There is no question that one of the major opportunities offered by the Web is vastly increased access to content. However this has brought with it a number of problems. Whereas paper based publication has evolved a range of effective mechanisms and standards over time – the structure of text books, mechanisms for review and publication, delivery methods – online publication is struggling to develop its own mechanisms, that do not restrict the benefits of access, but do provide confidence in its validity. In particular, traditional educational structures, processes and roles are well harmonised with the technology of printed materials – teachers and learners know how to work with books and libraries, and how to use them to support their purposes; institutions know how to acquire and pay for them.
This is not the case with online materials. Almost every aspect of online publication is problematic; although it is very simple to write and publish on the Web, describing content (metadata tagging), finding material, aggregating and disaggregating materials, reviewing, and rewarding authors are all areas that still need attention. There is no doubt that recent work in defining and developing a learning object approach addresses some issues, in particular making reusability more likely. The development of learning content interoperability specifications for metadata and content packaging directly address the searching and aggregation/disaggregation issue. If these specifications are widely adopted, then content will be able to run in different learning environments, preserving materials as environments evolve.
Despite this, major problems remain. What is the motivation for lecturers to make their resources available to others by tagging them with metadata? What is the role of information professionals (librarians) in this online world? Does eLearning require a restructuring of job roles? Who are the players in the learning object economy, and what will their roles be? How will it achieve sustainability?
This paper will discuss possible scenarios for a learning object economy, and examine the implications for the structure of educational institutions processes and roles.
Posted by price at March 23, 2004 10:15 AM