OneRoster 1.2 Standard
Specification Overview. (Start Here)
Abstract
The IMS OneRoster (OR) standard addresses the exchange of student data (primarily about people, courses, enrollments and grades) between different educational systems for the specific needs of K-12. The primary use-case is the exchange of data between a Student Information System (SIS) and Learning Management System (LMS). In OR 1.2, the service has been split into three core services:
Introduction
The IMS OneRoster©(OR) specification supports securely sharing class rosters and related data between a student information system (SIS) and any other system, typically a content application or learning information system (LMS). The OneRoster standard supports spreadsheet-style (CSV) export-import as well as direct system exchanges using REST APIs. With OneRoster, schools pave the way for digital resources for teaching and learning and eliminate problems before they happen.
Teachers, institutional technical administrators, and suppliers all benefit when OneRoster integrations are implemented. Anyone who takes part in the management of the many and diverse tools and technologies in schools and districts benefit from the consistency and standardization offered by the OneRoster standard.
Status of this document
This document is in IMS Final release status, meaning the technical specification is also in Final release status. IMS members are currently working towards successful completion of conformance certification.
IMS strongly encourages its members and the community to provide feedback to continue the evolution and improvement of the OneRoster standard. To join the IMS developer and conformance certification community focused on OneRoster and the other related IMS standards please visit the IMS EduERP alliance online here: https://www.imsglobal.org/lis/alliance.html
Where Can I Get Help?
If you have questions or need help with implementing OneRoster or achieving conformance certification, here are some available resources:
- Public Forum - for all parties interested in OneRoster.
- OneRoster Support - for EduERP Alliance, Affiliate, and Contributing Members.
- OneRoster Developer FAQs - series of articles published by the IMS staff answering frequently asked implementation questions.
- IMS Contributing Members have access to private GitHub repositories and a Slack channel for OneRoster Project Group discussions and collaborations. Contact an IMS staff member to gain access.
Conformance Certificattion
IMS offers a process for testing the conformance of products using the IMS certification test suite. Certification designates passing a set of tests that verify the standard has been implemented correctly and guarantees a product’s interoperability across hundreds of other certified products. The OneRoster 1.2 Conformance Certification Guide 1EdTech OneRoster 1.2 Conformance and Certification Final Release 1.0 provides details about the testing process, requirements, and how to get started.
Conformance certification is much better than claims of “compliance," since the only way IMS can guarantee interoperability is by obtaining certification for the latest version of the standard. Only products listed in the official IMS Certified Product Directory can claim conformance certification. IMS certification provides the assurance that a solution will integrate securely and seamlessly into an institution's digital learning ecosystem.
In order to become certified a paid IMS membership is necessary. Here's why: while conformance certification provides a "seal" for passing prescribed tests it is much more than that. It is a commitment by a supplier to the IMS community for continuous support for achieving "plug and play" integration. Certification implies ongoing community commitment to resolve problems, revise implementations and retest as need. For that reason, only IMS Contributing Members, Affiliate Members and Alliance members are eligible to apply for conformance certification. Details and benefits of membership are listed at https://www.imsglobal.org/imsmembership.html.
As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words MAY, MUST, MUST NOT, OPTIONAL, RECOMMENDED, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, and SHOULD NOT in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
An implementation of this specification that fails to implement a MUST/REQUIRED/SHALL requirement or fails to abide by a MUST NOT/SHALL NOT prohibition is considered nonconformant. SHOULD/SHOULD NOT/RECOMMENDED statements constitute a best practice. Ignoring a best practice does not violate conformance but a decision to disregard such guidance should be carefully considered. MAY/OPTIONAL statements indicate that implementers are entirely free to choose whether or not to implement the option.
Product Directory Listing
The IMS Certified Product Directory is the official listing of products that have passed 1EdTech conformance certification testing. Products that are listed in this directory are guaranteed to meet the IMS standards for which they have passed testing. If you experience an integration issue with a product listed here, IMS will work with the supplier to resolve the problem. If a product is NOT listed here it has either not passed IMS testing or its certification has expired.
Acronyms
The following acronyms are used in this document
- AfA PNP
- Access for All Personal Needs and Preferences
- BOM
- Byte Order Mark
- CEDS
- Common Education Data Standards
- CSV
- Comma Separated Values
- GUID
- Globally Unique Identifier
- IETF
- Internet Engineering Task Force
- JSON
- JavaScript Object Notation
- LDAP
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
- LMS
- Learning Management System
- LTI
- Learning Tools Interoperability
- NCES
- National Center for Educational Statistics
- OR
- OneRoster
- ORCA
- OneRoster Consumer API
- REST
- Representational State Transfer
- RFC
- Request For Comment
- SIS
- Student Information System
- TLS
- Transaction Layer Security
- UTF
- Unicode Transformation Format
- UUID
- Universally Unique Identifier
Specification
The OneRoster (OR) v1p2 Standard documentation is split by it's services and transport protocols. For REST implementations this is split into an information model document and a REST binding document. For CSV implementations there is one document that describes the data and file structure for CSV file exchange. The information model documents describe the data dictionary and logical data model for the service. The REST binding documents describe the serialization and endpoint definitions for the service. There is also a formal profile for the Gradebook service that enables hierarchical assessments outside of a required class context.
