OpenEd: Week 11
I am very sorry that I am quite late for this week’s assignment, but my life has been very busy. In the past, I have usually read through everyone else’s submissions before posting my own, but this week I am trying to do this based solely on my own impressions from the course material, since we will spend next week (really, this week), commenting and reflecting upon other people’s submissions.
The Learning Objects Literature (Wiley, 12 pages)
RIP-ping on learning objects (Wiley, 3 pages)
Openness, Localization, and the Future of Learning Objects (Wiley, 36 minutes)
QUESTIONS: Some people believe that open educational resources “fix” many of the problems experienced by those who work with learning objects. Why do you think they would say this? Do you agree? Why or why not?
I missed the boat?
I have come across the idea of learning objects in a few places, but I think mostly I “missed this fad” - I was not yet hooked into computer-mediated and distance learning at the time that learning objects were “hot”, and most of the places that I have heard them mentioned were very sceptical and dismissive. As an interesting testament to how much thoughts might change, or to what extent one lives in one’s own little bubble, I never even considered the idea that learning objects would not be open. When authors write about models of DRM and micro-payments and what not, I get surprised. Hopefully, this is a sign of the world moving on, but possibly it is a sign of me isolating myself too much in my little idealistic bubble.
First locking it up, then trying to share it
The concept of learning objects seems closely tied to that of learning management systems (LMS), which I think in itself is “on the way out” - this course being a good example, we don’t use Moodle or ATutor or similar software, and I am not sure if anyone thinks that our course would be enhanced by using them. A big part of this is the idea of not locking out others - if anyone can go to a university lecture, sit in the back row, and listen to the professor - why is it that non-participants cannot go to our ATutor and Moodle courses and check out all the information provided? In a sense, it is partly the initial siloing of material into these systems, that create the need for interoperability and the concept of learning objects.
Just put it out there, we’ll have to refashion it anyway
Thus, I think that the current model of saying that “as long as the code is available, and it renders in a standard web browser”, it is reusable, is realistic. Just plugging in quizzes and sections into your course is unlikely to generate a course that is very pedagogical or interesting, it will take reworking and refashioning either way - and the important part is lowering the barriers to reuse, whether those barriers are intellectual property, or file formats, or lack of easy tools. It would also be good to make it easy for refashioned objects to link back to where they came from, so that people can “follow their trajectory” around the world.
Small objects, loosely coupled
I currently TA for a class that uses ATutor for online collaboration, and I keep wondering whether a combination of wikis, blogs, photo sharing sites, etc, would not be more usable and effective. Certainly, I think that simple wins over complicated - tagging is not perfect, but when a million people are doing it, it trumps complicated specialist provided metadata. Small objects loosely coupled, sites that make it easy to do collaborative authoring, like Wikipedia and Connexions, sites that provide metadata for learning resources (like the OER Commons), tags, rss feeds - they are incredibly productive platforms. I would also argue that in most cases a focus on learning resources as opposed to just knowledge resources, or cultural resources, is in many ways restrictive: all the pictures on Wikipedia, and many on flickr, can be used in teaching. Academic journals, documentary movies, Youtube clips, immersive multiplayer games, can all be used for teaching and learning, even if they were not designed for that purpose.
Stian
(thanks to oskay @ flickr for all the great pictures)
November 15th, 2007 @ 4:05
Thank you for introducing the new software Moodle and ATutor. I think those are similar to the WebCT or Blackboard which we are using now for other classes, the difference is entering with password or not. But I would rather use blog or wiki which is very popular now.
November 17th, 2007 @ 11:45
Good point, Stian! Actually the “LOs movement” is strictly connected with the LMSs. We can think to a “formal/institutional” paradigm of e-learning grounded on LOs and LMSs!
If we look at our course’s materials, we can observe that David didn’t offered us any “package”, any SCORM at all. In this case, simple documents, in various formats “glued” by plain HTML, have worked very well as course materials, while our posts and comments delivered via RSS, worked well too, like a LMS forum.. Of course, we can discuss if using a LMS would have added some highly important feature.
Indeed, this course was a wonderful example of how is possible to bridge formal/institutional and informal/personal learning over the Web and, by the way, it made no use of LOs, unless we refer to the broadest definition of LO…
Maybe if the informal/personal paradigm of e-learning (the so-called e-learning 2.0) grows, the importance of LOs (seen as technical pieces, packages usable in an LMS) will reduce…
November 19th, 2007 @ 3:04
[…] Stian (on the e-learning paradigms and their consequences, e.g.. LO+LMS = formal/institutional); […]
November 20th, 2007 @ 3:05
Sharing within a locked up environment doesn’t make much sense, does it?
November 21st, 2007 @ 20:25
[…] Stian says Just put it out there, we’ll have to refashion it anyway: I think that the current model of saying that “as long as the code is available, and it renders in a standard web browser”, it is reusable, is realistic. Just plugging in quizzes and sections into your course is unlikely to generate a course that is very pedagogical or interesting, it will take reworking and refashioning either way - and the important part is lowering the barriers to reuse, whether those barriers are intellectual property, or file formats, or lack of easy tools. It would also be good to make it easy for refashioned objects to link back to where they came from, so that people can “follow their trajectory” around the world. […]