Description:
Consider the phrase 'developing and implementing computer-based resources to support education'. This describes a widespread craft that has been maturing within educational institutions for a long time. In a wide range of scenarios, people working in this area now find themselves adopting various roles and engaging in a variety of challenging activities ranging from technology-oriented development work to audience-oriented implementation work. Within these scenarios the categories of educational objects with which people work are more diverse than ever before and hence include objects like: - low-level software widgets and tools used for developing courseware resources; high-level on-line services provided as part of managing the delivery of courses; collaborative educational networks of facilitators, teachers, and learners operating as virtual universities, global campuses, and so on. This paper offers some categorisation of the various components that populate these scenarios. So, in an arbitrary rather than authoritative framework, the paper highlights some typical roles that people adopt and some kinds of educational objects with which they interact. One of the motives for this tour of roles and objects is that descriptions of scenarios can help practitioners to shed some light on what it means to pursue standards. The need for standards in areas like courseware engineering has long been appreciated by many educationalists and, as the diversity of objects in education continues to grow, significant efforts are finally emerging to address the need for standards.