Learning Objects: Approaches and Trends

“If good content were enough to support learning and human interaction were unnecessary, libraries would never have evolved into universities” (Wiley et al., 2004, p.511).

The definition of learning objects seem to be very broad: at one end of the spectrum, it is defined as virtually any (digital) item that may be (re)used for instructional purposes (e.g., lesson plan document, photo, sound recording); on the other end are complex systems that integrate entities, attributes and algorithms. However, some degree of re-useability seems to be an ideal goal of any learning object design. I think the digital part comes into play because making copies (hence re-useability) is so much easier than copying physical objects.

I must be a humanist because I found Wiley et al.'s article the most convincing – especially in their statement that “the majority of the value of educational experiences comes from the value added through interactions with human beings” (2004, p. 518). Although their definition was bit broad – “any digital resource which can be reused to mediate learning” (Wiley et al., 2004, p. 514), I thought their typology of learning object types made good sense:

• Fundamental – individual assets which cannot be meaningfully broken down further (e.g., images or PDF handout)
• Combined-closed – contain two or more fundamentals combined in a manner which precludes the simple reuse of the fundamentals (e.g., narrated presentation recording)
• Combined-open – contain two or more fundamentals combined in a way that does not preclude the simple reuse of the Fundamentals (e.g., images and text in a MS PowerPoint slide deck).

I also appreciated their discussion of the 're-useability paradox', since this is something my colleagues and I talk about often when creating instructional content online. Librarians all over the country teach very similar things (e.g., how to search the library catalog, how to find scholarly articles, evaluating resources, etc.) – but local differences, or 'how you do it here' aspects do matter – e.g., which databases your institution subscribes to, how to navigate your library website to get to the specific resources, etc. One way around this paradox is then to make learning objects general but build specific context around it – which is what we've tried to do with some of our 'big picture' videos.

What resonated the most about Merrill's article was his grounding in Gagne's work relating to guided practice, which I am a fan of. And although it seemed a bit overly technical to describe learning processes in terms of '13 instructional transactions', I thought he did provide an interesting approach to analyzing and designing methods for 'how to teach'. There were two aspects of his model I would like to try to apply to library related learning objects. One is his method of incorporating three levels of practice within the learning object:

Levels of Practice

• “Simon says” - do this, now do this, etc.
• “Do the next step” - start here, and you do what comes next
• “You do it” - you start

The second aspect is being able to provide different kinds of guidance options:


Guidance Options

• Explain – given an action, describe what happened and offer reasons why
• Predict – given a scenario or situation, determine what happens next
• Troubleshoot – after a fault is introduced, explain what happened and offer reasons why, offer alternative conditions or actions

I think a big challenge to Merrill's approach is the amount of programming required to create such a system – I have never written an algorithm and don't know where to start! I am also somewhat doubtful that his system would work as well for ill-structured environments as he implies.

Koppi et al's article didn't reveal many surprises: research faculty have little incentive to contribute to learning object repositories. One way that MERLOT seems to have approached their incentive and community building is by holding annual conferences, now in collaboration with SLOAN. While contributing learning objects may not (yet?) count towards tenure, I think conference contributions, or serving as a peer reviewer, are more closely aligned with the existing reward structure in academia.

Wiley et al, provided a nice summary of the two major trajectories in the work around learning objects:

“Commercial educational enterprises will continue to see value in the create once, sell for reuse many times economic model. Humanitarian educational enterprises will continue to see value in the ability to fund the development of one set of instructional materials and open these materials for reuse to individuals in developing nations and other spaces without additional costs.” (Wiley et al., 2004, p.519).

I wonder if a third approach would be to take an 'educational asset management' approach, as it seems with the NC Learning Object Repository - brief case studies are available from Equella (the partnering commercial software vendor).

References

Koppi, T., Bogle, L., Hodgson, N., & Lavitt, N. (2004). Institutional use of learning objects: Lessons learned andfuture directions. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(4), 449-463.

Merrill, M. D. (1999). Instructional transaction theory (ITT): Instructional design based on knowledge objects. In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models (2nd ed., pp. 397-424). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wiley, D., Waters, S., Dawson, D., Lambert, B., Barclay, M., Wade, D., & Nelson, L. (2004). Overcoming thelimitations of learning objects. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(4), 507-521.

Cognitive Flexibility Theory, Literary Criticism and Reference Interviews

Cognitive flexibility theory (CFT) “is a constructivist learning paradigm which emphasizes real-world complexity and ill-structuredness of knowledge.” (Fitzgerald, Wilson & Semrau, 1997, p. 49). CFT was developed to serve as a more suitable means to approach advanced learning in complex and ill-structured domains, rather than introductory learning approaches that tend to over-simplify complex material and emphasize rote memorization (Jacobson & Spiro, 1995, p.303). These statements resonated with me because I'm always weary of developing training for adults that is better suited to developing skills in children or young adolescents.

