Saturday, July 02, 2005

Creating Learning Objects from Pre-Authored Course Materials This article by Anita Petrinjak and Rodger Graham appeared in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. The authors present an interesting XML-based method for generating LOs from existing course materials that looks very promising; their work includes the development of an LO authoring tool for users who do not have XML programming skills. However, despite the optimistic conclusions in the Abstract and in the article,  no detailed examples of usable, transformed LOs are exhibited and no reports from users are provided--consequently it is not possible to truly evaluate the methodology. This is something like trying to evaluate the quality of a computer language translation by looking at a few sentences or phrases rather than seeing the complete document.  (An Appendix with one example, is missing from the online version of this article.)  ____JH (Via the Distance-Educator.com Daily News for June, 29, 2005) _________ "Abstract. This paper describes work that was done at Athabasca University as part of the EduSource Canada project. This work centered around learning object development based on pre-authored educational content. The major outcomes of the work were the development of an explicit semantic structure with strong educational focus for learning objects, and the implementation of that structure, using platform/software-independent XML technology. An explicit semantic structure for educational content has some significant advantages: it enables faster publishing of material in different formats using automated processes; it allows institutions to participate in seamless content exchange with other institutions; and it enables more accurate discovery and reuse of learning objects within learning object repositories." 4:11:00 PM    COMMENT []