Comments on: Learning objects – Is the King naked?

By: bohemian

bohemian — Thu, 26 May 2005 18:46:11 +0000

On a more fundamental level, the "need" to define "Learning Objects" stems from the belief (assumption)that ISD is standard and universal, that Instructional Designers use the exact same theory and systematic approach in designing and developing instruction. That is a fallacious assumption and is the cause of the Learning Objects mess. Learning contexts are always unique and situational – a one-size-fits-all ISD model cannot, and does not exist. The root cause of many of these debates stems from the fact that different people hold different beliefs and philosophies towards instructional deisgn, and adopt different approaches to ISD. Hence, it was hardly surprising that the conceptualization of Learning Objects became a point of contention.

By: Fred Riley

Fred Riley — Thu, 26 May 2005 13:52:16 +0000

Erm, well the debate about what is a learning object has rather moved on from the IEEE definition of 'anything in the universe that's ever been or will ever be'. I would recommend reading Wiley's chapter on the definition of learning objects, and Norm Friesen's critical appraisal of them. Both those papers, and a couple of others, are at the end of my learning objects FAQ at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nursing/sonet/rlos/rlofaq.html...

Although my job is almost exclusively devoted to creating Reusable Learning Objects, I'm agnostic as to how useful, or otherwise, the objects, and more importantly the term learning object, are. I don't like it that the whole LO movement came from, and is still driven by, the US military, government, and corporations, and their conceptions of LOs are centred around training purposes. OTOH, the educational community has co-opted and subverted the original LO concept, and is redefining it for teaching purposes.

By all means ditch 'object' as a term, but you'd better come up with something useful to replace it. "E-learning" or "online learning" or "CAL" are generic catch-all terms, and don't describe the discrete 'bite-sized' and reusable learning packages that are being created by folk such as Wisconsin Online (http://www.wisc-online.com/ ) or even ourselves.

As for metadata, that's a whole other can of worms…

Just my 2 Euro's worth…

By: Tarmo Toikkanen

Tarmo Toikkanen — Tue, 24 May 2005 22:29:34 +0000

LOs seem like the desperate attempt of educational publishers to keep their revenues flowing, by migrating from deadwood textbooks to digital content. And since having modular, reusable components in IT (in software engineering) produces enormous savings, then it makes sense to have modular, reusable components in learning as well, right? WRONG.

As Graham Atwell said earlier in the thread, learning for humans happens in context. Having complete reusability means having no context, and vice versa. Modularity and reusability is great when the material is to be used by a machine, but not when the user is a human brain - our brains need concrete, memorable, weird things that are anchored to our previous experiences and linked to our motivations and goals. LOs can't achieve that while being completely reusable and thus contextless.

By: D-Arcy Norman

D-Arcy Norman — Tue, 24 May 2005 18:52:10 +0000

I replied originally to Alan Levine's link to this, with this:

"Totally agree. Lord knows I was swept up with this stuff. It’s about the CONTENT, stupid! Let’s get away from the acronyms, and back to figuring out what we can actually DO with content, now that we’re not constrained by things like shelves and boxes…"

I was part of the CAREO project, which was stuck on the concept of the repository as the centre of all being. Which, in retrospect, is really quite silly. The specifications and protocols don't matter to the people that use this stuff. It's all just infrastructure, and unless it's invisible, it's useless (or worse, in the way).

I've been calling learning objects "assets" for the last year or so. It's more generic, and doesn't try to be more than it is.

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Tue, 24 May 2005 09:25:26 +0000

I agree and I agree, and I agree. As the slang expression goes, "stick a fork in it", so called learning objects are "done".

There is wrong about the concept, the intent, all the work, but fine tuning definitions and wrangling over them has virtually accomplished nothing in terms of making content "reusable" or widely adopted beyond the original creators. For all the efforts in defining, creating official meta data, collecting items in "repositories" where is all the great content and learning activities that have been constructed from them? Where are the hundreds of teachers using these "encapsulated" resources?

For that matter the naked emporer perhaps does not even need any clothes. Just let him be free

By: Tleinone

Tleinone — Mon, 23 May 2005 10:39:35 +0000

Dear Peter. Thank you for your comment. It would be great if “learning objects” could be like software objects. I do not understand much about OOP, but I think that in a functional software or system of learning objects (that are like software objects) there should be human objects, as well. Learning is a process where, we humans gain better understanding of some domain, make meaning and learn new skills. The aim of the system is to make this to happen for the human object. The problem is that human objects are very heterogeneous, understand different messages in many different ways because of different languages and culture and takes part in number of other systems that also have an effect on them – They just are out of our control! Can the OO (or LO) system work if one of the key objects is totally out of control?

By: Tleinone

Tleinone — Mon, 23 May 2005 10:38:34 +0000

Dear Rory – I agree and disagree I think all digital content – from novels to study books and from fiction to documentary movies – should be interoperable, reusable, online and usable on different platforms. This is what the open standards are all about.

To emphasise this, it is maybe a good strategy to call this kind of digital objects, made for learning, learning objects. But I am afraid that there will be a day when we do not anymore use the term learning object, as it is useless. We will call them pieces of learning content, lectures etc.

By: Graham Attwell

Graham Attwell — Mon, 23 May 2005 09:31:56 +0000

The p;roblem here is teh idea that any learning can take place outside its context. Given that context is so important then we need to track and record that data as part of information about those learning materials

By: Uno

Uno — Sat, 21 May 2005 20:51:15 +0000

SCORM killed learning objects.

By: Rory McGreal

Rory McGreal — Sat, 21 May 2005 01:43:06 +0000

Teemu,
I agree and disagree. Your statement on the official LOM definition is correct. If everything is a learning object then the term is meaningless. So, why use it? My definition is more practical: "any reusable digital resource that is encapsulated in a lesson or assemblage of lessons." This is a useful term for us in creating a repository of learning materials. If you don't call this a "learning object" then what would you call it? The term object is NOT to make it look more scientific but rather to emphasise the point that it is a digital entity that can be reused on a variety of different platforms etc. If it is interoperable and on line "object" is a good word. What is a better word?
Rory