ADTED 470 Intro to DE - Final

Learning objects hold great promise for distance education and e-learning because it is “a means of achieving efficiencies and enhanced flexibility in instructional design and course development” (Moisey & Ally, 2007, p.323). Moore and Kearsley (2010) suggested that we observe the trend in the “development of a universe of marketable learning objects…that could be bought and sold by different institutions for assembling into their different educational programs” (p.281). During the movement in the learning object economy, there were many definitions offered for what constitute a learning object. At that same time, considerable efforts were expended to standardize metadata elements for identification, search, and retrieval of learning objects (LOs) in the computer-mediated learning field (Polsani, 2003). A clear definition and consistent lexicon would help eliminate any misunderstanding and confusion in the use of and research on LOs.

McGreal (2004) suggested that digital objects should have a stated educational purpose and defined LOs “as any reusable digital resource that is encapsulated in a lesson or assemblage of lessons grouped in units, modules, courses, and even programmes. A lesson can be defined as a piece of instruction, normally including a learning purpose or purposes.” In comparison, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ offers a broad definition in its Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) standard document as “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning” (IEEE, 2002). Wiley (2002) narrowed the definition to exclude non-digital resources and Polsani (2003) provided more details by defining LOs as “an independent and self-standing unit of learning content that is pre-disposed to reuse in multiple instructional contexts” (section 2.2).

According to Polsani (2003) there is “a broad understanding among the members of the LO community about the functional requirements of LOs” (section 1), namely, accessibility, reusability, and interoperability. The potential of LOs for the military prompted extensive research and development efforts associated with the SCORM initiative (Moisey & Ally, 2007). The purpose is to integrate “a set of related technical standards, specifications, and guidelines designed to meet SCORM’s high-level requirements—accessible, interoperable, durable, and reusable content and systems” (Advanced Distributed Learning, 2004). For LOs to be used they must be easily located and retrieved from the repositories in which they are housed. Therefore, proper tagging is essential to create metadata or “data about data” for the LOs to be stored and referenced in the database. On reusability, once LOs are created it should be able to function in different instructional context. Interoperability refers to LOs being independent of both delivery media and knowledge management systems (Polsani, 2003). To facilitate the storage of LOs in a repository, it has to be in a digital format to be searched and retrieved electronically through the Internet.
    

With the trend towards creation and use of learning objects, how would this affect the roles of instructor? On effective teaching at a distance, there are three key interactions involved: learner- content, learner-instructor and learner-learner (Moore, 1989) and in the theory of transactional distance, there are three key interactive components that influence (reduce or increase) the cognitive and psychological space between instructors and learners, namely dialogue, structure and learner autonomy (Moore and Kearsley, 2010).  Note that the original theory of transactional distance was written in the 1970s from primarily an independent learner perspective, which focuses on the connection between the instructor and learner (Shattuck & Tan, 2012). But today, interactive learning objects and edu-games are being used for teaching. Will productive exchange be affected with the increasing use of LOs in designing distance education (DE) courses? It seems not as studies by Docherty et al. (2005), Kong and Kwok (2005), and Reimer and Moyer (2005) indicated that only moderate success was achieved by higher ed students when LOs were used with minimal interaction from an instructor. In addition, I have observed similar results in the use of VBS simulation games that were designed for specialist warrant officers to teach Section Ambush and Quick Attack to military trainees. As with the observations in the field study by Lowe et al. (2010), students needed guidance to focus on what is critical to the learning task, and how the instructor chooses to use the LOs is also critical for successful implementation. Clearly, we have not yet reached a level of sophistication in LO development that would render human instructors redundant.

[only part of the final paper is being shared here]