in 'Math 2017' |
Draft |
|
New License Defined and Applied to Math 2017 |
Draft |
|
New Concept Hierarchy Defined and applied to Math 2017 |
Draft |
|
Math 2017 Published |
Published |
|
Math 2016 Deprecated |
Published |
* |
*At this point, the defining attributes of the deprecated CF Doc need to be locked. They can be used, by other new documents, but they cannot be changed.. this is to allow historical reference. If an organization is redefining their defining attributes, they need to establish new hierarchies to support those changes in order to ensure historical reference This speaks to the importance of establishing a best practice for defining hierarchy values.
The main goal is to develop a specification that enables consistent digital standards interoperability between curriculum standards/competency framework developers, content publishers, and third party education vendors.
There are two general scenarios:
This section contains examples drawn from four recent pilots.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium designed a Content Specification Explorer which teachers could use to better understand and organize their instruction to align with Smarter Balanced Claims and Targets as represented in a suite of close to 300 existing PDF documents:
Smarter Balanced has developed content specifications in English language arts/literacy and math to ensure that the assessments cover the range of knowledge and skills in the Common Core State Standards. The content specifications serve as the basis for the Smarter Balanced system of summative and interim assessments and formative assessment support for teachers.
Figure 7.1: Smarter Balanced content specifications model
There are two main types of item specifications,Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) and Performance Task (PT).
(ALDs) are a means of describing performance on a standardized test in terms of levels or categories of performance. For the Smarter Balanced assessments, outcomes will be reported in terms of four levels of achievement: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4. The ALDs are text descriptions of the knowledge, skills, and processes demonstrated by students in each category of performance.
The ELA Content Spec, for example contains a set of four Claims with regards to English Language Arts:
Figure 7.2: Achievement Level Descriptors
The first two Claims are further separated into Domains with a consistent abbreviation of Target:
Figure 7.3: Claims separated into domains with an abbreviation of the target.
Smarter Balanced established a Primary Taxonomy organized by Grade Level as the top node:
Figure 7.4: Smarter Balanced Primary Taxonomy organized by Grade Level
Based on the analysis above, an example of how this information as it is parsed into data would be as follows:
Doc |
SortID |
Is Child Of |
Human Coding Scheme |
Node Label |
Short Label |
Longer Statement |
LS Association Type |
Target LS Doc & Item |
ELA CS |
3 |
ELA CS |
|
Grade |
3 |
|
|
|
ELA CS |
3.1 |
1 |
|
Claim |
1 |
Reading |
|
|
ELA CS |
3.1.1 |
1.1 |
1-LT |
Content Category |
Literary Texts |
Students can read closely and analytically to comprehend a range of increasingly complex literary and informational texts. |
|
|
ELA CS |
3.1.1.1 |
1.1.1 |
1-LT|1-3 |
Target |
Key Details |
Given an inference or conclusion, use explicit details and implicit information from the text to support the inference or conclusion provides. |
Is Related to Precedes |
DOK 1, DOK 2 4.1.1.1 |
Figure 7.5: Example in OpenSALT, an alignment tool created by Public Consulting Group (PCG)
There are two major sources of information regarding student learning standards in Texas.
TEKS is a document divided into Chapters, sub-chapter and sections at a high level. Chapters represent content areas, and sections represent a single subject and grade level set of standards. Within sections, the standards are composed of knowledge and skill (K & S) statements with student expectations shown as sub-elements of the K & S statements.
STAAR Assessed Curriculum Guides build upon TEKS. Each guide is broken down by the Subject and Grade of the summative assessment area covering the selected standards. Typically, these correspond directly to Chapter and Section of the TEKS. With the guide, standards are grouped by Reporting Categories - which are considered the lowest level of comparable score reporting achieved through the summative testing process. Student expectations are classified as to whether they are considered a Readiness Standard or a Supporting Standard. Not every TEKS standard of a given chapter and section is necessarily represented in the assessed curriculum guide - although most are.
Figure 7.6: Relationship between Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR)
Figure 7.7: Example of TEKS Essential Skill A.3(B)
Figure 7.8: Example of Exact Match to Readiness Standard in STAAR
This pilot focused specifically on testing the digital ecosystem the CASE specification would enable. This pilot included Gwinnett County Public Schools, HMH, D2L and Safari Montage within its scope in order to better ascertain challenges around interoperability within both the spec and implementations of that spec. Through the course of the pilot, 5 separate systems exchanged / ingested CF Docs in order to simulate a content alignment lifecycle from standards publishing at the national (CCSO), state (GA) and district (GCPS) level, through content development and standards alignment via Common Cartridge (HMH), to LMS integration (D2L & Safari) . The final success of this pilot showed that implementation of final CASE specification can significantly simplify digital content alignment for publishers allowing for a far wider range of custom / adaptive learning opportunities for education organizations.
HMH created a publishing and processing tool called Axiom designed specifically to test the CASE specification. Three Axiom instances were stood up to represent 3 levels of K12 standards publishing:
1. A national instance that included a copy of Common Core Math 2010 and the NGSS 2015 Science standards sets
2. A state instance that included Georgia DOE equivalent standard sets for both Math and Science
3. A district level instance including Gwinnett standard sets equivalent to the Georgia DOE Math and Science sets
Once the servers were in place, team members on the State instance used the Cross Mapping tool within Axiom to create exactMatchOf associations between the state standard set and the equivalent national standard set. The district teams did the same cross mapping between the district instance and the state instance. At this point, via the CASE spec, the relationship between the district level standards and the national standards can be understood and followed from tone instance to the next via various API calls between the instances.
