Learning technology standards adoption – how to improve process and product legitimacy

Standardisation of learning technologies as a co-ordinated design activity needs legitimacy to attract the necessary support from its stakeholders. This paper identifies the need for a theoretical model of such standardisation and offers an analysis of two pivotal concepts in such a theory, process legitimacy and product legitimacy. Comparing the development of two specifications from Norway and Britain the authors proposes a reframing of an existing theory of input and output legitimacy, focusing more on the technical characteristics and the enactment status of the standard at hand. 1