Learning Objects
There are many definitions of 'Learning Objects'. One of the most often quoted comes from the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) who define a Learning Object as 'any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training' (IEEE LTSC, 2002). Examples include online articles, PowerPoint slides, digital images, animations, video clips and simulations.
Learning Objects can be thought of as blocks of content that can be interlinked to produce a course (Duncan, 2003). This method of course building has been compared to building with Lego bricks: blocks of content can be recombined in different ways with other blocks and reused across a number of different courses. This view of building courses is simplistic because it implies that 'teaching' is simply the transmission of blocks of content to students and that 'learning' is the consumption of information. A different metaphor to course building involves viewing educational content and activities as 'atoms' that are combined in particular ways that adhere to rules (Wiley, 2004). In other words, not every educational resource can be linked to every learning activity. You can read more on this perspective from a special edition of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education: Wiley, D. (2004) Commentary on: Downes, S. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2004 (5), Special Issue on the Educational Semantic Web.
See Commentary on: Resource Profiles.
Designing courses in small, reusable chunks may seem intuitive to you if you already reuse and repackage paper based content from several different sources into a single course. On the other hand, assembling a course from a large number of individual resources may seem daunting. One way of making course design easier is to start off by designing simple learning activities with associated resource materials (e.g. an online discussion with associated course readings). A series of learning activities can be linked within a single course design based upon an educational model (Koper, 2003). (You may want to refer to the types of educational models in the Introduction to VLEs section). Each course design can be drawn up as a storyboard: a template that can be reused. This method of course design and planning is outlined later in this section.
If you decide to reuse learning materials, you may quickly discover conflicts between the educational value and the reusability of a resource. In theory, the smaller a resource, the greater the possibility of it being re-used in another educational context (for example an individual image is likely to be more readily reused than an entire course). However, larger resources may have greater educational value (it may be less time consuming to reuse a larger resource, such as a learning activity, rather than to construct a course from its most basic components). Therefore, the optimal size for learning resources is a fine balance between the educational and reusability factors. It is likely to include a number of learning resources linked to a student learning activity (Thorpe et al 2003).
To increase their reusability content, resources should not contain information specific to a particular subject discipline, course or class (Naeve, 1999). This contradicts the way you might normally modify and adapt non-digital resources to fit specific teaching situations (i.e. by contextualizing these materials). One way of tackling this problem is to detach context information from resources, rather than having contextual information as an integral part of a resource. For example, an image of Van Gogh's Sunflowers could be used across a number of subject disciplines. A horticulture tutor may attach context information about the propagation of the flowers. An Art tutor may attach information on about the history of the artist or style of painting and so on. By keeping the context information and resource separate, the image could be reused. The image and information can be hyperlinked through the VLE. Therefore, the context information itself can become a reusable resource that could be made available to other tutors.
