DEFINITIONS

Definition of Learning Object: Any digital resource that can be reused to support learning. (Dr. David Wiley, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State U.)

Learning Objects ~ A Practical Definition: "Rory McGreal provides a rationale to relate variations in terminology into a single practical definition of Learning Objects." 11/05/04

Acronym, Definitions & Standards in place or in-process: A GREAT QUICK-REFERENCE PAGE! 11/13/02

Scroll down or click a category:

• Learning Objects Information
• IMS Standards and Compliance
• Other Standards to consider
• Learning Objects Repositories
• Meta tags
• Tools & Helpers

Learning Objects information:

Learning Objects -- The World Has Become Our Repository: Darren Draper: "Much like the "most famous scream in Hollywood", there exists a plethora of educational content (much already digitized) that is just as effective in its reuse as it was in its first use. Wherein many original issues surrounding the implementation of learning objects centered on the practicality of creating and maintaining a centralized repository, it appears that Google has provided our much needed, neatly indexed repository: the world wide web itself." 10/21/07

World of Teaching: Free Powerpoint presentation Learning Objects in biology, chemistry, math, English, history, physics, geography, Spanish. 04/25/07

Evaluating Learning Objects for Schools: "In the K-12 education sector, learning objects are seen as important in providing quality resources for teachers and learners but there has been little formal research on the assessment of learning objects based on the qualities that would be important for K-12 teachers. In this paper we describe the developments in the K-12 sector, the arguments around learning object characteristics and the development of an assessment profile. We applied this instrument in two separate analyses of learning objects and found it useful in identifying characteristics of importance to teachers." 09/26/05

Packaging & Publishing Learning Objects: Or a direct link to the pdf file."This new guide from Becta gives the grand tour through most of the relevant learning object related standards, and contains a few useful starting points, for instance the "Packaging and publishing checklist." 03/12/05

Learning Objects: A Practical Definition: Learning objects make it unnecessary to have thousands of iterations of the same teaching point. Metadata makes it possible to select and integrate relevant learning experiences from a relatively small library of learning objects. Reusable learning objects permit lessons to be generated and customized for specific groups or even for individuals. Extensive research and development has led to a vocabulary of specialized terms to define learning objects. Rory McGreal provides a rationale to relate variations in terminology into a single practical definition of Learning Objects." 10/02/04

Topic Maps! Making sense of it all: Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? "The task of an information architect is to create web sites where users can actually find the information they are looking for. As the ocean of information rises and leaves what we seek ever more deeply buried in what we don't seek, this discipline becomes ever more relevant. Information architecture involves many different aspects of web site creation and organization, but its principal tools are information organization techniques developed in other disciplines. Most of these techniques come from library science, such as thesauri, taxonomies, and faceted classification. Topic maps are a relative newcomer to this area and bring with them the promise of better-organized web sites, compared to what is possible with existing techniques. However, it is not generally understood how topic maps relate to the traditional techniques, and what advantages and disadvantages they have, compared to these techniques. The aim of this paper is to help build a better understanding of these issues." 03/29/04

A Guide to Institutional Repository Software v 2.0: Downloadable as a PDF or HTML document. "The Open Society Institute intends this document to help organizations with one facet of their repository planning: selecting a software system that best satisfies an institution's needs. ... A well designed and carefully planned repository program can function well with any of the systems discussed here--but none of these systems can help a poorly designed or inadequately planned repository succeed." 01/17/04

Best Faculty-level presentation on Learning Objects from the last 18 months: Scott Leslie (EdTechPost): "I'm working on a number of different learning object repository projects at the moment and have been spending the last few days digging through masses of material I've bookmarked and blogged over the past few years. All of which brought me back to this presentation given by William Horton at the 18th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning in 2002. I know it's saying a lot (maybe not) but it gets my vote for the best non-technical presentation on learning objects and related issues that I've seen over the last few years. I'd especially highlight the third slide on page 19 - 'What Needs to be Communicated' - as the best explanation EVER of what SCORM is meant to facilitate without ever mentioning the acronym itself. If your task involves explaining the value, issues and context of learning objects to faculty, you could do worse than borrow some ideas from this presentation." 12/27/03

SCORM course: This course is made "for managers, authors, instructional designers and developers of online courses who want to comply with the requirements of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORMTM)." This is a FREE online course, colorful, step by step, easy to follow. It also has an excellent resource list and glossary. 05/08/03

