Subject: re: Learning Objects
From: Albert Ip (a.ip@meu.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon 14 Feb 2000 - 22:52:59 MET
From: "Albert Ip" <a.ip@meu.unimelb.edu.au> Subject: re: Learning Objects Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 08:52:59 +1100
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Ken Kahn <kenkahn@toontalk.com> wrote:
>One worry I have is that software components in general have been widely
>promoted for all the reasons that Clark mentions (re-use, selection of
"best
>of breed", etc.) and yet have had rather limited success. Instead of seeing
>a word processor as a collection of components for text entry, spell
>checking, formating, printing, etc the marketplace has gone in the opposite
>direction and most people buy office suites in which a word processor is
>tightly integrated with other programs (spreadsheets, presentation
software,
>databases, etc.). Why are educational components different from the general
>case?
Software component is also promoted for its scalability (or more accurately
Object Oriented Programming). As software becomes more complex, it is
important to encapsulate functionalities in manageable units (components).
Human mind just cannot handle information larger than a certain size.
The concept of encapsulation also implies there is a relationship between
the level of modularity and the focus. For example, while I am typing this
message, I am using English (not my first language by the way and hence
readers of the list please excuse my occasional "strange" way of saying
thing). I am not thinking in terms of alphabets. Yet English words are
made up of alphabets. In this digital world, these arlphabets are coded in
ASCII, for example. ASCII is a standard defining how alphabets are
represented in 0 and 1. Most of us do not know which character 0010010
represents (me either!).
Different users focus on different level of encapsulation. Average
productivity tool buyers will not be interested in assembling a productivity
tool from individual components and hence software house sells their product
pre-packaged. For programmers, they work on a lower level of encapsulation.
They can call specific modules within the productivity tool set to do things
which is not provided in the "standard" package. For example, Microsoft's
office tools are made up of a large number of COM objects. To the average
productivity tool buyers, Microsoft sells the package. One of the reasons
of success (I don't have the whole list :-)) of Microsoft is the
development effort they put into the "developer community". The features
provided by each of the components are mostly documented and developer
(given the right tool and M/S is happy to sell the tool too) can assemble
different package.
Back to educational component. If educational software is continue to
develop into complex systems, OOP techniques seem to be inevitable. Most of
us will not be interested in the components because our level of interest is
not in that area. Our interest in composing our courses - not a simple
software in the traditional sense. A typical web-based course include
navigations, contents, "interactivity", student administration and tracking,
reporting.....
When we talk about learning object, we are assuming components that help us
in creating "content" and "interactivity". We must start to make a
conceptual distinctiion between "content" and "interactivity" and the
relationship between them in order to fully capture the benefit of
educational components.
Sorry this message sounds more like a lecture then a discussion. That's my
humble feelings.
Albert
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