Learning Objects

1.http://ocw.usu.edu/instructional-technology-learning-sciences/advanced-topics-in-learning-object-design-and-reuse/Textbook.html

(no longer available)

2. Wisconsin Online Resource Center (WORC):3. Using O2 to Overcome Learning Objects Limitations, a paper from “Learning Objects 2003 Symposium“

Definition of Learning Object

• There are many of it …

What is Learning Object?

• “Any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning”– IEEE 1484.12.1-2002, 15 July 2002, Draft

Standard for Learning Object Metadata, IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)

What is Learning Object?

• "modular digital resources, uniquely identified and metatagged, that can be used to support learning" – National Learning Infrastructure Initiative

What is Learning Object?

• Any digital resource that can be reused to support learning"  – David A. Wiley, "Connecting Learning

Objects to Instructional Design Theory" 

What is Learning Object?

• Adapted from the Wisconsin Online Resource Center (WORC): – Learning objects are much smaller units of

learning, typically ranging from 2 minutes to 15 minutes. 

– Are self-contained   – Are reusable– Can be aggregated – Are tagged with metadata

Recall … (on SCORM)

Context of LO & Reusability

Context of LO & Reusability

Professor David Wiley

Advanced Topics in Learning Object Design & Reuse

(How Big Should a Learning Object Be?) it depends

The fundamental tension between using and reusing

The Reusability Paradox

• Some of the things you do to make a learning object more effective today make it harder to reuse tomorrow.

• … the designing you do to make a learning object work well in one instructional situation may actually keep it from working in another.

Predicting context in the future?

• … Just how exactly is one supposed to design materials to be as effective as possible in a future scenario whose nature is unknown? – If you don't know the context of that future aud

ience of learners, how can you match their context in your examples? How can you be sure to use the right spice?

Pull out all the context

• Perhaps you just leave all the context out of your instruction.

However …

• … pulling out all the context would make the instruction much less effective ... – Those examples and pictures and little details

are what help people connect instruction to their lives.

– If we're not going to have that context, why not just sell everyone encyclopedias?

Personalization & Learner’s Context

• Personalization? – The things you do to make a learner feel like t

he instruction is actually relevant to them, instead of dry encyclopedia info.

– It's about understanding the context of the learner and meeting them there, speaking their language, and using their examples. …

Personalization & Learner’s Context

• The difference between a great teacher and a boring one is how much spice they add to the content. – Anybody can stand up there and read their lec

ture notes or the encyclopedia entry. – The amazing teachers are the ones who can

connect the content to your life, show you how it actually affects you and is useful to you, and make you see why you should care.

Context is important

• Just what is context? – We've been talking about context and how im

portant context is for a while now, but we have yet to really talk about context specifically.

Examples

Dialogues and Interpretation

• (Whining) Come on Mom, can't I please go out with my friends tonight?

• No!

Dialogues and Interpretation

• I'm sorry to call so late madam, but there's been a serious accident involving your husband.

• No!

Dialogues and Interpretation

• (In a news anchor voice) A report of a multi-billion dollar study released by the federal government today suggests that eating less and exercising more can result in significant weight loss.

• No!

How do you know what "No!" means in each case?

• By the words that came before. – So this single, commonplace word can have

multiple meanings, and the only way we can determine which meaning we are supposed to understand with any given use is by the context of the conversation in which the use occurs.

What does this mean?

• So what does this have to do with learning objects? – Is it that the meaning of a fairly straightforwar

d learning object may change depending on the other learning objects it is used together with?

How about changing the response?

• I'm sorry to call so late madam, but there's been a serious accident involving your husband.

• Oh please don't let it be true!– That would certainly have left little room for int

erpretation– the more words used, the less room is left ope

n for interpretation

More words, more context

• The more words you use, the more context you add, the more specific you make the suggested meaning, the harder it may be to get that highly-specified, concretized thing to feel like it really fits with any other piece of content?

Context can work both way …

• We've said that more context can make instruction more effective.

• We've also said that more context can get in the way of reusability.

How big should a learning object be?

• Do you begin to understand why the answer to the question "how big should a learning object be?" is "it depends" ?

Back to context issue …

• … If every bit of instructional media had to be somehow tailored for each individual who used it? What would happen to the textbook industry?

Context and Textbooks

• But … you don't buy a textbook, take it home, and learn calculus. You take it home, read it, only get half of it, and then go to class so that a professor *can* tailor it for you. – Huh …, no professor I ever had did anythin

g with my textbooks...

