Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Site Profile: Project Synergy, Maryland Faculty Online The Project Synergy site contains "enhanced learning objects," i.e., some of the objects are accompanied by activities, assessment strategies, and guidelines for the use of the online learning resources. "Project Synergy Technology Fellows present a collection of interactive, technology based, web-accessible learning objects, activities, assignments, and assessments organized around discipline areas." The lead-in section on Teaching with Technology Resources gives an explanation of learning objects, introduces MERLOT (from which many of the learning objects were located), and explains the Project Synergy process for selecting LOs and developing ELOs. The resources are grouped under the following categories: Science Activities, Teacher Education Activities, Liberal Arts Activities, Allied Health Activities, Information Technology Activities, and Mathematics Activities. Each category contains Enhanced Learning Objects and Identified and Rated Learning Objects that have not yet been enhanced with instructional guidelines. The ELOs vary greatly from a "complete mini-course" Introduction to HTML in the Information Technology category to a set of assignments exploring "Your Genes, Your Health" in the Allied Health Science category. Since the materials were assembled by different teams within Project Synergy, there are differences in the format and display of the resources from category to category. One drawback, for many of the ELOs is that they require downloads in Word or other file formats before they can be displayed. This makes touring the site much more time consuming. However, despite its limitations in the size and formatting of the resources, this site is valuable both for the collection of ELOs that it supplies and as a first model for the development of other guideline sites to assist faculty to locate and better use online learning resources. Project Synergy could be considered a meta-MERLOT site, i.e., it provides a selection and classification of resources from within MERLOT, plus guidelines for the use of the resources. (I learned about Project Synergy from John Sener's posting to DEOS-L; see John's cogent remarks in the post below.) 10:22:52 AM    COMMENT []

This message from John Sener about Project Synergy appeared recently in DEOS-L; the listserv discussion has contained many postings about reusable training objects and SCORM in the last month. The Project Synergy effort that Sener mentions relates directly to many of the concerns about the use of online learning resources that I have raised in EduResources, especially the importance of providing guidelines for the use of online resources if they are to be widely used by instructors. JH ___ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 19:37:45 -0500 From: DEOS-L moderator Subject: Re: RTOs/RLOs/ELOs & the Reusability Issue From: "John Sener" I agree with Maggie that MERLOT is an excellent learning object database and resource. Two of its limitations, however, are that 1) only a small fraction (< 10%) of the items in its database have been peer reviewed to date, and 2) most of the listed items do not include activities, assessment strategies/suggestions, and/or instructions for use. The latter limitation is important because (in my experience at least) while a small proportion of faculty (pioneers and early adopters mostly) will make the effort to figure out how to use these objects, the vast majority of faculty will look at them and say 'that's nice, but how do I use this?' The results of one project which has attempted to address this latter concern is Project Synergy can be found at (http://www.mdfaconline.org/resources_act.html -- I referenced this URL in an earlier posting to this discussion, but perhaps re-listing the URL in this post will also be useful). In this project, faculty teams took existing learning objects, many of them from MERLOT, and 'enhanced' them by creating activities, assessment strategies, and instructions for use. The aim was to make these objects easier for faculty to use for both online and classroom instruction. Project Synergy does not fully address the reusability/retrieval issue although the 'enhanced learning objects' (ELOs) are grouped by discipline area and some of the objects have also been referenced to MERLOT, most of them are not metatagged nor is there a search engine at present. It's not a major problem because there are only around 60 ELOs at present; obviously it would become a problem if the site were closer to MERLOT's size. But I mention it here because accessing learning objects is larger than just a reusability/retrieval issue; it's also about making these objects easier and more appealing for (sometimes reluctant) faculty to use. The project appears to have achieved some success to date in attracting new faculty to use technology in their teaching and learning by 'setting the table' for them, so to speak, with these ELOs; we are still in the process of evaluating just how successful the project has been in this regard thus far. Thus, Project Synergy is also one manifestation of Maggie's exhortation for distance educators to "support [MERLOT] by sharing our work and partnering with them in any learning object development and research." If you have any questions or comments about Project Synergy or the ELOs/other information at the project website, please feel free to share them with me off-list. John Sener Sener Learning Services Associate, Sloan-C www.sloan-c.org 8:16:51 AM    COMMENT []