Teaching with Learning Objects and then reusing them

1
Teaching with Learning Objects and then reusing
them

• Chris Pegler
• IET, The Open University
• c.a.pegler_at_open.ac.uk

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Introducing H806

• Learning in the Connected Economy - first cohort
  1st March 9th October 2003
• 55 students in 18 countries drawn from both
  private and public sector
• Online course using text and audio conferencing,
  instant messaging, blogging, webcasts, personal
  webspace and online databases
• Masters-level course accredited by The Open
  University as part of the MA in Online and
  Distance Education

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Whats new about all this?

• First UKEU pilot course (lots of uncertainty,
  developing for an unknown platform)
• Academic partnership with Cambridge University -
  first OpenCambridge course
• New authoring team drawn from across the OU and
  new consultants from beyond the OU
• A 60pt assessed fast-track course written
  entirely as learning objects
• Extensive reuse of H806 course material within
  the first year

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The benefits to H806 of learning objects

• Freedom for the course team to
• - Accommodate different voices and approaches
• - Offer students more choice
• - Contain riskiness re. subject matter or
  technologies
• - Plan, revise and update the course quickly
• Freedom for the student to
• - Plan study flexibly around interests, time and
  access
• - Omit learning objects without knock-on effects
• - Get lost, overloaded, confused

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Operational advantages were clear

• Quick agreement (ability to make later changes)
• Improved communication (content available online
  quickly to all parties)
• Easier to use external authors (exact
  specification, no boundary issues)
• Parallel development (self-sufficiency allowed
  out-of-synch progress)
• Controlled risk-taking (easier to replace things
  that dont work)
• Future re-versioning (active consideration as we
  were writing it)

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Learning design challenges for H806

• Loss of educational narrative
• Ensuring sufficient student coverage of course
  content
• Balancing student interaction with flexibility in
  study patterns
• Balancing variety in objects with the need for a
  cohesive approach
• Allowing for academic progression.

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H806 met those challenges by

• Careful structuring of the course material
• Appropriate authoring techniques
• Use of assessment
• Embedding objects in a broader context

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How we tried to meet those challenges
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1 Loss of educational narrative
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More about narrative objects

• Learning objects that dont obey the rules but
  it is clear how and where the rules are broken
• They refer to other learning objects so they have
  a reuse potential of zero (or very close)
• For H806 these acted as guide, context or
  theme-building objects (on another platform a
  richer mortar (Wiley, 2003) could replace them)
• Metadata identifies these special case objects
• Not strictly reusable, but versionable

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Looked at another way
Narrative objects that refer to others but not to
each other
Learning objects of varying types
Tutor support, peer support, course team
discussion, assessment, etc
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2 Sufficiency of student coverage
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3 Balancing interaction and flexibility
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4 Balancing variety with cohesion
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5 Progression through the course
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H806 03 is now over what happened?

• Retention rate slightly lower
• Performance in final portfolio assessment in line
  with continuous assessment
• Student satisfaction was very high
• Students were not conscious of LO use in this
  course
• Students who were faced with time crises
  exercised choice, others tried to study everything

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Technical bits Metadata

• First author input metadata in minimal fashion
  directly into LCMS
• Unfriendly LCMS interface made this experience
  unnecessarily stressful
• Second author entered metadata into a spreadsheet
  and cut and pasted
• This worked only slightly better but at least we
  have the metadata entries ourselves
• Although we havent been able to reuse it

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Technical bits Learning design

• Martin Weller has mapped two learning objects
  from H806 using Learning Design
• If you want to see what this looks like please
  email me (c.a.pegler_at_open.ac.uk) for a copy of
  Martins write-up of this

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Reuse expectations and reality

• Expected three of four blocks could be marketed
  separately. Not happened yet
• Oct 2003 T186 was launched (H806 content in a
  10pt course). Activities were rewritten.
• Nov 2003 revised H850 launched reusing some H806
  content and versioning some H850 print as online
  learning objects
• Dec 2003 regional staff development based on a
  H806 learning object wrapped with others
• Spring 2004 piloting Hot Topics, an OU-wide CPD
  series based on H806 learning objects

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Practical lessons drawn from H806

• Significant benefits in using learning object
  approaches to develop content.
• Production (versioning) benefits are more readily
  realisable (in T186, H850 and CPD).
• Small size and wide variety may not be most
  significant influences on reusability.
• Writing learning objects from scratch was easier
  and more rewarding than we anticipated.
• Students did not recognise the impact of learning
  objects, or perceived it as positive

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What we will do differently next time

• Induction will help students to recognise that
  they can and should make choices
• Narrative objects will offer more guidance
• Archive of course will be offered to students to
  refer to and fill in the gaps
• New learning objects may be offered to alumni in
  a CPD package
• Exploring learning objects within OU-wide Course
  Models Review and VLE projects

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A couple of papers

• Putting the pieces together What working with
  learning objects means for the educator
  (eLearninternational, Edinburgh, Feb 2003)
  http//iet.open.ac.uk/pp/c.a.pegler/ukeu/edinburgh
  .doc
• Working with learning objects - some pedagogical
  suggestions (ALT-C, Sheffield, Sept 2003)
  http//iet.open.ac.uk/pp/c.a.pegler/ukeu/ALTC_2003
  .doc