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Learning Object Technologies

With the advent of technologies for storing, labeling, sorting, and delivering educational content dynamically, many instructors have begun to rethink what constitutes traditional units of instruction. Instead of the one-day lecture, multi-day module, or term-long course, some instructors are focusing on smaller units of learning, such as digital content modules, activities, and student performances that can stand alone as self-contained, reusable objects and be gathered together and organized differently by any number of instructors. These instructors often share objects by storing them along with descriptive metadata in repositories such as Merlot.

Seminar

December 2, 2003
12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.
274 McNeal Hall

Moderator:

Scott Wilson-Barnard
Digital Media Center, Office of Information Technology

Panelists:

Jenni Swenson
Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, College of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences

Simon Hooper and Charlie Miller
Department of Instructional Systems and Technology, College of Education and Human Development

Victoria Mikelonis and Lenna Constantinides
Department of Rhetoric, College of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences

Earl Schleske
Academic and Distributed Computing Services, Office of Information Technology

At the seminar, we asked the panelists to consider questions such as the following.

  • What is a learning object? What process do instructors use to repurpose existing materials as collections of objects or to design new objects?
  • Are there pedagogical and technical advantages to pursuing an object-oriented design strategy?
  • What is metadata? Are there existing metadata standards? What is the process of gathering metadata? Are there related pedagogical advantages?

Campus Projects

Panelists' Projects

The moderator and panelists have developed or are in the process of developing the following technology-enhanced problem-based learning activities; some are being developed with TEL Grant Program funds. The panelists described their projects at the seminar:

Mikelonis, Victoria. "An Online Primer on Grammar, Punctuation and Usage: Hands-on Skill Building in Flexible Learning Environments" [2002-03 Technology-Enhanced Learning Grant proposal]. University of Minnesota, 2002. http://dmc.umn.edu/grants/2002/Mikelonis.pdf.

Rehm, George, and Jenni Swenson. "e-Soils" [2002-03 Technology-Enhanced Learning Grant proposal]. University of Minnesota, 2002. http://dmc.umn.edu/grants/2002/Rehm.pdf.

Rose, Susan, and Simon Hooper. "Evaluating American Sign Language Performance" [2002-03 Technology-Enhanced Learning Grant proposal]. University of Minnesota, 2002. http://dmc.umn.edu/grants/2002/Rose.pdf.

Schleske, Earl, Sue Kim, Bobby Lee, Eun-Ji Lee, and Wendy Tu. "Learning Object Generator (LOG)." Defense Language Institute Foreign Languages Center and the Office of Information Technology, University of Minnesota, 2002-03.

Exemplary Project Case Studies

Case studies of the panelists' projects are available in the Exemplary Projects section of our site:

Questions and Comments

About 40 people, including the moderator and panelists, attended the seminar.

Moderator's Comments

Moderator Scott Wilson-Barnard began by defining learning objects (see the Academic ADL Co-Lab (AADL), the University of Wisconsin System (UWS), and Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) page, "What Are Learning Objects?" for details). They are small chunks of instructional content that are

  • discrete/self-standing,
  • re-usable, and
  • associated with descriptive metadata.

The seminar participants asked questions and discussed topics such as the following.

Questions for Swenson

Why are you including metadata?

Swenson explained that "doing metadata is harder but it will make a much better product." She and Rehm decided to use the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative standards because the educational descriptors "enable creators to describe factors specific to the intended audience (students, farmers, researchers, etc.), instructional level," and the like.

How are you controlling quality?

Faculty members who wish to contribute content contact Rehm and Swenson, then Swenson interviews them and converts the materials to digital and the e-Soils formats. She then works with the department head to determine how to present the most relevant information the most effectively, then reworks the material accordingly.

Could quality control be set up like on Amazon.com so that users rate the objects?

There is a student feedback function, but substantive rating is still all manual and internal.

Bibliography

Academic ADL Co-Lab (AADL), the University of Wisconsin System (UWS), and Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS). "Objects of Learning." Academic ADL Co-Lab (AADL), 2001. http://adlcolab.uwsa.edu/lo/back.htm.

An introduction to learning objects and their creation and use developed by a number of groups using the SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model), a specification that enables interoperability and reusability of Web-based content.

Academic Technologies for Learning. "ATL Educational Objects Projects - A Progress Update." University of Alberta, 2003. http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/programs/eo.cfm.

