How can we improve the pedagogical quality of e-learning courses, in an interoperable way, with user-friendly tools? This is the primary focus of the community of people working in the field of learning design and educational modelling. The first step has been the approval of the IMS Learning Design specification (LD) in 2003. With LD it is possible to develop and present advanced e-learning courses embracing adaptive problem-based learning, collaborative learning, learning community approaches, role and game playing methods and peer coaching. It is even possible to record evolving learning events for later reflection and reuse. However, a specification is only a set of documents and not an implementation. For real implementations in practice, a variety of intermediate steps has to be taken, for instance the development of tools and infrastructures, but also the development of a vision how to transform future formal and informal learning using these new tools. In this keynote I will summarize the state-of-the-art of tool development and present a vision of future learning networks for informal and formal competency development using learning design.

Rob Koper is professor of Educational Technology at the Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC) of the Open University of the Netherlands. He is director of learning technologies research & development. He was, among other things, responsible for the development of Educational Modelling Language (EML), currently known as the IMS Learning Design specification (http://www.imsglobal.org). His research focuses on self-organized distributed learning networks for lifelong learning, including the use of software agents, educational semantic web, interoperability specifications and standards. He publishes regularly in journals, current books are: Integrated eLearning, 2004. London: RoutledgeFalmer. (co-edited with W. Jochems and J. van Merrienboer), and Learning Design: A handbook on Modelling and Delivering Networked Education and Training. Heidelberg: Springer (co-edited with Colin Tattersall).