Learning Object Repositories for Collaboration
About 15 years ago, I knew a teacher who said that the practice of teachers searching the Internet for lesson plans was a poor practice. This teacher believed that each of us should develop our own ideas and use those, not anyone elses’ ideas in the classroom. I don’t know if this teacher is still around, but I’m sure the idea of learning object repositories would send that teacher into a spitting rage.
Before I go too much further, I suppose a great place to start is with a definition of a Learning Object (LO). Ballantyne (2007, p. 1) defines a learning object as “bite sized digital learning resources designed to tackle the e-learning adoption problem by virtue of their scale, adaptability, and interoperability. The Learning Object approach advocates the creation of small e-learning resources, rather than whole courses:resources that can be mixed and matched” (emphasis added). So, really what you looking at is bits and pieces of courses, not whole courses, individual lesson plans so to speak, lectures, podcasts, webquests, etc. The repository then provides a central location for all of these pieces to be kept so that others may find them use, pull them out, retool them based on individual needs, and build a course. The key for this is that everyone must contribute. When people contribute, then you have the beginnings of a vast collaborative network that allows educators access to a variety of resources.
Learning object repositories have the potential to greatly increase collaboration. As Vellucci, Hsieh-Yee, and Moen (2007, p. 170) point out these repositories can provide “a venue for sharing, ideas, practices, and expertise in order to provide the best learning experience for students”. A repository is a great way to educators of all fields to be able to share ideas, so that we can take something that is a great idea at its heart and alter just slightly to fit the needs of our individual students. Imagine the possibilities pof building a course. Pick your topic, and then find the best ideas out there from several repositories, modify them to fit your needs, and build your course. As you are doing this, you take your own ideas, add them to the repository, add the LOs that you modified, and share the modifications with the other members of community. None of use has the silver bullet to fix all educational problems, but working together, we can find solutions to common problems.
Of course an issue that is being addressed with LO repostitories is how to keep the junk out of there. I’m sure many of us have done a web search for lessons on a particular idea, followed a ‘promising’ link from the search engine of choice and then been sorely disappointed as we read the lesson idea and scratch our head wondering, “What is the point of this?” There is a process now, with some repositories of having them peer reviewed, fellow educators taking the time to review what is submitted to insure that what is put in is worth having in the repository.
One example of this is Project MERLOT (sorry, it’s not a research project to determine why Paul Giamotti was so vehemently opposed to anyone having a Merlot with dinner in the movie Sideways). Project Merlot is the Multimedia Educational Repository for Learning and Online Teaching. Rather than providing an overivew of how MERLOT works, I will instead focus on the peer review component, because with the mass of websites out there, it is nice to know that some exist that do check on what resources are hosted on the site.
Project MERLOT uses a system similar to a peer review process for a scholarly journal (Cafolla, 2006, p. 321). An editorial board establishes standards and new learning objects are sent out to multiple reviewers in the field of the learning object (i.e., a Learning Object on Congress would be sent to experts on Congress). These reviewers then rate the learning object and write up a review of. The user can then determine if it is worth while for their needs. Since the individuals conducting the reviews are experts in the field, the user can be assured of the accuracy of the content, which in today’s day and age is a major concern for material on the web. As we increase the use of the Internet for collaboration and finding teaching and learning resources, we need to be sure that what we are using is accurate.
Going back to the teacher that I knew that was opposed to using the internet for finding lesson plans, I don’t know if something like Merlot would change his mind, but for me, knowing that a resource is evaluated by experts gives me some reassurance that the learning object is worth my time (assuming it fits into my course). The key to all of this though is that we have to work together to build the community of contributers and we all have to be willing to accept that our work probably does need some criticism.
References:
Ballantyne, N. (2007, January). Object lessons: A learning object approach to e-learning for social work education. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 1/2, pp. 1-16.
Cafolla, R. (2006, May). Project MERLOT: Bringing peer review to web-based educational resources. Journal of Technology & Teacher Education, 2, 313-323.
Vellucci, S., Hsieh-Yee, I., & Moen, W. (2007). The metadata education and research information commons (MERIC): A collaborative teaching and research initiative. Education for Information, 3/4, pp. 169-178.
I’ve used MERLOT, but not in several years. I was still in college when I last looked at it. However, I think the idea of a peer review process for learning objects is excellent. Often, when I do an Internet search for lessons, most of what I find is garbage, to speak plainly. A peer review by teachers in the same field would be very beneficial.
Hi, Jon,
I looked into MERLOT and liked what I saw. I think the peer-review component is valuable, too. I have found a lot of garbage out there that is a waste of time–I could create better materials myself. So, knowing that the learning objects are peer-reviewed gives me a level of confidence in using this resource.
Jon, you said, “The key for this is that everyone must contribute. When people contribute, then you have the beginnings of a vast collaborative network that allows educators access to a variety of resources.” That is a very good observation, and it relates to a blog post I just read. D’Arcy Norman was one of the creators of the learning repository called CAREO. He described the project as failing “pretty dramatically,” and said that the tool received almost no contributions at the individual level. He also spoke of the causes he believed were responsible for this lack of participation: 1.) Lack of a coherent method to share content; 2.) inadequate API; and 3.) it didn’t leverage the social applications people were already using (such as Del.icio.us, Digg, etc.). Interestingly, he also asserts “that much of the functionality of a “learning object repository” could be implemented for free with Google and del.icio.us.” He further mentions Drupal, a free tool which incorporates much of the individual and social tools that people want/use. His general point seems to be that we need to recognize what people like to do with technology and make our learning repositories reflect this understanding, or we won’t have participation, and the tool will fail.
Reference:
Norman, D’Arcy (2007). Learning Object Repositories 2.0. Retrieved May 10, 2009, from http://www.darcynorman.net/2007/06/12/learning-object-repositories-20/.