Introduction to Learning Object Repositories
Overview
There are several online repositories or collections of learning objects
that target Higher Education faculty needs. A learning object can be as
small as a paragraph or as large as a complete online course and come
in the form of HTML/Text files, simulations, JAVA, Flash, QuickTime movies
etc. Learning objects have arisen in response to the faculty need for
high-quality, reusable instructional materials that are organized to be
easily searchable. Online search engines that search the whole web simply
bring back too many results. Instructional materials like polciy guides,
assignments, simulations, websites, tuorials, matrices and other kinds
of formats and media expressions are easier to find from within a contained
collection.
The repositories that hold the learning objects have well researched
user interfaces and architectures that make them easy to use and permits
various levels of interactivty including search, submissions, comments/reviews,
and creating personal collections. Some offer a variety of other fee-based
services that institutions can buy into at varying levels to involve their
faculty, or add functionality at the local level.
Faculty Scenarios
- I have a concept that my students frequently struggle with and need
to find better ways to demonstrate or illucidate it.
- I need an assignment for a new topic area I want to include in my
course.
- I need to convert my course for online delivery and need some guidelines
or templates to help me.
Reality Check
Here are some issues to consider before deciding to use this technology:
- You may not find what you are looking for all the time, or find very
much. Think of it more as a place to find one golden nugget for a minimal
investment of time. As these collections grow, you will have better
chances of making hits for your searches.
- Depending on your discipline, the instructional materials are laregly
designed for web-based use, in or out of the classroom.
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Top 3 Repositories
The followng is our subjective rank ordering of the top instructional
materials repositories:
MERLOT -- Multimedia Educational
Resource for Online Learning and Teaching
(www.merlot.org)
MERLOT's Mission: to improve the effectiveness of teaching
and learning by expanding the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed online
learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed
courses.
- MERLOT is an international cooperative for high quality online resources
to improve learning and teaching within higher education.
- MERLOT is a dynamically designed, web-based software tool to support
the development of teaching and learning communities, collections, services,
and research in higher education. The resources in MERLOT include:
- links to thousands of learning materials
- sample assignments, which show how the materials could be used
in the classroom
- evaluations of the learning materials by other individual users
and panels of faculty
- links to people with common interests in a discipline and in
teaching and learning
- MERLOT is also a community of people who strive to enrich teaching
and learning experiences.
NOTE: You do not have to
register as a member to use MERLOT. If you want to contribute learning
materials, comments, or assignments to MERLOT, then you must become a
member. To become a member, simply click on Member Directory from the
main navigation bar and fill in the membership information.
Key Benefits to Faculty
- Contributing to MERLOT is a way for faculty to gain recognition and
credit for their instructional materials as well as their scholarship
in teaching and learning in a peer-reviewed venue.
- Contributing to MERLOT is a way to get feedback or comments on your
instructional materials from perusers and users.
- Free access to a large collection of high quality, online teaching
and learning materials as well as some information to help evaluate
the quality and appropriateness of the resource for their students and
learning objectives, and examples of assignments that other faculty
have used with the resource.
MERLOT Discipline Communities
MERLOT focuses its effort in a number of specific disciplinary communities.
These are subsets of the whole MERLOT collection that are curated by Editorial
Boards; users can find peer reviewed materials in each of these communities.
Community members help MERLOT grow by contributing materials and adding
assignments and comments.
Biology, Business, Chemistry, Engineering, Health Science, History, Information
Technology, Mathematics, Music, Physics, Psychology, Teacher Education,
, World Languages
- Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS) - contains materials
specific to staff who support faculty.
- Teaching and Technology - contains materials specific to online teaching
and learning
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Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction
(mcli) - http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
Links to a number of discrete searchable repositories: the MLX contains
faculty assignments, Teaching/Learning on the Web, Problem Based Learning
and others...
Unlike MERLOT, some of the repositories only accept submissions from
Maricopa faculty. However, all of the databases are open for the public
to use.
Featured projects:
MLX Learning Exchange (contains over 500 faculty assignments)
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/index.php
This is Maricopa's newest respository. It uses an easy metpahor of warehouse
and packages for each learning object. Each assignment is formated to
display on a standard form that easy and clean to read.
Teaching and Learning on the Web (contains over 900
examples of how the web is being used as a medium for learning) -- http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tl/index.html
This searchable collection includes sites that range from courses delivered
entirely via the web to courses that offer specific activities related
to a class assignment or perhaps courses that offer class support materials
via the web.
This particular repository of Maricopa's appears to be a bit stagnant
and not regularly updated, but may contain some nuggets.
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Careo (Campus Alberta Repository
of Educational Objects) http://www.careo.org/
The CAREO educational object repository is an ongoing research prototype
supported by Alberta Learning and CANARIE that has as its primary goal the
creation of a searchable, Web-based collection of multidisciplinary teaching
materials for educators across the province and beyond.
Main Disciplines: Business, Sciences, Arts, Education, Engineering,
and Law
Miscellaneous
Here is a list of a few other repositories with different approaches to
the commerce of exchanging learning objects: (see also Syllabus
article link below)
MIT Libraries DSpace - https://hpds1.mit.edu/index.jsp
What can you find in DSpace? -- MIT Research in digital form,
including preprints, technical reports, working papers, conference papers,
images, and more.
Review: In terms of content, the repository appears to be new
and underdevelopement. Mostly technical documents and papers..
Lydia Global Repository - http://www.lydialearn.com/devwelcomepage.cfm
You contribute a learning object to the repository and set the price of
that object , then your contribution may be used by other developers and
along with their added value (now a new learning object) they merely add
an increment of pricing to your work. When sold each owner receives their
price set within this new compositional work based on the number of uses.
Review: none
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Pedagogical Issues
The following are
some examples of how faculty have found repositories useful in their courses:
- As an in-class demo
- For out-of-class assignments
- To supplement labs (where unable to do so otherwise)
- Parts of complete online course
- Extra credit work
Technical Issues
- All the repositories are web-based and do not require special technology;
however, some learning objects will require special browser plug-ins
or standard media players to work.
GMU Support Services
Resources and References Learning
About Learning Objects - quick summary of what exactly a learning
object is.
http://www.alivetek.com/learningobjects/site_paper.htm
NMC Learning Objects Initiative - This section of the
NMC website is composed of more than 50 pages of information and more
than a hundred links detailing the landscape of the world of Learning
Objects.
http://www.nmc.net/projects/lo/index.shtml
Syllabus Magazine Article (Archives) - a
short article on faculty needs from learning objects
collections and a good list of valuable repositories and collections
links.
http://syllabus.com/article.asp?id=7476
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