Jacobson & Spiro (1995) offer 5 principles derived from CFT:

• Use multiple conceptual representations of knowledge (varied perspectives)
• Link and tailor abstract concepts to different case examples (crisscross themes and cases)
• Introduce domain complexity early
• Stress the interrelated and web-like nature of knowledge
• Encourage knowledge assembly (construct meaning) (p.303-304)

Fitzgerald et al suggest in more concrete terms that CFT may be applied in practice through the use of “authentic case scenarios, providing factual and procedural knowledge within the discipline, scaffolding the learner through guided activities, and modeling the reasoning processes of experts” (1997, p. 51)

Although both Jacobson and Fitzgerald emphasized hypertext and multimedia environments, CFT reminded me of my undergraduate studies in American Literature – which did not use hypertext, but merely printed texts – mind you by the end of the course my copies were always filled with sticky notes and cross-references. But the model was still pretty much the same – we discussed different themes and critical perspectives in class, and applied them across the texts selected for the course. I had a great professor who would introduce much of the themes and critical perspectives through provocative questions applied to the course texts – but eventually at the end of class or unit, she would offer her own (expert) perspective. This experience makes me think that cognitive flexibility theory would work well in literary studies. I also think it is a good match for reference work. While there are some aspects to reference questions that can be fairly well-structured, often reference interviews are required to figure out what exactly the patron needs and then figure out where to search for it. If anything, it seems that reference interactions have become much less-structured with an increase in the diversity of information formats, storage devices and retrieval tools. I'm less sure about how this applies to training students in finding, evaluating and using business information...

“The program resides on six floppy disks to enable easy distribution” (Fitzgerald, Wilson & Semrau, 1997, p.52)

This was my favorite line in the Fitzgerald et al. article. Despite some of the outdated aspects of the technologies used, I was impressed by the overall design of the program. I imagine such programs are not meant to be developed by teaching instructors but administered by them – I guess they are created by instructional technologists and I wonder what the industry standard is in terms of the turnaround for developing and implementing such a program. I think one of the key challenges will be to capture or access real-world examples in order to develop authentic cases. I guess you'd have to work closely with practitioners and institutions to obtain internal documentation. You'd also have to identify and interview experts to weigh in on the cases that are developed. Planning out branching scenarios and anticipating learner questions and preparing responses ahead of time are likely critical in delivering a successful learning experience.

References

Fitzgerald, G. E., Wilson, B., & Semrau, L. P. (1997). An interactive multimedia program to enhance teacher problem-solving skills based on cognitive flexibility theory: Design and outcomes. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 6(1), 47-76.

Jacobson, M. J., & Spiro. R. J. (1995). Hypertext learning environments, cognitive flexibility, and the transfer of complex knowledge: An empirical investigation. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 12 (4), 301-333.

Jacobson, M. J., Maouri, C., Mishra, P., & Kolar, C. (1996). Learning with hypertext learning environments: Theory, design, and research. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 5(3/4), 239-281.

Case-Based Reasoning Toward Skillful Practice

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a problem solving approach based on the idea that people draw on previous cases where similar problems and associated solutions were encountered, and that such experiences are captured in the form of stories (Wang et al., 2003).

The readings this week brought together a lot things that are related to my own work and interests. I love the idea of collecting stories from competent practitioners and using that for task analysis and developing mutlimedia content to help novices develop 'expert thinking'. This was the general idea behind the graduate student training module I'd developed last semester. In those interviews I'd asked each of my interviewees very simple, and exactly the same set of questions, to solicit

• information about themselves (name, role at libraries, extent of work experience),
• what customer service meant to them as it related to reference work; how this may differ in providing online reference services vs. in-person
• how they handle in-depth, difficult questions

Since the nature of reference work begins with a challenge or problem such general questions seemed to solicit stories that included strategies and lessons. In comparison to the simple line of questioning I'd used, Jonassen et al.'s recommendations for collecting stories from practitioners is much more problem focused and probing (2002):

• Identify skilled practitioners in the domain.
• Show the practitioners the problem for which you are seeking support.
• Ask the practitioners if they can remember any similar problems that they have solved – then work with the practitioner to
• Identify the problem goals and expectations
• Describe the context in which the problem occurred
• Describe the solution that was chosen
• Was it successful? Was it a failure? Why?
• Identify the points that each story makes
• Decide what the stories teach.

I would love to try some version of this in two subject domains. I'd already been thinking about doing interviews with business librarians in order to tap into their knowledge base, established over several years of practice. In fact one of my early writing submissions was a brief interview with a business librarian who'd recently retired and had been on Jeopardy!. The other domain is in the area of business – I would find it fascinating to interview technology start-up entrepreneurs, small business owners, financial market investors, and academics.

One of the challenges in developing, maintaining and curating a database of such content is keeping it fresh, and relevant. The libraries maintains a complex network of databases that require all sorts of planning, technical development, marketing and training support. Developing a repository of relevant and highly used content is no small project! Learning object repositories like M.E.R.L.O.T and A.N.T.S. come to mind – also proof that you need a pretty vibrant community around any repository for it to stay a live. Or, Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge site perhaps reminds us that prestige, adequate funds and contacts are important to consider when putting something like this together. Also, domains that deal with information technology evolve very quickly; however, I do agree with the adage that 'more things change the more the things stay the same', so I'm sure there are ways to draw lessons from the past about dealing with risk, uncertainty and compromise in new contexts – but it is likely to be tricky to pull off well.

In a previous post I'd mentioned using a Flip camcorder for conducting interviews with my colleagues – mostly in terms of the quality vs. learning curve. What I think is additionally useful to mention here is that the smallness of the camera made it much less obtrusive to film the conversation. I'd used a small tripod to place the camera on the table in between us, but angled it off to the side so that it was barely in their peripheral vision if they were addressing me with their responses to my question.

References

Jonassen, D. H., & Hernandez-Serrano, J. (2002). Case-based reasoning and instructional design: Using stories to support problem solving. Educational Technology Research & Development, 50(2), 65-77.

Wang, F. K., Moore, J.L., Wedman, J., & Shyu, C. R. (2003). Developing a case-based reasoning knowledge repository to support a learning community: An example from the technology integration community. Educational Technology Research and Development, 52(3), 45-62.