This useful online list was prepared by Barbara Shuh of the National Library of Canada to provide a "quick reference guide to Canadian learning object repositories and the partners participating in this on-going activity. Background information is provided on the series of Canadian projects that have lead up to the latest project, eduSource. The projects and programs listed in this reference have the following aims: to develop methods of storage for e-learning resources appropriate of the needs of the Canadian educational community; to develop methods of discovery; to provide Internet access to the resources discovered and to gain experience in the structuring and organization of the metadata that facilitates such discovery and access."
The list uses the following categories to group the listings:
Projects and Programs;
Tools for Managing E-Learning Repositories;
Distance Learning;
Universities;
Government Agencies (Provincial, Federal);
Non-Government Organizations (NGOs);
Commercial Partners; and
Non-Canadian Players.
Each listing includes the following information: Project Name, Full Name, Description, Partners, Website, and Coverage.
Under the last category "Non-Canadian Players" the list does include a number of major sites outside Canada such as MERLOT and SCORM. Because the focus is on learning objects rather than courses, MIT's OpenCourseWare Project is not included. Also, discipline-specific sites such as the Scout Archives and the Harvey Project are not covered. (These omissions raise an important question about whether an exclusive focus on learning objects might be overly narrow for the facilitation of the use of online learning resources by higher education faculty; this is an open question that will require serious study throughout the next decade. Will instructors be more likely to locate and use learning objects or will they be more likely to extract learning objects, and other materials, from the context of full courses? Or, can both kinds of pathways and repositories be equally facilitated and inter-connected?)
As I've pointed out in earlier postings, Canada is making a significant national investment in the development of learning object repositories. This reference list provides a helpful compilation of the various projects that are underway; if the list is regularly updated, it will provide a way to track developments at the various sites and the emergence of new projects.
9:05:41 AM 
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