Explore implementing support for Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE)

CASE Standards refer to Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE) which is an open technical standard developed by the 1EdTech Consortium (formerly IMS Global Learning Consortium).

What CASE Standards Aim to Do:

The primary goal of CASE is to create a standardized way to describe, organize, and exchange learning standards, competencies, and learning objectives digitally. Think of it as a universal language for academic standards.

Before CASE, various educational organizations, states, districts, and content providers each had their own ways of documenting and publishing their learning standards (e.g., Common Core, state-specific standards, curriculum frameworks). This led to:

• Interoperability challenges: It was difficult for different educational systems (LMS, SIS, assessment platforms, content providers) to understand, align with, and share these diverse sets of standards.

• Manual effort: Aligning content or assessments to standards often involved tedious manual mapping.

• Lack of granularity: Standards were often published as static documents, making it hard to link to specific, granular learning objectives.

Key Features and Benefits of CASE:

1. Digital Representation: CASE provides a common data model and associated APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for representing standards and competencies in a machine-readable format.

2. Granularity: It allows for breaking down broad standards into more specific, measurable learning objectives or "competencies."

3. Relationships: CASE enables the definition of relationships between different standards or competencies (e.g., prerequisite, narrower/broader, equivalent).

4. Discovery: It facilitates the discovery and use of relevant standards by various educational tools and platforms.

5. Interoperability: This is the core benefit. When systems implement CASE, they can seamlessly:

   • Import/Export Standards: Easily exchange standards data.

   • Align Content: Content providers can tag their resources to specific CASE-compliant standards.

   • Track Progress: Learning platforms can track student mastery of standards.

   • Develop Assessments: Assessment tools can be built to evaluate specific standards.

6. Transparency: Provides a clear, unambiguous way to articulate learning expectations.

7. Efficiency: Reduces the manual effort involved in managing and aligning standards across the ecosystem.

How it Works (Simplified):

At its heart, CASE uses a hierarchical structure to define standards frameworks. Each standard or competency is given a unique identifier (URI/UUID). Tools can then reference these identifiers to show alignment.

Who Uses CASE Standards?

• State Departments of Education: To publish their state learning standards.

• Curriculum Publishers: To tag their instructional materials to relevant standards.

• Assessment Providers: To align their assessments with specific learning objectives.

• Learning Management Systems (LMS): To import standards and allow teachers to align assignments.

• Student Information Systems (SIS): To manage and track student progress against standards.

• Badging and Credentialing Platforms: To define and issue micro-credentials based on demonstrated competencies.

In essence, CASE standards are crucial for building a truly interoperable digital learning ecosystem where learning objectives, content, and assessments can be seamlessly connected and understood across different platforms.