Making a Macromedia Flash MX LearningObject SCORM-Conformant: (pdf) A 'White Paper' from Macromedia. This article clarifies something for me. In all the confusion among "experts" and not-so-experts about making a definition of Learning Objects that everybody can live with -- yesterday I got email that said, "ask 5000 experts what a learning object is and you'll get 5000 different definitions" -- this paper seems to suggest a solution. We should really be talking about SCOs if we're talking about creating objects that are metatagged, when we're talking about shared repositories and such. The article contains a table that compares Learning Objects (LOs) with Sharable Content Objects (SCOs). The authors suggest that LOs consists of three elements: instructionally sound content, metadata, and communication capabilities with a management system. An SCO is simply a Learning Object that conforms to the SCORM. LOs plus the SCORM = SCOs. 05/08/03

What is a Learning Object, Technically? (pdf) An article that highlights the debate about what and what is not included in the label of Learning Object. 05/07/03

Three Objections to Learning Objects: Norm Friesen. A version of this paper will be appearing in the forthcoming publication, Learning Objects and Metadata. (McGreal, R. ed.) London: Kogan Page. On the basis of the benefits..., government and industry are spending substantial amounts of money, giving rise to a veritable "educational object" and "standardization" movement in educational technology. This paper outlines a number of problems associated with this movement." 04/18/03

CETIS - Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards: The CETIS website has a huge amount of information in various categories. "CETIS represents UK higher-education and further-education institutions on international learning technology standards intiatives." 03/22/03

An Exploration of the subject of Knowledge Objects: A presentation by William Horton. "This is an abstract concept and hard to understand, but it is very important to those of us who create online courses, online documents, and other knowledge products." The presentation is indexed so you can watch it all, or review a section. 11/19/02

Macromedia has created their recent MX suite of applications with a focus on the ability to create Learning objects that are SCORM compliant. The link I'm providing is to a page of links to various white papers, information about their vision for creating "rich client" interactive interfaces and "powerful and extensible object models for interactivity". "Rich clients need to provide a powerful, object-oriented model for applications and events, integrating user interface, communications, and system-level services into a common object model that can be used by developers of varying skill levels." They also provide links to information on using their tools to create Learning Objects. 11/19/02

Learning Objects and Standards Resources: Learnativity.com provides a large collection of information links under the headings: Articles and Reports; Organizations and Websites; Books; Presentations. 11/13/02

Design and Reusability of Learning Objects in an Academic Context: A New Economy of Education? (MS Word doc to download or view in browser) This paper "looks at systems for locating and distributing learning objects." The powerpoint presentation that accompanied his presentation of the paper can be viewed here. [Submitted to eLearning: una sfida per l’universita, Milan, November 12, 2002, by Stephen Downes, National Research Council of Canada] 11/13/02

OR-World (Operations Research): An XML approach to learning objects, based on their belief that "The flat description model which HTML offers is not precise enough to allow an efficient search and retrieval process."~ "This article focuses on the use of so called 'learning objects' in the field of Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS)....The whole band width of educational activities would benefit from one consistent description model and LOM could be the key to transport the structuredness of databases to the World Wide Web." 11/13/02

Web Ontology Language (OWL): W3C's Web Ontology Specs have just been released (Nov.4/02). I'm not even sure yet where this fits in the scheme of things, but Jack Yensen, guru of many things, posted this link in the context of Learning Object Repositories, so I've placed the link on this page. W3C explains it: "The World Wide Web as it is currently constituted resembles a poorly mapped geography. Our insight into the documents and capabilities available are based on keyword searches, abetted by clever use of document connectivity and usage patterns. The sheer mass of this data is unmanageable without powerful tool support. In order to map this terrain more precisely, computational agents require machine-readable descriptions of the content and capabilities of web accessible resources. These descriptions must be in addition to the human-readable versions of that information. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is intended to provide a language that can be used to describe the classes and relations between them that are inherent in Web documents and applications." 11/13/02

Intro to Learning Objects: from the Center for International Education, UofW Milwaukee. Links include: "several characterizations of "learning objects", links to individual learning objects, links to collections of learning objects, links to key organizations associated with learning objects and metadata, a select bibliography. 09/17/01

SPLASH (2002 Award Winner in Ed.Tech) is "a free, downloadable peer-to-peer application allowing an educator to create a personalized repository and link with other educators in a nation-wide learning object community. This allows them to share learning materials rather than individually recreating the wheel. SPLASH, currently in the pilot phase, holds great promise for Canadian educators. The first release of SPLASH (February 2002) is part of the Portals for Online Objects for Learning (POOL) sponsored by the CANARIE e-Learning Program. 05/22/02

IEEE Standards: "The IEEE LOM standard forms the basis for all IMS and CanCore metadata work."

