Educational Modelling Language
The real driving force behind EMLs is a belief that current content-driven approaches are too reductionist and just aren't specific enough to education (“Content Packaging could package elephants or ferraris” as one speaker put it).
By reducing study to learning objects and ignoring the teaching and learning methods, the argument is that current approaches will never achieve real interoperability.
“EMLs contain all the logic and content of a learning unit, so it allows for real interoperability and collaboration between institutions and industry” explains Koper, “the logic of interpreting the content is not fully specified. WebCT can't interpret Blackboard and vice versa […] for real interoperability we need an expression of the complete course regardless of the tools used to make or run the course.”