Learning Objects and the On-line Composition Course

1. Learning Objects and the On-line Composition Course Or:

2. Learning Objects: A Force for Good or Evil? One Teacher’s Quest

3. Warm-up • If you have or do teach on-line, what are some of the challenges you’ve faced developing materials for on-line delivery? • If you haven’t, what would concern you most about designing/adapting a course for on-line delivery?

4. Overview • Overview (or review) of Learning Objects • My experience building a unit of instruction from LOs • Challenges and compromises • The end product • The unit revisited -- discussion

5. Being Object-Oriented • The theory behind object-oriented programming languages was that time and money would be saved if programs were designed so that bits and pieces could be revised without revising a thousand lines of code. • An object would be designed to do a single task. If users’ needs changed, programmers could replace or redo that “object” without affecting the rest of the program.

6. Knowledge Objects • Discrete items that can be integrated into lessons. • Not complete units of instruction – rather, knowledge objects are building blocks. • Examples: a text or reading, an image, a video or audio clip. • Not a Learning Object until a lesson is attached to it.

7. Learning Objects • Mohamed Ally’s definition: “any digital resource that can be used and re-used to achieve a specific learning outcome or outcomes”

8. Learning Objects • Any digital resource that can be used and re-used to achieve a specific learning outcome or outcomes.

9. Digital: so object can be stored in digital repository available for electronic search and retrieval • Re-usable in different lessons, courses or instructional interventions • Tied to a specific learning outcome so appropriate content and assessment can be included.

10. Learning Objects: • Revisable • Educators should be able to revise and/or customize a single LO in isolation, without revising an entire module, unit or course. • Stand-alone and Re-usable • LOs should be context-independent, so they can be used in multiple lessons or courses. • Flexible • LOs should be usable in different instructional settings (Ally mentions “learning, remediation, just-in-time learning, job aids, and enrichment”) (5).

11. Learning Objects: • Linkable • Educators should be able to link LOs together to build custom lessons/courses. • Durable • Ideally, LOs should be designed so that they can be used many times without becoming obsolete • Platform Independent • LOs should be accessible from whatever platform students and instructors are using to access the course.

12. Learning Objects: • Demonstrate sound instructional design • LOs are complete “chunks” of instruction. As such, they must make use of effective instructional strategies to help students process information, master material and demonstrate that mastery. • For example, an LO designed using a cognitive approach might include an activity to engage prior knowledge, followed by an activity or activities to help learners process new information.

13. Metadata • One of the selling points of learning objects is that they can be stored in repositories. • Objects are tagged with metadata, a segment, in XML or HTML, which describes the purpose of the LO.

14. Title of LO Description Language Location Learning Resource Type Context Cost Keywords Metadata tags include:

15. A Sample Knowledge Object: • This is an HTML file which delivers a “lecture” on freewriting for an on-line 112 course.

16. Clustering If you are more a visual than a verbal learner, you might want to try brainstorming through clustering, which combines words and images to help you develop and expand your ideas. Write your topic in the center of a blank sheet of paper and draw a circle around it. Around it write (or draw) whatever comes to mind about that topic. Then consider each of these ideas or drawings, and do the same. What you'll come up with might look something like the example on page 14 of your handbook - or you can follow someone through a clustering exercise by visiting Deb Okey's Prewriting Page , which is one of the assigned readings for this unit. Loopy Writing Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, two of the biggies in the field of Composition and Rhetoric (yes, there really is such a field), outlines the Loop Writing Process in their book, Being a Writer: A community of Writers Revisited. The goal of loop writing is to attack an idea from several directions, then to "loop" back to refocus on your topic when you begin revising. The Unit 1 exercise folder contains an exercise which will lead you through a writing loop. Your Process Journal The process journal is another idea spawned in the fertile mind of Peter Elbow. The goal of the process journal is to help you to think about your own writing process. Again, the journal is private writing - what you'll submit to me is a collection, a collage, of the insights you come across when writing about how you write. Think about it this way: let's say you play golf, but aren't doing so well. You keep getting kicked off of courses for hurling divets the size of a human head every time you swing, and one more than one occasion you've had to let a troop of Brownies going for their golfing badges play through because you just couldn't get past the 2nd hole. How do you improve your swing? Well, you'll have to try to identify what you're doing right, and what you're doing well. You'll have to think about how you're standing, and how you're gripping your golf club. This is what your Process Journal will help you do with your writing. Keep in mind, however, that your journal is still a form of freewriting. Each time you sit down to write, leave a bit of time at the end for your journal. Instead of freewriting about your topic, freewrite about your writing session. Try writing the story of your session - how did you get started? What stumbling blocks did you trip over? What went really well? Each time you submit an essay to me, I'll ask you for a Process Letter: this will be a summary or collage of the insights you've developed in your process journal. The Unit 1 assignment contains an exercise which will lead you through your first process letter.