Validation 1: Direct standards access. To test the practicality of the model, HMH then introduced a Common Core aligned Common Cartridge 1.2 . This cartridge only had content correlations aligned against identifiers in the National Axiom instance. As such, the CC, if ingested into a LMS like D2L or Safari would not be able to recognize the correlations contained within the CC and would then be of limited instructional value to educators. At this point, both Safari and D2L implemented CFPackage consumer services that could dynamically target an Axiom instance and ingest the applicable CF Doc allowing these platforms to natively recognize the referenced standards within the provided CC package and present those standards to the LMS users.
Figure 7.9: Diagram of Direct Standards Access Model
Validation 2: Standards exactMatchOf tracking. In order to facilitate State and District level standards needs, HMH provided an additional POC tool within Axiom that allowed a Common Cartridge to be targeted against a specific CF Document. This tool would then follow exactMatchOf associations from one Axiom instance to another into order to find all equivalent standards among the various instances. It then updated the Common Cartridge payload to include the newly discovered equivalent standards within the CC and delivered that package back to the user. The new package that previously only included correlations to national standards now included correlations to state and district standards as well. That package was then successfully ingested into Safari and D2L and each LMS in turn used CFPackage calls to the appropriate Axiom instances in order to understand what those correlations were so they could be rendered for users.
Figure 7.10: Diagram of Exact Match Relationship Tracked between Standards
Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model:
Ed-Fi Bulk/XML - Links to concrete instantiation in XSD
Ed-Fi API/JSON - Here is are swagger links to how they surface in the Ed-Fi API
Title: | IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange Service v1.0: Best Practices and Implementation Guide |
Editors: | Colin Smythe, IMS Global (UK) Bob Grogan, Elumen (USA) Greg Nadeau, PCGUS (USA) Joshua Marks, PCGUS (USA) Jared Booth, HMH (USA) |
Co-chairs: | K-12: Joseph Chapman, D2L (Canada) Joshua Marks, PCGUS (USA) Higher Ed: Jeff Grann, Capella University (USA) Deborah Everhart, Learning Objects (USA) |
Version: | 1.0 |
Version Date: | 7th July, 2017 |
Status: | IMS Final Release |
Summary: | The IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange Service is used to
exchange information about the learning and education competencies. This
standard defines a set of data models for competency frameworks, competency
documents, competency definitions, competency associations, rubrics, rubric
criterions and rubric criterion levels. It also describes how this data can
be exchanged using a set of service calls. This document contains the best
practice recommendations when adopting the specification. |
Revision Information: | First release of this specification. |
Purpose: | For public adoption. |
Document Location: | www.imsglobal.org/case/ |
The following individuals contributed to the development of this document:
Raymond Baranoski | Safari Montage (USA) |
Diana Bidulescu | Houston ISD (USA) |
Adam Blum | OpenEd (USA) |
Jared Booth | HMH (USA) |
Clyde Boyer | Trinity Education Group (USA) |
Barry Brahier | Infinite Campus (USA) |
Christine Case | Trinity Education Group (USA) |
Joseph Chapman | D2L (Canada) |
Chris Chung | IMS Global (USA) |
Deb Everhart | Learning Objects (USA) |
David Gappa | Safari Montage (USA) |
Jeramy Gatza | Florida Virtual School (USA) |
Jeff Grann | Capella University (USA) |
Bob Grogan | Elumen (USA) |
Jeroen Hamers | Kennisnet (Netherlands) |
Joel Hernandez | Elumen (USA) |
Jill Hobson | IMS Global (USA) |
Chris Houston | Capella University (USA) |
Jamey Hynds | Katy ISD (USA) |
Brian Kubota | Pearson (USA) |
Andy Kuritizky | HMH (USA) |
Mark Leuba | IMS Global (USA) |
Karl Lloyd | Instructure (USA) |
Joshua Marks | PCGUS (USA) |
Lisa Mattson | IMS Global (USA) |
David Mayes | Gwinnett County Schools (USA) |
Greg Nadeau | PCGUS (USA) |
Henk Nijstad | Kennisnet (Netherlands) |
Hugh Norwood | Trinity Education Group (USA) |
Robert Pangborn | IBM (USA) |
Steve Polyak | ACT (USA) |
Brandt Redd | Smarter Balance (USA) |
Jennifer Reichlin | Pearson (USA) |
William Santo | Desire2Learn (Canada) |
Bob Schloss | IBM (USA) |
McCall Smith | Instructure (USA) |
Colin Smythe | IMS Global (UK) |
Davant Stewart | Houston ISD (USA) |
Stewart Sutton | Dublin Core (USA) |
Marcia van Oplo | Kennisnet (Netherlands) |
Michele Wagner | Baltimore County Public Schools (USA) |
David Ward | PCGUS (USA) |
Jennifer Whiting | Florida Virtual School (USA) |
Avi Yashchin | IBM (USA) |
Version No. | Release Date | Comments |
---|---|---|
Base Document Draft 1 | 7th January, 2017 | Introduces the basic table of contents. |
Final Release 1.0 | 7th July, 2017 | The first formal Final Release that is ready for public adoption and implementation. |
IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. ("IMS Global") is publishing the information contained in this document ("Specification") for purposes of scientific, experimental, and scholarly collaboration only.
IMS Global makes no warranty or representation regarding the accuracy or completeness of the Specification.
This material is provided on an "As Is" and "As Available" basis.
The Specification is at all times subject to change and revision without notice.
It is your sole responsibility to evaluate the usefulness, accuracy, and completeness of the Specification as it relates to you.
IMS Global would appreciate receiving your comments and suggestions.
Please contact IMS Global through our website at http://www.imsglobal.org.
Please refer to Document Name: IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) Service v1.0: Best Practices and Implementation Guide
Date: 7th July, 2017