The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

Companion ConcurrentSession

• Eduprise: A Collegis Eduprise Company – David McArthur, Senior Consultant

• The Ohio State University – Susan Metros, Deputy CIO & Professor

• University of Arizona– Veronica Diaz, Research Associate– Beth Harrison, Faculty, East Asian Studies – Amy Metcalfe, Research Associate

• University of Tennessee – Kathleen Bennett, Web Instructional Technologist

http://www.educause.edu/nlii/keythemes/

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

What are learning objects?

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

Modular digital resources, uniquely identified, metadata tagged, of any size and type, free or not, reviewed or not, connected or not.(From iLumina):

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

What are learning objects?

Often resources managed by and accessed through digital libraries, such as MERLOT, SMETE, iLumina and (soon) NSDL

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

What are the right questions for institutions to ask?

1. Who will populate and maintain the repositories?

1. Who will tag the content?

2. How will learning objects align with learning management systems?

3. How will faculty and students react to a pedagogical shift towards LOs?

4. How can faculty development staff model change to create and support the use of LOs?

5. How will institutions incite faculty, support development, protect intellectual property, and fund this activity?

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

What are the right questions for institutions to ask?

1. Who will populate and maintain the repositories?

2. Who will tag the content?

2a. Where can you find LOs (outside your institution)?

3. How will LOs align with learning management systems?

3a. Do the LOs adhere to emerging standards? Are the LOs transportable across different LMSs and repositories?

4. How will faculty and students react to a pedagogical shift towards LO?

5. How might faculty development staff model change to help create and support the use of LOs?

6. How will institutions incite faculty, support development, protect intellectual property, and fund this activity?

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

Where can you find LOs?

• Many open digital libraries and repositories such as Merlot, SMETE and NSDL

• A few commercial sites, such as Questia, Fathom, ebrary, Netlibrary(?)

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

Do the LOs adhere to standards? Are they transportable?

• Technical standards include IMS/IEE LOM, and DC

• Standards enable distributed access, and reuse in general

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

The future of Learning Objects is in highly distributed Digital Libraries such as NSDL

(From NSDL Core Integration Services Presentation, Nov. 2001)

The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects

Other questions for discussion

• How can the cost of creating not only LOs but also their metadata be minimized?

• How can compound objects be productively created from smaller components?

• How can we encourage LMSs to support standardized LO formats?

• How can reuse be encouraged in a culture that is used to “doing it ourselves”?

• Will intellectual-property and digital-rights management issues impede sharing, even of “free” resources?