Role of professor …

• You're missing the point. – When the textbook explains a principle one w

ay, and you don't get it, you ask your professor. He then provides a *different* explanation, one he thinks more likely to speak to you. One you'll hopefully have a better chance of understanding.

Higher reusability Less development time?

• … The ability to reuse materials should mean shorter development times...

• (but) … everyone is ignoring the obvious problems, the hidden costs, talking about how wonderful this component-based approach is ... – Well, we heard the same promises years an

d years ago in computer programming. …

OO and reusability

• Object-oriented approaches would facilitate reusability of code, and this would shorten development times, and this would save money, etc., etc. – Well, it's fairly well agreed that the emperor ha

s no clothes.

OO and reusability

• Sites like OOP Criticism are increasingly popular.

• I'm not sure why we should expect learning objects to be any more successful than OOP

Hidden cost …

• Does your company have a standard process they follow for designing and developing instruction? Has it ever changed, or been updated? – Yes. .. we switched from doing a lot of Author

ware / Toolbook authoring for CDs, and started doing everything for the Internet. The dev team is getting into "AJAX" now, but it hasn't affected the design process a lot.

Hidden cost …

• When you switched platforms from Authorware to the Internet, was it a large change? How long did it take? – Oh it was painful, I can tell you that right now

…

Hidden cost …

• We were months in preparing the process, another two weeks in retraining the designers and developers (and we actually lost a few developers who couldn't make the switch), and then everything was significantly slower for a few months. … – the business people who had been writing RFP respo

nses from the CD-ROM perspective for so long that they couldn't get used to the selling points of our new approach.

Hidden cost …

• But the costs weren't just in changing the process. … – I know we're going to talk standards eventuall

y, …, but doing metadata for all our new materials takes *forever*.

– Everyday there is someone whining about how they went to school to develop cool educational materials, not fill up the card catalog ...

Time spends on metadata …

• How long does it really take to create a metadata entry for an object? – If we're lucky; I should say if we do things acc

ording to process, it only adds about 15 minutes per object.

Time spends on metadata …

• At 15 minutes per object, you can do four in an hour, a little over 4000 objects... – … just the metadata part of the learning objec

ts approach adds over 1000 hours to the project.

Is LO really worth the efforts?

• ... Going to all the effort of creating these reusable objects is worth it if you have either "lots" of people to train or "lots" of training to create. – Cisco is always releasing new products world

wide… It's a huge number of people, and a huge amount of training for both sales and support.

Internal structure of LO

• You might think about it as the architecture of learning objects.

Good thing about common architecture

• ... When the learning objects all share a common architecture - when we know exactly what we can expect to find in a learning object - it becomes possible to write all sorts of systems that can automatically use and reuse learning objects.

Good thing about common architecture

• And then all the arguments in favor of intelligent tutoring systems apply to the learning objects approach. – The automated system can keep perfect track

of every learner's progress.

But …

• … How did we get from sharing a common architecture to having intelligent tutoring systems?

Because …

• … when I know what kind of data I will find inside an object, and how it will be formatted, then I can write algorithms that consume the data and do useful things with them.

Back to reality …

• How many learning objects are there in the world today that have been developed according to this standard architecture? – None, of course, since no such standard arc

hitecture exists, strictly speaking.

What about SCORM?

• the ADL's SCORM describes a minimal architecture an object must conform with in order to be considered a sharable content object (SCO). – The SCO must have an interface by which it can com

municate with a learning management system, in order to report things like time spent on the object and scores made on exams.

• Right, a SCORM wrapper. But that has almost nothing to do with the internal structure of the content …

SCORM might be the beginning

• SCORM is the closest standard we have to the learning object architecture standard

Standard architecture of LO?

• Well, if there is no standard architecture, there can't be any learning objects that conform to it. – And since the consensus-based standards pr

ocess is famous for being glacially slow there is very little chance that such a standard will exist any time soon.

What's the big deal about having automated systems assemble content?

• … (Why not) let people - individuals - take what they need and leave the rest. – They'll provide the context and the sequencin

g. Who needs a robot to assemble content and spoon-feed it?

What's the big deal about having automated systems assemble content?

• That assumes that learners can in fact decide what they need to learn and choose the most appropriate materials. – The research shows that while high-ability, sel

f-directed learners like us can do that most of the time, there are a lot of folks that need to be spoon-fed.

• Individualized instruction

Currently, how do you reuse existing material?

• ... Before beginning production of any of these materials, the development team looks through our catalog to see if any materials like those specified already exist. – If they do, we just reuse those rather than cre

ating new materials.

