The session focused on interoperability issues in different areas, such as learning content and repositories, accessibility, assessment, administration, learner information, and learning activity. More in particular the findings of the project, which are based on expert workshops in each of the area, were presented and discussed with the participants. In addition the session discussed important issues for governance and the way ahead. The main audience of the session was policy makers, industry representatives, user representatives and academia.

In the session, a 34 page consultation copy of the “Roadmap to eLearning Interoperability” was distributed. The roadmap is a report including a practitioner's guide to interoperability, and also includes policy recommendations concerning the practical application of interoperability. The full “Roadmap to eLearning Interoperability” is expected to be ready in the beginning of 2007.

The audience showed a lively interest in the different aspects of interoperability and especially what it means in the context of social networking software. One of the conclusions of the LIFE-project is indeed that there is a need for
".. a platform that enables highly distributed trading of content and licenses. The belief is that, thanks to such phenomena as the long-tail effect, a substantial volume of extremely varied content can thus be traded at low costs. Social “tagging” mechanisms could be used to ensure quality and help users find what they are looking for."

Clearly, semantic interoperability is a challenge for social networking software when trying to use it in a multi-lingual environment such as Europe.

LIFE portal: http://life.eun.org
Story on Insight: http://life.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/interoperability/developments/
life_round_table_discussion.htm