8.01 Learning Objects - systems and issues

On standards - I find the technicality of the standards quite difficult to grasp and would welcome a brief clear and accessible guide to what they are about. What makes up the IMS standard?

It was interesting to read the various articles on the difficulties especially the cynical look by James Dalziel. His view of it as a chaotic madness that will never be achieved strikes a few chords.

The article by D. Wiley I found extremely interesting especially the statement on the reason for the ideas behing learning objects:
1. A one-on-one instructional model is preferable
2. human interaction in large scale learning environments is economically impossible,
3. automation is the only viable solution to providing anywhere anytime learning.

Summary of drawbacks:
1. Technical reusability - The majority of digital educational resources, in existing systems supposedly designed to support reusability, cannot be reused .
2. De-contextualisation - Decontextualized learning objects provide the greatest reusability but are also the most expensive and difficult for instructional designers to reuse.
3. IPR - Despite copyright legislation digital content will inevitably make its way into free distribution thus providing any market economy for the production of commercial content for purchase and reuse.

Summary of advantages:
1. Model - The best model will be one separating instructional strategies (teaching techniques) from the available strucutred content.
2. Open access - Allows the building up a library of free, nonrivalrous educational resources.
3. Social learning - Blogs and other software provide a valid way of using learning objects to support learning.
4. Supports learning - Assuming an instructional design rather than direct instruction allows learning objects to be used for problem base learning.

Three Objections to Learning Objects and E-learning Standards has a wealth of links and highlights the three main concerns as;
1. what is a learning object anyway? - so many standards and definitions
2. Where is the Learning in E-Learning Standards? - pedagogically neutral, pedagogically irrelevant
3. Education in a Militarized Zone? - model on a man-machine / engineering basis.

Other web sites for the above include:
CETIS-CETIS Reference
Topdoglearning