All about Learning Technology Standards: "Everything you ever wanted to know about learning standards but were afraid to ask." At the bottom of the page there are numbered steps "...for those just getting started or for those looking at specific new LTSC standards groups." (Look for the title "How can I take action?") Very clear information! 05/21/01

Learnativity.com: The parent site for the one above. Hosts "continued updates and coverage of the important developments with standards for the new learning economy. There you will find a history of the learning objects projects, presentations on the learning standards efforts, articles about the learning objects and learning standards and a thorough glossary of the terms and acronyms used to describe this process." 05/21/01

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC): Check out this web site at for the most up-to-date documents and notes on the accredited standards. 05/21/01

Related Assumptions, Theories and Applications: An article that addresses "it is also crucial at this point to consider the implications of learning object use and implementation in an instructional context prior to full-scale implementation of this technology." The article outlines L.O. systems and looks at the application of learning theories to such systems. (Check out the table on page 43 of the document.) 05/13/01

Applying IEEE Learning Object Metadata to Publishing Teaching Programs: Among other things, this site "defines eight meaningful categories of descriptors". 05/09/01

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: Their information/links page. IEEE and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative have a joint commitment to develop interoperable metadata for learning, education and training. 09/17/01

Dublin Core Metatdata Element Set (Z39.85-2001) is now an official ANSI standard, as of October 5, 2001. This standard is available for free downloading or hardcopy purchase. "Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource. The Dublin Core was originally developed to be simple and concise, and to describe Web-based documents. The current standard defines fifteen metadata elements for resource description in a cross-disciplinary information environment. These elements are: title, subject, description, source, language, relation, coverage, creator, publisher, contributor, rights, date, type, format, and identifier." 10/18/01

IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc.: Designing the Future of Global Distributed Learning. "A nonprofit organization that includes more than 200 educational institutions, commercial entities, and government agencies. Its purpose is to develop and promote standards that define an open architecture for networking learning systems." 04/14/01

SCORM ~ ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) Net: The people who are developing SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) standards. SCORM is similar to POOL, above. The SCORM initiative is to develop common open-architecture specifications for "net-centric" learning internationally. Its goal is to set specifications that focus on the ability to deliver and track content from multiple sources. 02/15/01

SCORM: What is SCORM? Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) incorporates many emerging standards into one content model. The link is to a .doc file that explains what SCORM is and provides a bit of information about who, why, where, how, etc. as well as the organization and status of SCORM. 03/31/03

IMS (Instructional Management Systems) Standards for Learning Objects:

Learning Standards Acronyms: Acronym, Definitions & Standards in place or in-process 03/31/03

A Simple Guide to IMS: "This short primer on IMS will provide course developers with a basic understanding of the terminology and application of IMS." 03/31/03

IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc.: There are a number of groups working on learning object-related standards. In the U.S., the IMS Project has been developing related standards since 1997. 08/25/01

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC): Another working group working on creating standards for learning objects. I think this in an international consortium. 08/25/01

WebCT has recently released an IMS Content Migration Utility. 08/25/01

Other Standards to Consider:

AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee) Standards: That link is to the information page; see also this page for current systems that are listed as AICC Certified Products. AICC standards have been "around for 2 decades now, so there are different levels of technology involved. I believe level 10 is about Web based systems. These standards are basis for IMS standards (Blackboard, EDUCAUSE IMS committee) as well as for federal standards {ADL), including the newest army movement SCORM." (quote from online discussion) 11/14/02

Learning Objects Repositories:(alpha order)

Arrow Project: (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World): "The ARROW project objectives are to: identify and test software to support best-practice institutional digital repositories at the ARROW Consortium member sites to manage e-prints, digital theses and electronic publishing; develop and test a national resource discovery service using metadata harvested from the institutional repositories by the National Library of Australia." 02/19/05

Canadian Learning Object Repositories - an INDEX: "This list, prepared by Barbara Shuh of the National Library of Canada, provides a quick reference guide to Canadian learning object repositories and the partners participating in this on-going activity. Background information is provided on the series of Canadian projects that have lead up to the latest project, eduSource." 02/22/03

