Category: Learning Objects

DARE Report ‘Specifications for a Networked Repository for Dutch Universities

http://www.surf.nl/en/publicaties/index2.php?oid=21

This report is from the Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) program at SURF, a Dutch research consortium for network services and information and communications technology. It describes the decisions that are being taken in that country so as to enable interoperability of the different types of institutional repository systems and to keep in line with international standards. While quite a bit is enabled by the specific context of education within the Netherlands, there is lots here to learn from. – SWL

Final report from the ADL Global Learning Repositories Summit

http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/
FinalSummitReport.pdf

Following up on earlier posts about their wiki and draft list of repositories, the final report by Colin Holden on the recent ‘Global Repositories Summit’ has been released.

The report ultimately contains as many (more) questions than answers, but reflects what was evidently lots of quality interchange amongst the participants, and could be taken as an effective state of the learning object union. I found it hard not to come away with a sense that a lot of learning object/repository projects feel like solutions in search of a problem, or at least a solution that’s not sure which, out of many, problems they want to address. One of the best pieces of advice contained in the report was “Those at the Learning Repository Summit recommended that administrators of developing learning repository projects … know the communities that they are serving” and, I would add, the specific problem(s) they want to solve. While this may seem obvious, if you reach a point where you start to have functional software but are still having to persuade users into using it, you have to wonder a bit. – SWL

Technical documentation for the Ilumina Science Repository

http://aa.uncw.edu/digilib/documents/

The Ilumina repository is one of the LOR projects funded by the National Science Foundation. As repositories go it seems fairly mature and appears to contain quite a bit of useful material. They have built this page of technical background info off to the side; much of it is specific to this site and maybe a bit arcane, but perhaps of interest is the flowchart of their review process, as well as an illustrated summary of their review process. – SWL

HunterStone THESIS – another Office to SCORM convertor

http://www.hunterstone.com/eduProds.aspx

Another in the growing list of Office-to-SCORM-package conversion products. This one is, in fact, certified as ‘SCORM conformant,’ as testified to on the ADL site. Which led to another handy discovery, a concise (as concise as you are going to get from the American military) description of the various SCORM certification levels and what they actually mean. – SWL

Academic ADL Co-Lab Learning Repository Community wiki

http://www.academiccolab.org/projects/
repositories/community/wiki/index.php?
page=LearningRepositoryCommunity

“This site supports continuing discussion of the many issues raised during our successful Learning Repository Summit over October 7th and 8th, 2003.” Looks fairly new but maybe worth keeping an eye on. – SWL

FAST (FACETED APPLICATION OF SUBJECT TERMINOLOGY)

http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla69/papers/
010e-ONeill_Mai-Chan.pdf

When it comes to controlled vocabularies, one of the most successful is the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). This paper, presented to the recent World Library and Information Congress by Edward O’Neill and
Lois Chan, outlines an attempt to adapt the LCSH with a faceted schema, in theory to make it “easier to understand, control, apply, and use.”

The eight facets proposed cover: Topics, Geographic (Place), Personal Name, Corporate Name, Form (Type, Genre), Chronological (Time, Period), Title, and Meeting Name. A nice attempt to leverage what exists into new technologies and ways of working. – SWL

– via [ResourceShelf]

E-learning Competency Centre’s Learning Objects Competition Website

E-learning Competency Centre’s Learning Objects Competition Website

Stephen pointed to this ongoing competition site as a chance to view a fair number of learning objects in one place. More than that, these are all what you would call “rich” multi-media objects, most often done in Authorware or Flash, with each typically covering a distinct ‘unit’ of learning.
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Proceedings of the OLN Institute –

http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/
michelle/archives/000194.html

Via Michelle Lamberson comes mention of an important collection of papers on learning objects that came out of the recent OLN Institute at Ohio State called “Building and Assessing Shareable Content.” The proceedings for the conference, a book titled “Learning Objects: Contexts and Connections” (Catherine M. Gynn and Stephen R. Acker, Editors) are now available online.

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Educational Leadership Learning Network – ELLNet

http://www.ellnetportal.com/

“The Vision of the Educational Leadership Learning Network (ELLnet) is to create a leadership community among Canadian Educational leaders who will actively share their experience and expertise through an electronic medium.” Came across this very obliquely – a new Canadian project to creating a national/international leadership learning curriculum framework using peer-to-peer learning object technology. Hmmm, where have I heard that phrase before. Any Canucks out there have any more info on this? – SWL