Includes links to a very useful introduction to the concepts of learning objects and object repositories as well as providing a gateway to a collection of exemplary educational objects.

Advanced Distributed Learning. Home page. Advanced Distributed Learning, 2003. http://www.adlnet.org/.

A Web site about the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative that is "sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) [and] 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." Participants are "evolving the development and implementation of ADL specifications and guidelines such as the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). . . . a reference model that defines the interrelationship of course components, data models and protocols so that learning content objects are sharable across systems that conform with the same model."

Baca, Murtha, ed. "Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Information." J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/.

Useful examples of the metadata sets used by the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Baca, Murtha, and Patricia Harpring, eds. "Categories for the Description of Works of Art." J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/cdwa/.

Although aimed at describing artworks, provides a useful overview of the conceptual problems inherent in morphologizing existing content, identifying salient structures, defining relationships among them, and more.

Downes, Stephen. "Learning Objects." University of Alberta, 2003. http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/downes/naweb/Learning_Objects.htm .

Provides a very accessible introduction to the design, development, and description of educational objects.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. "DCMI Metadata Terms." Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2003. http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/.

Dublin Core metadata terms.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. "Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Reference Description." Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2003. http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.

Dublin Core metadata element set.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. "Encoding Guidelines." Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2003. http://dublincore.org/resources/expressions/.

Dublin Core encoding guidelines for encoding/expressing metadata in HTML, XML, RDF/XML, and HTML/XHTML.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Home page. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2003. http://dublincore.org/.

Main page for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

Educational Object Economy Foundation. "The EOE Foundation: Building Communities that Build Knowledge." Educational Object Economy Foundation, 2003. http://www.eoe.org.

The home page of a community devoted to developing educational objects with JAVA and to creating metadata standards for and a repository of these objects.

Getty Information Institute. "Introduction to Imaging: Issues in Constructing an Image Database." J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/introimages/.

For individuals planning to create collections of image objects for use in their own courses, this resource provides a comprehensive discussion of the issues and challenges involved in developing standards for image digitizing, formatting, storage, and description.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "IEEE Standards Association Home Page." Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2003. http://standards.ieee.org/.

Home page of the group that set the standards on which the SCORM specifications are based.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "IEEE Xplore: Standards." Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2003.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/standards.jsp.

User must enter "1484.12.1" in the "Quick Find a Standard" field to get the Standard for Learning Object Metadata PDF link.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers educational technology Standards Committee. "WG12: Learning Object Metadata." Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers educational technology Standards Committee, 2003. http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/index.html.

Another attempt to develop a standard for describing instructional multimedia objects.

J. Paul Getty Trust. "Data Standards and Guidelines." J. Paul Getty Trust, 2003. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/.

The developers of one of the most complete and easy-to-understand systems for classifying and describing the works in their collections have created pages that are instructive for anyone planning to develop an object-oriented project.

Lanzi, Elisa, and Patricia Harpring. "Introduction to Vocabularies: A Guide to Enhancing Access to Art and Material Culture Information." J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/introvocabs/.

A useful discussion of issues related to the development of meaningful data labels to catalogue information objects.

Littlejohn, Allison, and Simon Buckingham Shum. "Reusing Online Resources" (Special Issue). Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2003(1). ISSN:1365-893X http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2003/1/.

To complement Littlejohn's book (Littlejohn, Allison, ed. 2003. Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to E-Learning. London: Kogan Page), this special issue was devoted entirely to the challenges and opportunities posed by the design, development, and use of educational objects. Of particular interest are chapters and editorial commentaries on the challenge of atomizing course materials and learning activities (responding to the book's "Chapter 2: Granularisation"); ensuring that the recombination of educational objects in new course settings is pedagogically sound (responding to the book's "Chapter 3: Keeping the Learning in Learning Objects" and "Chapter 5: Combining Re-usable Learning Resources"); and considerations for designing and assessing the effectiveness of learning objects (for example, responding to the book's "Chapter 9: Designing for Reuse and Versioning" and "Chapter 14: Assessing Question Banks").

Wiley, David A., ed. The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Agency for Instructional Technology and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 2002. http://www.reusability.org/read/.

The online version of a book that "tries to go beyond the technological hype and connect learning objects to instruction and learning."

Last modified Tuesday, 19-Jun-2007 15:42:49 CDT