There’s a discussion going on currently at the ETUG list, British Columbia’s Ed Tech Users Group list hosted at C2T2 (http://www.c2t2.ca/, and just happens to be where I work 😉 that has me thinking again about learning objects. I’m planning to post something there if I can get my thoughts together. The thoughts are along the lines of the connection between learning object model and approach and pedagogical approach, not unlike some of the motivations I think are behind the Educational Modeling Language out of Europe or the recent sequencing work at IMS. In trying to gather my thoughts on this issue I did a few google searches on the connection between learning object models and pedagogical models and came across this article by three folks in Australia. I wanted to capture the URL here as I really liked the line of thought (although am not sure I 100% agree with the conclusion) and want to follow up with more in this area.
For me, this is actually the best aspect of the discussions on learning objects (and related ones on CMSes and some other educational technologies) – they constantly spur us on to think and talk more and more deeply about the nature of teaching and education. I think this ongoing investigation and dialog is far more important, and has improved the quality of our collective teaching and edtech practice, than the conclusions we may end up drawing. It is this collective shift towards increasingly reflexive practice that I think is often overlooked when trying to cost out the returns on investment of technology in education. – SWL