Learning Environments
Knowledge Networks 5: Learning Objects

 

 

Increasingly knowledge elements are being created in a web format and stored on databases that are being made available to educational institutions throughout the world. One of the first of the major institutions to provide free, high quality online courses was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT has available on a web site http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html hundreds of broad-range online courses that are free to access for anyone, anywhere. September 2003 was the official launch of several hundred courses and by 2007 virtually all of MIT's courses will be published online. The potential this offers "students" around the world is enormous. In the United Kingdom the Open Knowledge Initiative, a collaboration amongst the leading universities, is putting online an "open source extensible architecture" that specifies how components and educational software environments communicate with each other. Other "object repository management systems" are being offered such as Fedora http://www.fedora.info which can be used to create interoperable web based digital libraries, institutional repositories and information management systems.

Some of the most interesting work in creating learning objects is happening at the K-12 level. The initiative by the Australian and New Zealand governments under the auspices of the Learning Federation http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au is backed by a $60 million budget to develop online interactive curriculum content specifically for Australian and New Zealand schools. To quote the web site the aim here is to ensure that

"The systems will also facilitate the breakdown of content into discrete 'objects' and the reassembly and repurposing of these to suit the particular needs of teachers and students."