Connexions: "A web-based repository of FREE educational content and tools for creating these materials. The repository, called the Content Commons, is a collection of small self-contained units called modules and organized collections of modules called courses. It is like a collection of textbooks but better since web-based content has links, multimedia elements, modularity, interactivity, and much more." 06/19/04

DSpace: From MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology), an institutional digital repository "created to capture, distribute and preserve the intellectual output of MIT." Some examples of items in this searchable database are: articles, preprints, working papers, technical reports, conference papers, books, theses, data sets, computer programs, visual simulations and models. 01/02/03

eduSourceCanada: The eduSource project will create a testbed of linked and interoperable learning object repositories across Canada and provide leadership in the ongoing development of the associated tools, systems, protocols and practices that will support such an infrastructure. 01/02/03
--> New information page: contains detailed overview of the project, soon to be released to the public: 04/11/04

Edutella: a peer-to-peer exchange network for metadata. Edutella is based on the well-known GNUtella open source application. 01/02/03

ExploreLearning: "ExploreLearning offers a catalog of modular, interactive simulations in math and science for teachers and students in grades 6-12. We call these simulations Gizmos. Gizmos are fun, easy to use, and flexible enough to support many different teaching styles and contexts. Our Gizmos are designed as supplemental curriculum materials that support state and national curriculum standards; in addition, Gizmos help teachers bring research-proven instructional strategies to their classrooms." 04/26/04

GEM: (Gateway to Educational Materials) High quality lesson plans (7,000 Lessons to date), curriculum units and other education resources on the Internet. The GEM Project has been collecting, evaluating, describing and linking to educational resources on the web for three years to date, and the collection now exceeds sixteen thousand catalogued items. 01/12/01

Learning Objects Collections: A list provided by U of Wisconsin's Center for International Education. The list is categorized into General Repositories, Discipline-Specific Repositories, and Commercial Repositories. 08/16/03

MERLOT: (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) This repository of over 220 peer-reviewed Learning objects "is a FREE and OPEN resource designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education." High quality interactive online learning materials. Here's their "Tasting Room" page. 07/10/01

RSS feeds from learning object repositories from EdTechPost: Scott Leslie's site collects the results from Object Repositories that offer RSS feeds. A way to keep current on what's available and what is being developed as objects for some of the main repositories. At this point, he is aggregating from the following repositories: 02/21/04

Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO)
Maricopa Learning Exchange
Humbul database
UK Centre for Materials Education
Edna Online
Merlot.

META TAGS

Metadata for Education - FAQ: Newly launched (early 2005), this Wiki site "has been developed collaboratively by participants from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee and other organisations including CanCore, ADL, JES and Co and CETIS. This FAQ provides guidelines and information." 02/11/05

Sands Dublin Core Services: "DCS turns the dissimilar content of Internet resources into Dublin Core metadata registers, making the web more manageable for information specialists and software applications. Giving to DCS the URLs of online documents, images, etc. or keywords, its engine parses the content and returns specific information about the resource, ex.: submitting dates, keywords, creators, extension and more."10/22/04

Controlling your language - links to metadata vocabularies: "This resource provides links to more than 60 vocabulary sources. There are two main components of a metadata framework : the metadata schema (the categories of information you choose to record) and metadata vocabularies (the 'words' or 'values' you enter into those categories - we're using 'vocabulary' here in its broadest sense)." 03/29/04

Topic Maps! Making sense of it all: Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? "The task of an information architect is to create web sites where users can actually find the information they are looking for. As the ocean of information rises and leaves what we seek ever more deeply buried in what we don't seek, this discipline becomes ever more relevant. Information architecture involves many different aspects of web site creation and organization, but its principal tools are information organization techniques developed in other disciplines. Most of these techniques come from library science, such as thesauri, taxonomies, and faceted classification. Topic maps are a relative newcomer to this area and bring with them the promise of better-organized web sites, compared to what is possible with existing techniques. However, it is not generally understood how topic maps relate to the traditional techniques, and what advantages and disadvantages they have, compared to these techniques. The aim of this paper is to help build a better understanding of these issues." 03/29/04

Introduction to Meta Tags: Good basic info about tagging for search engines. 08/28/02

Tools & Helpers

Tools (several helpful applications): from UBC Arts ISIT: "The e-learning tools listed here are publicly available for academic use, within and outside the University of British Columbia." The tools include a WebCT Discussion Extractor, Timeline tool, Multimedia learning object authoring tool, and more. 05/18/07