The IMS Global Learning Consortium have announced the launch of a new project that will produce a community source testing tool for the Common Cartridge (CC) format. JISC along with ANGEL Learning, eCollege, McGraw-Hill, Microsoft, The Open University United Kingdom, Pearson Education and Ucompass.com have agreed to provide initial funding for the project.

“A number of organizations have recognized the community benefit in having a common format for both publisher-sourced materials and in-house production by learning institutions,” said Rob Abel of IMS. “I’m delighted to announce that such is the level of commitment to this goal, nine organizations have already stepped forward to fund and participate in a project to develop a cartridge testing tool that will be distributed free-of-charge by the CC Alliance.”

More information about the Cartridge Alliance is available @ http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/alliance.html

We will keep you informed of developments of this tool and the joint Assessment and EC SIG meeting on 19th February will include presentations from a number CC implementers including the OU and a community update from CETIS from the IMS quarterly meeting which takes place the week before.