REST Documents
- Rostering Service Documents
- Gradebook Service Documents
- Resource Service Documents
CSV Documents
Supporting Documents
- 1EdTech OneRoster 1.2 Implementation Guide Final Release 1.0
- 1EdTech OneRoster 1.2 Conformance and Certification Final Release 1.0
OneRoster Interoperability Architecture
Like all IMS specifications, the OneRoster specification describes data in motion i.e. the exchange of information achieved using agreed interoperability. For OneRoster the information being exchanged is contained in three groups:
- Class Rosters - the set of people enrolled on a class at a site and for a set period;
- Gradebooks - the data is broken into results, lineItems (a set of results) and categories (a set of lineItems).
- Resources - to identify the set of resources that are required for a class and/or a course;
OneRoster 1.2 serves as a major upgrade to OneRoster 1.1. This version to the educational content, tool and platform rostering standard and consists of three distinct services available in previous revisions. A brief list of features supported in OneRoster 1.2 are:
-
Simplification of workflows by separation into 3 distinct services:
-
Multiple transfer options to support multiple system requirements. OneRoster supports transmission through spreadsheet-style CSV templates or through system to system data exchange (REST API)
-
Support of sort, filter, and field selection
OneRoster Process Flow
OneRoster defines two roles, a Provider and a Consumer. Technical administrators or other users of the CSV will export from the Provider system such as a student information system and import to a consumer system, such as an LMS or a digital text. REST API-based products adopt the same concepts but users are not handling files directly since the exchange is system-to-system.
Additional Product Considerations
When selecting products it is very important to understand what OneRoster product type you are considering purchasing. Will the product be a OneRoster Provider or a OneRoster Consumer? Or is the product performing an Aggregator service, which is a Consumer of data from one system and Provider of that data to another system? An Aggregator service usually performs additional value-added services to help make the onboarding and enrollment of students in multiple platforms easier and more efficient. Because of their intermediary role, to be compliant, Aggregator product types must be certified as both Consumers and Providers.
IP Disclosures
The following participating organizations have made explicit license commitments to this specification:
| Organization Name | Date election made | Necessary claims | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthology Inc. | 2022-08-10 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
| D2L | 2022-07-21 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
| Gwinnett County Public Schools | 2022-07-22 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
| Infinite Campus Inc. | 2022-07-25 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
| Microsoft Corporation | 2022-08-08 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
| SameGoal Inc. | 2022-07-21 | No | RF RAND (Required & Optional Elements) |
List of Contributors
The following individuals contributed to the development of this document:
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Eric Adams | Instructure | |
| Barry Brahier | Infinite Campus | |
| Tom Clark | Pearson | |
| Linda Feng | Unicon | |
| Viktor Haag | Desire2Learn | |
| Richard Heim | LearningMate | |
| Tom Ingram | Escambia County School District | |
| Oxana Jurosevic | Instructure | |
| Jong Kim | Pearson | |
| Andrew Kuritzky | Edmentum | |
| David Mayes | Gwinnett County Schools | |
| Joshua McGhee | 1EdTech | Editor |
| Phil Nicholls | 1EdTech | |
| Padraig O'hiceadha | HMH | |
| James Perreault | FLVS | |
| Patrick Porter | Houston ISD | |
| Matt Richards | Infinite Campus | Co-Chair |
| Wendy Riedy | Microsoft | |
| Kurt Rompot | Pearson | |
| Upendra Penegalapati | Pearson | |
| Gabrielle Sanderson | Illuminate Education | |
| Colin Smythe | 1EdTech | Editor |
| Konrad Stimeling | Stride | |
| Aditya Subramaniam | Schoology | |
| Matt Vella | Schoology | |
| TJ Vering | Microsoft | |
| Mark Walls | Gwinnett County Schools |
Changelog
Changelog entries are not listed yet.
Revision History
| Version | Doc Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| OneRoster 1.2 Candidate Final Public | 2021-07-01 | First release of OneRoster 1.2 Candidate Final Public. | |
| OneRoster 1.2 Candidate Final Public | 2022-06-06 | OneRoster 1.2 first final release. | |
| OneRoster 1.2 Final | 2022-09-19 | OneRoster 1.2 Final Release . |
IPR and Distribution Notices
Recipients of this document are requested to submit, with their comments, notification of any relevant patent claims or other intellectual property rights of which they may be aware that might be infringed by any implementation of the specification set forth in this document, and to provide supporting documentation.
1EdTech takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on 1EdTech's procedures with respect to rights in 1EdTech specifications can be found at the 1EdTech Intellectual Property Rights web page: https://www.1edtech.org/ip.
Copyright © 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Use of this specification to develop products or services is governed by the license with 1EdTech found on the 1EdTech website: https://www.1edtech.org/standards/specification-license.
Permission is granted to all parties to use excerpts from this document as needed in producing requests for proposals.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by 1EdTech or its successors or assigns.
THIS SPECIFICATION IS BEING OFFERED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, AND IN PARTICULAR, ANY WARRANTY OF NONINFRINGEMENT IS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. ANY USE OF THIS SPECIFICATION SHALL BE MADE ENTIRELY AT THE IMPLEMENTER'S OWN RISK, AND NEITHER THE CONSORTIUM, NOR ANY OF ITS MEMBERS OR SUBMITTERS, SHALL HAVE ANY LIABILITY WHATSOEVER TO ANY IMPLEMENTER OR THIRD PARTY FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY NATURE WHATSOEVER, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS SPECIFICATION.
Trademark information: https://www.1edtech.org/about/legal/trademarks