Currently, how do you reuse existing material?

• Well, more often than not, we end up tinkering with the thing to make it fit into the course better. (tinker: 粗修 )

How to reuse existing material?

• What do you mean by "fit better?" – Well, if we develop some training for the Arm

y, and then build the same training for the Air Force, it would be nice to have people in the pictures wearing blue uniforms instead of green, right?

Oh boy ...

• My manager's not going to be happy to hear about this. He's got it in his head that you can develop learning objects that a computer can just reuse.

“reusing” versus “repurposing”

• … there's something very different about dropping an object into a sequence and having to "tinker" with it first. – There are some people who refer to this differ

ence as "reusing" versus "repurposing"

Learning Objects Limitations

Using O2 to Overcome Learning Objects Limitations

By David Wiley et alO2: A project-based model of learning object

use

Issues in Adopting Learning Objects

• Decontextualized Learning

• Megaphone not Mediator

• Scaling through Automation

• Databanking Education

• Specially Designed for Reusability

• The Reusability Paradox

• The Intellectual Property Pit

名辭解釋• Learning Object : 學習物件

– 例如 , 我有一個地球儀 , 另一個小球作為月亮 , 在此 , “ 地球儀” 與 “小球” 分別為 2 個學習物件

• Instructional Design : 教學設計– 我們如何利用前述 “地球儀” 與 “小球” 2

個學習物件來設計某個說明地球與月亮關係的 “課程” or “ 教材”

Decontextualized Learning

• 去情境化學習– 學習物件愈能夠 “去情境化” , 愈能提昇

“ Reusability”– 這與目前主流教學設計理論 or 策略悖離

• social context” (Vygotsky, 1981); “cultural, historical, and institutional setting” (e.g., Wertsch, 1991), and “situatedness”

• 問題 : 如何在 Learning Objects 已去情境化前提下 , 做情境式教學設計 ?

Megaphone not Mediator

• 擴音器 , 而非調節 ( 中介 ) 者– Learning Objects 有點像是 Instructor 的 “擴音器”

( 意思是 Instructor 將其知識切成一塊塊 , 包裝後置於某處 , 讓遠比課堂上更多的學習者取用 , 就像擴音器一般 )

– 然而 , 這樣的 Learning Objects 在諸如 Case-based or Problem-based learning 的教學策略下並不盡適用

• 問題 : 如何設計 LOs, 使其作為 Problem-solving 的 “中介者” ( 而非僅是單純知識的傳達者 )

Scaling through Automation

• LO-based 自動化課程設計使問題更糟 – 人們宣稱的 Learning Objects based

eLearning 系統的一個好處是 “自動化課程設計” personalized for individual learners (“anywhere anytime”, Indeed saves a lot of time ...)

– 但封閉地與電腦互動的學習很可能會背離於現今所謂 “合作學習” , “ 學習者社群” 或 “師徒制” 等的教學策略

DataBanking Education• 銀行式教育

– 有錢人 ( 專家教師 ) 將錢 ( 知識 ) 存入銀行 ( 被動 & 無知的學習者 )

• riches of knowledge were deposited into the empty minds of passive learners by expert teachers

– 將 Learning Objects 儲存於資料庫 , 再經由某種方法自動地被選取後 , 傳遞給學習者 , 其實十足就是上述所謂 DataBanking Education

– 因此 , 學習者只能被動地接受所謂 “ One-World’s View”, 而少了 experience alternatives, hear the stories of others, or ask meaningful questions 的機會

Specially Designed for Reusability

• 需經過特殊設計方能達到重覆使用的目標– 例如需考量 Learning Object 的大小

(granularity), 去情境化 , 再經過特殊 “包裝”• 簡單地說 : “ 煩 ( 繁 ) 啦 !”

The Reusability Paradox

• 重覆使用的矛盾 ( 似是而非 )– 選擇可重覆使用的學習物件 , 重組後 , 就真的

成為一個有意義的課程嗎 ?• 這其中可能會有陷阱 , 舉人際溝通為例 , 一句 “你

很好ㄚ” , 可能會因前後文不同而有不同意義 , 那某個學習物件會否因為其前後搭配之學習物件不同而導致學習者之解讀差異 ?

The Intellectual Property Pit

• 智慧財產的陷阱– 任何東東 ( 文章 , 圖片 , 音樂 or 影片 ), 只要

上網 , 就幾乎形同 “毫無智慧財產”– The commercial content industries have

learned the hard way that, despite rights management attempts, digital content will make its way into free distribution.