MACE-Dir sponsored work in the area of courses and course enrollments a few years ago. The CourseID Working Group conducted the effort and produced an initial set of recommendations in the form of an information model, an LDAP object class and a couple of attributes (see the table at the top of http://middleware.internet2.edu/courseID/).
At the time the group concluded its first round of work in early 2005, the group felt that there was not enough real practice in the world yet, and further elaboration of the model at that time would be premature. Now that situation has changed. IMS Global Learning Consortium, a major standards setting body for student records and learning management systems, has chartered work to produce version 2.0 of their Enterprise Services Specification (see http://www.imsglobal.org/getpdf.cfm?DocName=ESv2p0Charter.pdf. The IMS Project Group Charter names Linda Feng of Oracle as chair, with participation from Blackboard, Desire2Learn, DEST, JISC/CETIS, Oracle, Informs and SAKAI (represented by UC Berkeley). We know that one of the project members, Michael Feldstein, of Oracle, knows of the eduCourse work. UW-Madison is tied into this IMS initiative on the grounds that it will have a big impact on the Curriculum and Course Roster Information Service project underway there.
If MACE-Dir and friends would like to re-engage in the course information modeling dialogue, now is the time. This page will be the home for coordinated information on efforts in various corners of the globe that have bearing on this issue. Contribute your ideas and news items, please.