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The Promise and Pitfalls of Learning Objects: Current Status of Digital Resource Collections. Companion Concurrent Session. Eduprise: A Collegis Eduprise Company David McArthur, Senior Consultant The Ohio State University Susan Metros, Deputy CIO & Professor University of Arizona
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The Promise and Pitfallsof Learning Objects:Current Status of Digital Resource Collections Companion Concurrent Session • 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 • Maria Marzinsky, Ph.C., Research Associate • Amy Metcalfe, Research Associate • University of Tennessee • Kathleen Bennett, Web Instructional Technologist
What are 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
What are the right questions for institutions to ask? 1. Who will populate and maintain the repositories? 2. Who will tag the content? 3. How will learning objects align with learning management systems? 4. How will faculty and students react to a pedagogical shift towards learning objects'? 5. How might faculty development staff model change to help create and support the use of learning objects? 6. How will institutions incite, support, and fund this activity?
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 learning objects (outside your institution)? 3. How will learning objects align with learning management systems? 3a. Do the learning objects adhere to emerging standards? Are the learning objects transportable across different LMSs and repositories? 4. How will faculty and students react to a pedagogical shift towards learning objects'? 5. How might faculty development staff model change to help create and support the use of learning objects? 6. How will institutions incite, support, and fund this activity?
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(?)
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 future of Learning Objects is in highly distributed Digital Libraries such as NSDL (From NSDL Core Integration Services Presentation, Nov. 2001)
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?