Learning Object Reusability Metrics: Some Ideas from Software Engineering

Abstract

Reusability is considered to be an essential characteristic of learning objects, which are the central notion of current approaches to standardized learning content design. In consequence, measurement instruments for learning object reusability should be developed for the sake of quality assessment and also to serve as criteria to choose between alternate designs. In this paper, the applicability of metrics borrowed from the field of Software Engineering is analyzed, providing analogies for several metrics that can be given an interpretation in terms of learning objects. Introduction and motivation Reusability is considered to be an essential characteristic of the concept of “learning object ” as the central notion for modern digital learning content design. For example, Polsani (2003) includes reuse in his definition of learning object as “an independent and self-standing unit of learning content that is predisposed to reuse in multipl