Subject: Summary 1 (12 - 18th Feb)
S.J.E.Hobbs@open.ac.uk
Date: Mon 21 Feb 2000 - 20:57:24 MET
From: S.J.E.Hobbs@open.ac.uk Subject: Summary 1 (12 - 18th Feb) Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:57:24 -0000
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My apologies for the lateness of this first summary, holiday and technical
problems I'm afraid.
I have summarised my understanding of the discussion up to 18/2 into 3 or 4
main themes or issues. This is, of course, my personal understanding and I
welcome corrections, comments and explanations, all of which will be
integrated into the final summary.
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1. There has been some considerable discussion about the DEFINITION and SIZE
of an LO.
Kahn and Lowney draw comparisons between software components and LOs with
Kahn suggesting that LOs may experience the same lack of success as
independent software components such as word processing packages and spell
checkers. Quinn extends this analogy but puts forward the view that items in
a library for GUI widgets is nearer the size he would envisage.
Both Rowley and Gilbert reject the applicability of re-use to
'commercial-grade' courses since the expected standards of 'harmonisation
and customisation of courses would not be feasible. Gilbert goes on to
suggests that since anything that is designed for educational use is
designed for specific learner groups and learning aims in mind successful
use for learning outside that scenario will be purely accidental.
Both these contributors appear to see an LO as a whole course or at least a
large, complex and coherent part of a course. This view is not shared by
others who feel that for success, courses need to be decomposed into smaller
object which would be the LOs. These would then be combined, perhaps in
hierarchies (Thompson and Downes) where at the higher level student is
integrating lower level LOs.
Other suggestions as to what might be considered LOs include
'non-educational' or knowledge objects (Ip) and bulletin boards and
collaborative activities (Quinn rejected by Dalgarno). There is some
disagreement as to whether LOs can be tools or must be contentful and
Dalgarno only accepts the relevance of LOs to subjects where there is
'individual learning of concepts' such as the sciences. Ip, taking input
from Lian and Schuyler, suggests that an LO has at least 4 subcomponents:
content, functions, learning objectives and 'look and feel'. This is
rejected by Downes who draws a distinction between 'components' which are
self-contained entities (such as LOs) and 'variables' which are values and
properties, such as colour or font size, which cannot exist on their own.
The issue of the need to design LOs specifically for re-use was also raised
(Kahn, Lowney and Schuyler)
2. A second area of controversy is the COHERENT linking of LOs:
Concerns were raised about the resulting coherence of courses produced by
juxtaposing LOs (Lowe, Lian, Rowley and Gilbert). This resulted in some
interesting discussion with many contributors as to what constitutes
'cohesion', who or what should be responsible for providing it, and how
important it is.
Cohesion is seen as two different things, the similarity between LOs in
terms of fonts, graphics etc (type 1) and the information and guidance which
'glues' the LOs together to form a 'course' (type 2).
Lian sees the development of coherence between LOs in a 'course' as being a
'core issue' and raises the question of what creates coherence as a research
issue. Others propose that the educator is responsible for providing the
necessary cohesion (type 2) between LOs when they combine them to form a
'course' (Plot and Parson) Thompson gives and example of such a course
evolving. Quinn, who believes that the system itself can produce the
cohesion suggests that the coherence may be composed of (amongst other
things) the look and feel of LOs, their thematic relationship and their
relevance to a particular task.
Others see the degree of cohesion between LOs as being of less urgency (type
1). Parson equates a student integrating different kinds of LOs with a
similar experience with different object types in a museum, Schuyler suggest
that learners already integrate very different resources on the internet and
Lowney points out that although we currently may have coherence throughout a
course, this rarely extends between courses, the content of which students
are still expected to integrate.
3. A third issue is the role of INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN or PEDAGOGY and
ADAPTATION in this process.
Pincas raised the issue of starting point suggesting that many developers
begin with the LOs and only look at the instructional design later
preferring herself to work the other way round. Ip suggests a cyclical
approach oscillating between the materials and the pedagogy in response to
these concerns.
Martinez sees the migration towards a new instructional design appropriate
to the use of LOs as a opportunity at which we might integrate and
capitalise on the growing awareness of the influence of affect and emotion
on learning. Others also suggest that rich metadata and small LOs should
permit adaptability of content to user although more research as to the user
characteristics to which it should adapt will be necessary.
Quinn suggests two approaches to combining LOs, 'adaptation' in which the
system leads and 'adaptability' where students set their own parameters.
Where the system leads, either the LOs are 'simple but richly tagged' or the
objects are very smart and the flow of information very complex making the
former more likely to be realised
4. Other issues raised include the difficulty of defining levels of
difficulty and levels of interactivity of LOs and the relevance of current
IP law to complex LOs.
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