A Brief Look at Learning Objects and Repositories

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A Brief Look at Learning Objectsand Repositories

• Susie Henderson
• Associate Director
• Florida Distance Learning Consortium

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What do we knowtoday?

• 85 of colleges offered online courses in 2002
• Development costs for each course
• 4,000 to gt 100,000
• gt 1,000,000 for British Open University
• Same or similar course developed by
• Multiple institutions within a state
• Thousands of institutions within the US
• Tens of thousand institutions worldwide

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What do we knowtoday?

• Difficult to share an entire course whether
  on-campus or on-line
• Within a course, similar or same concepts, ideas,
  theories, etc. are taught across institutions and
  delivery methods
• Easier to share smaller, common pieces of a
  course developed into high quality multimedia
  learning activities or digital assets, or,
  learning objects (LOs)
• LOs allow faculty to organize and customize
  course materials

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Learning Objects - Definition

• A learning object is "any digital entity designed
  to meet a specific learning outcome that can be
  reused to support learning". (Co-operative
  Learning Object Exchange)
• See Example Powers of 10

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Learning Objects Characteristics

• Small enough to remove context while big enough
  to supply meaning
• Self contained
• Reusable
• Can be aggregated
• Tagged with metadata
• Description of LO content and keywords
• Imagine a library with a card catalog (or
  without!)

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A Learning Object doesnt exist in a vacuum

• The successful use of LOs requires an
  interdependent system based on
• SCORM
• Collection of international standards for
  e-learning that enables interoperability,
  accessibility and reusability of Web-based
  learning content.
• Demonstrated standards conformance of vendor
  products
• Learning content management system (LCMS) that
  references or stores, tracks, and delivers
  content
• Repository Software
• LO Development Tools i.e. D2L, RoboDemo,
  Dreamweaver, Director, Flash

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Who will benefit from Learning Objects?

• The Student
• Personalized instruction and assessment
• The College
• Learning objects are reusable therefore save time
  and money
• Can meet a variety of student needs
• The Instructor
• Saving time and energy
• Easy to cooperate with other instructors
• Provide students what they need

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More Advantages of Learning Objects

• Instructors can provide a flexible course that
  can be individualized for each learner.
• Learners can choose their own learning goals and
  assemble a personally relevant course.
• CONVERGENCE of online and on-campus course
  development resulting in lower development costs

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If Learning Objects are so great, why have we not
heard about them?

• The concept of a traditional course has dominated
  formal education for the last two centuries
• Learning objects require substantial computing
  power, software tools and network infrastructure
  that was not available even several years ago
• Driven by SCORM specifications, international
  standards are just now being approved for
  e-learning to effectively utilize LOs

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Developing the Orange Grove in Florida

• Establish now
• Small multi-sector (k-20) planning committee
• Meta-tagging schema committees for system and
  sectors
• Prototype faculty committee
• Bottleneck Courses
• MAT 1033 and MAT 1065
• Identify course choke points
• Purchase, develop or locate existing learning
  objects for those choke points
• Innovation Diffusion Plan including information
  and training
• Process to evaluate successes and problems of the
  program for improvement