Lake Mary, FL - 20 September 2006 - The IMS Global Learning Consortium announced today the launch of a new program to partner with a select set of educational institutions worldwide in order to accelerate the impact of learning technology. Georgetown University has stepped forward as the first participant in the Global Academic Affiliates program.

IMS anticipates that approximately twenty institutions will be selected for affiliate partnerships. Each affiliate will have a unique charter for pursuing an aspect of research or testing that is closely connected with IMS's mission of addressing global learning industry challenges through community development of standards, innovation, and best practices. Each affiliate will work closely with IMS to perform research or applied implementations that will feed back to the IMS community.

The Georgetown / Sun Center of Excellence in Scholarly Information Architecture will work closely with IMS on providing a testbed for verifying that products which vendors claim adhere to standards and are interoperable are in fact plug and play. In addition, Georgetown will play a leadership role in a new IMS work group focused on driving best practice implementations of enterprise content management, based on open interoperability standards. This new group will be developing best practices and solution recommendations for managing interoperable content coming from three sources: course management systems, publishers, and new media formats, such as podcasts. The Georgetown / Sun Center of Excellence in Scholarly Information Architecture will include partnerships with IMS Contributing Members Sun Microsystems and Apple. Georgetown is a Blackboard customer and a Sakai affiliate.

"The best way to prove interoperability is in real implementations, as witnessed by the customer," said Rob Abel, CEO of IMS Global Learning Consortium. Abel added, "Georgetown will play a key role in helping IMS test interoperability and collect feedback on interoperability from customers. In addition, Georgetown will contribute to the development of recommendations for the many institutions that are currently challenged to manage several sources of digital content in a way that enhances program quality and faculty effectiveness."

"At Georgetown we are interested in enhancing the learning experience of our students and the teaching experience of our faculty", remarked Charles Leonhardt, Principal Technologist at Georgetown. "We believe this is best achieved through a combination of new media and a combination of best-of-breed products that cross commercial and open source initiatives. We have found that IMS has created a unique atmosphere for collaboration in service to the best return across all sources of innovation."

About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS/GLC is the leading advocacy group encouraging the growth and impact of learning technology worldwide. IMS/GLC is a global, nonprofit, member organization that provides leadership in shaping and growing the learning industry through community development of standards, promotion of innovation, and research into best practices. For more information visit www.imsglobal.org.

For More Information
Contact: Lisa Mattson lisa@imsglobal.org
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