17. A Knowledge Object Unit One Lecture (Content) Clustering If you are more a visual than a verbal learner, you might want to try brainstorming through clustering, which combines words and images to help you develop and expand your ideas. Write your topic in the center of a blank sheet of paper and draw a circle around it. Around it write (or draw) whatever comes to mind about that topic. Then consider each of these ideas or drawings, and do the same. What you'll come up with might look something like the example on page 14 of your handbook - or you can follow someone through a clustering exercise by visiting Deb Okey's Prewriting Page , which is one of the assigned readings for this unit. Loopy Writing Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, two of the biggies in the field of Composition and Rhetoric (yes, there really is such a field), outlines the Loop Writing Process in their book, Being a Writer: A community of Writers Revisited. The goal of loop writing is to attack an idea from several directions, then to "loop" back to refocus on your topic when you begin revising. The Unit 1 exercise folder contains an exercise which will lead you through a writing loop. Your Process Journal The process journal is another idea spawned in the fertile mind of Peter Elbow. The goal of the process journal is to help you to think about your own writing process. Again, the journal is private writing - what you'll submit to me is a collection, a collage, of the insights you come across when writing about how you write. Think about it this way: let's say you play golf, but aren't doing so well. You keep getting kicked off of courses for hurling divets the size of a human head every time you swing, and one more than one occasion you've had to let a troop of Brownies going for their golfing badges play through because you just couldn't get past the 2nd hole. How do you improve your swing? Well, you'll have to try to identify what you're doing right, and what you're doing well. You'll have to think about how you're standing, and how you're gripping your golf club. This is what your Process Journal will help you do with your writing. Keep in mind, however, that your journal is still a form of freewriting. Each time you sit down to write, leave a bit of time at the end for your journal. Instead of freewriting about your topic, freewrite about your writing session. Try writing the story of your session - how did you get started? What stumbling blocks did you trip over? What went really well? Each time you submit an essay to me, I'll ask you for a Process Letter: this will be a summary or collage of the insights you've developed in your process journal. The Unit 1 assignment contains an exercise which will lead you through your first process lette

18. A Learning Object Loop Writing Exercise (Practice) Unit One Lecture (Content) Process Letter (Assessment)

19. A Course Constructed of Learning Objects Freewriting Unit Review of writing process Writing essay 1 Course Interface (i.e. Blackboard) Students, multiple platforms, accessing via WWW

20. Which can be accessed from multiple platforms over the WWW Desktop PCs and Macs Notebooks and laptops Handhelds Carrier pigeon

21. Will Wall-Mart Rule the World? • Ally suggests that LOs can provide “just-in-time” instruction, an expression which initially made me nervous – are we Mom-and-Pop stores watching as a Wall-Mart goes up across town?

22. Question: • What concerns (if any) do you have about this technology?

23. Constructivists see learners as actively engaged in learning – creating meaning, rather than passively absorbing knowledge from instructors. Students can access LOs as needed – giving them great control over the sequencing of instruction. Students can even be encouraged to revise LOs or create their own. LOs and Constructivism

24. Supporting a Variety of Learning Styles • Linking content with LOs which, for example, present the same information in text, audio and video formats instructors can provide support for learners with different learning styles.

