Learning Objects Group

2003-11-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

The following link is a tutorial developed through Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, which is sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in the United States. It is a collaborative effort between government, industry and academia to establish a new distributed learning environment that permits the interoperability of learning tools and course content on a global scale. The result is the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

They have developed a SCORM tutorial for managers, authors, instructional designers and developers of online courses who want to understand the requirements of the SCORM. The tutorial is actually made up of learning objects that follow the SCORM guidelines and provides a good basis for understanding how SCORM can be used with learning objects.

Dr. Ed's SCORM Course from JCA Solutions

2003-11-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

Learning Objects Group member Denise Nelson describes the Special Issue of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) that is 'reusing' the book Reusing Online Resources as the point of departure for online discussion, as "sooooo good!"

She refers specifically to "Chapter 6: Models for Open Learning" and quotes from three interesting passages. The first is in the Open Knowledge Initiative section:

"The Open Knowledge initiative was launched by the joint deliberations of MIT and Stanford university towards development of their own Learning Management Systems [LMS] (viz. Stellar at MIT and CourseWork at Stanford)... One of the advantages of Stellar is its customization as per needs of the departments or faculty. Stellar served the purpose of a reference architecture framework with the help of which the educational material could be developed, integrated or modified."

The second comes from the Discussion section:

"Since the OKI project supports the LOM and Content Packaging Standards, it can be discussed how the educational institutions in other parts of the world especially developing ones, can adopt a learning object approach by having a ready made architecture supported by the relevant software for deploying learning objects. We may also discuss on the mechanisms for generating personalized sequences of learning objects, which are suited to the learners needs. "

The third passage comes from the Concluding Remarks section:

"The authors have presented a detailed account of the significant work being done at MIT and Stanford for open source software development and on two key products of this category viz OKI and OCW. Such initiatives, although started off as a small and individualized effort, nevertheless, will form a base for other institutions in designing, developing and sharing their instructional content as well as tools with other institutions. Overall this chapter gives an interesting account of what is happening in the educational institutions towards open source software development and how the area of open learning can draw benefits from the models of open source movement."

2003-11-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

In a recent chapter by Wiley in Learning Objects: Conxtext and Connections (editors: Catherine Gynn and Stephen Acker) called The Coming Collision between Automated Instruction and Social Constructivism, he argues that there are "currently two groups of individuals in instructional technology research that are pursuing a research agenda aimed at making education scale to very large numbers and improve in effectiveness".

The two groups are represented by one group that wants to eliminate teachers from the instructional feedback loop with automated instructional systems and a second group that champions "the role of community in learning, claiming that human-to-human are not niceties that make learning more interesting or fun."

He suggest a much less formal requisite for the combining learning objects: "Learning objects are not catalogued with metadata and submitted to a central curator repository. Community members know of existing resources and local resource collections. Individual resources are discovered thorugh "community queries" in which community members respond with pointers to resources they know about personally."

Even Stephen Downes made comment about Wiley's chapter on Stephen's Web saying that Wiley's contribution was "an excellent paper outlining the differentes between the 'learning objects' approach to online learning and the 'learning communities' approach".

2003-10-27T18:53:00.000-08:00
Welcome to the Weblog for the Learning Objects Portal Group for the course Criticial Developments in Distance Education Technologies through Athabasca University's Master's of Distance Education program. Terry Anderson is the course instructor and the members of the learning objects group are Denise Nelson, Trish Lundstrom, Kevin Pitts and Bob Megens.

This weblog has been set up by the learning objects group to continue to discover and discuss the issues related to learning objects after the release of their Learning Objects Portal. Group members will post messages through to the end of the course, and perhaps beyond.

We recommend that you return to the Learning Objects Group Weblog to see what the group has uncovered and to contribute your own insights in this emerging field. The current resources in the Learning Objects Portal represent a snap-shot view of learning objects. We hope that this weblog will extend the resources of the Portal and act as the equivalent of an interactive video of the world of learning objects. We don't have a script yet, but we hope the members of our class and any others who stumble across our "log" will accept at least a cameo role as we "roll" along.