25. LOs: A New Hope An illustration of how LOs could save the galaxy…or at least a galaxy far, far away….

26. Our Learner Why do I have to take a writing course? I’m a Jedi Major!

27. Our Instructor Luke must learn the ways of freewriting…

28. The learner accesses LO, while instructor serves as facilitator… How am I supposed just write until I generate a topic? Use your feelings, Luke. The ideas will be with you…

29. Because LOs are Stand-alone, Reusable and Flexible, they can be linked into courses of many instructors, supporting different teaching styles…

30. I don’t understand why I have to revise my Process Letter, Master Yoda! Ungrammatical it is!

31. As well as different learning styles…

32. Freewriting allows me to give in to my anger…feel the Dark Side!

33. Because LOs can be accessed as needed, providing “just-in-time” instruction, they give learners control over their own learning….

34. Now the student has become the Master, Obi Wan! The things they make you do for tenure! At least it’s not another committee meeting….

35. There is something Obi Wan didn’t tell you. The essay is due tomorrow! Noooooo! Oh yes, and I’m your father.

36. One Teacher’s Quest The task: build a unit of instruction using LOs for an MDDE course in Instructional Design at Athabasca University. • Identify needs • Develop design strategy • Keep learning journal

37. What I Set Out to Do Revise the first unit of my on-line 112 English Composition course. The unit needed to accomplish three things: • Activate prior knowledge by reviewing freewriting techniques practiced in 111. • Introduce new concepts (Loop Writing and process journaling) • Familiarize students with the Blackboard environment, especially the communication tools they’ll use throughout the course.

38. Where I Started From • When I first adapted my face-to-face course to the on-line environment, I’d more or less uploaded my on-line materials and translated my lecture notes into on-line lectures. • Introduction to Blackboard was largely overlooked – I provided a few help files, but typically dealt with questions as they arose. • Unit led students from discovery to writing their first essay, reviewing the entire writing process.

39. Challenges and Compromises • A true LO must be context-independent. • But, in the unit I envisioned each chunk of instruction would be simultaneously providing instruction on the core subject (writing) and on the medium of instruction (Blackboard). • Compromise: apply insights from LOs to pacing and structure, but cheat a little in design of activities.

40. The End Product • How does the final product hold up as an LO? • Ally’s elements of LOs offer useful criteria for evaluation. • A few observations:

41. The Current Unit: • Revisable • Sort of. The unit’s freewriting activities are linked to an essay to be written in unit two. However, the tour of Blackboard is self-contained. • Stand-alone and Re-usable • Not so much. Again, the freewriting activities are designed to generate ideas for a specific activity, to be carried out in Blackboard. • Flexible • Not so much (see above).

42. Learning Objects: • Linkable • Potentially. With some tinkering, this could serve as a unit on freewriting to be linked with other writing-related LOs. • Durable • Somewhat. But the tour of Blackboard is obsolete now that Delta is switching to Compass Educator. • Platform Independent • Yes. The original unit is written in HTML format, and so can be read by any web browser.

43. Learning Objects: • Demonstrate sound instructional design • Tentative yes. The unit employs a number of ID strategies presenting both a cognitive strategy and a procedureusing task expertise sequencing as well as self-directed instruction.

44. The Unit Revisited • Using true LOs to build the unit would undermine one of the key goals – delving more deeply into freewriting than student’s might have gone before and familiarizing them with Blackboard. • LOs could, however, provide support for the unit, including providing scaffolding for different learning styles.

45. A step forward… A less context-dependent task, scaffolded with Knowledge Objects

46. What else? • How LOs might help us do what we do better?

47. References • Ally, Mohammed (2004). “”Designing Effective Learning Objects for Distance Education.” In R. McGreal (Ed.), Online Education Using Learning Objects. London: RoutledgeFalmer, p. 87-97. • Elbow, P., Belanoff, P. (2001). Being a Writer. Boston: Mcgraw Hill. • Morrison, G., Ross, S., & Kemp, J. (2003). Designing Effective Instruction (4th ed.). New York: Wiley. • Ragan, T., Smith, P. (1999). Instructional Design (2nd ed.). New york: Wiley.