ICOPER Project - Deliverable 4.3 ISURE: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, embodied in the ICOPER CD&R

The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas and recommendations, within and beyond the ICOPER community, concerning the reuse of learning content, including appropriate methodologies as well as established strategies for remixing and repurposing reusable resources. The overall remit of this work focuses on describing the key issues that are related to extending effective reuse embodied in such materials. The objective of this investigation, is to support the reuse of learning content whilst considering how it could be originally created and then adapted with that ‘reuse’ in mind. In these circumstances a survey on effective reuse best practices can often provide an insight into the main challenges and benefits involved in the process of creating, remixing and repurposing what we are now designating as Reusable Learning Content (RLC). Several key issues are analysed in this report: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, building upon those described in the previous related deliverables 4.1 Content Development Methodologies and 4.2 Quality Control and Web 2.0 technologies. The findings of this current survey, however, provide further recommendations and strategies for using and developing this reusable learning content. In the spirit of ‘reuse’, this work also aims to serve as a foundation for the many different stakeholders and users within, and beyond, the ICOPER community who are interested in reusing learning resources. This report analyses a variety of information. Evidence has been gathered from a qualitative survey that has focused on the technical and pedagogical recommendations suggested by a Special Interest Group (SIG) on the most innovative practices with respect to new media content authors (for content authoring or modification) and course designers (for unit creation). This extended community includes a wider collection of OER specialists. This collected evidence, in the form of video and audio interviews, has also been represented as multimedia assets potentially helpful for learning and useful as learning content in the New Media Space (See section 4 for further details). Section 2 of this report introduces the concept of reusable learning content and reusability. Section 3 discusses an application created by the ICOPER community to enhance the opportunities for developing reusable content. Section 4 of this report provides an overview of the methodology used for the qualitative survey. Section 5 presents a summary of thematic findings. Section 6 highlights a list of recommendations for effective reuse of educational content, which were derived from thematic analysis described in Appendix A. Finally, section 7 summarises the key outcomes of this work

Learning objects and learning designs: an integrated system for reusable, adaptive and shareable learning content

This paper proposes a system, the Smart Learning Design Framework, designed to support the development of pedagogically sound learning material within an integrated, platform-independent data structure. The system supports sharing, reuse and adaptation of learning material via a metadata-driven philosophy that enables the technicalities of the system to be imperceptible to the author and consumer. The system proposes the use of pedagogically focused metadata to support and guide the author and to adapt and deliver the content to the targeted consumer. A prototype of the proposed system, which provides proof of concept for the novel processes involved, has been developed. The paper describes the Smart Learning Design Framework and places it within the context of alternative learning object models and frameworks to highlight similarities, differences and advantages of the proposed system

Designing learning object repositories : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Science in Information Sciences at Massey University

Learning object repositories are expanding rapidly into the role of independent educational systems that not only are a supplement to a traditional way of learning, but also allow users to search, exchange and re-use learning objects. The intention of this innovative technology is to have such repositories to collect a database of learning objects catalogued by the learning content management system. However, for users to perform an efficient search, these learning objects would need to use metadata standards or specifications to describe their properties. For learning objects stored within the repositories, metadata standards are often used to descibe them so users of the respositories are able to find the accurate resources they required, hence metadata standards are important elements of any learning object repository. In this paper, a courseware example is used to demonstrate how to define a set of characteristics that we want to describe for our courseware, and attempt to map the data schema in the database with the available metadata standards. The outcome is to identify a set of metadata elements that would fully describe our learning objects stored within the learning object repository, and these metadata elements will also assist instructors to create adaptable courseware that can be reused by different instructors. Metadata standard is known as a critical element for the management of learning objects, not only will it increase the accuracy of the search results, it will also provide more relevant and descriptive information about the learning objects to the searchers

Panning for gold: designing pedagogically-inspired learning nuggets

Tools to support teachers and learning technologists in the creation of effective learning designs are currently in their infancy. This paper describes a metadata model, devised to assist in the conception and design of new learning activities, that has been developed, used and evaluated over a period of three years. The online tool that embodies this model was not originally intended to produce runtime executable code such as IMS-LD, but rather focussed on assisting teachers in the thought processes involved in selecting appropriate methods, tools, student activities and assessments to suit the required learning objectives. Subsequently, we have modified the RELOAD editor such that the output from our tool can be translated into IMS-LD. The contribution of this paper is the comparison of our data model with that of IMS-LD, and the analysis of how each can inform the other

Enforcing reuse and customization in the development of learning objects: a product line approach

© ACM 2015.This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM, In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (pp. 261-263). http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2695664.2695991.The growing use of information technologies in the educational cycles has raised new requirements for the development of In-teractive Learning Materials in terms of content reuse, customi-zation, and ease of creation and efficiency of production. In practical terms, the goal is the development of tools for creating reusable, granular, durable, and interoperable learning objects, and to compose such objects into meaningful courseware pieces. Current learning object development tools require special technical skills in the instructors to exploit reuse and customization features, leading sometimes to unsatisfactory user experiences. In this paper, we explore a new way to reuse and customization following Product Line Engineering principles and tools. We have applied product line-based document engineering tools to create the so-called Learning Object Authoring Tool (LOAT), which supports the development of learning materials following the Cisco s Reusable Information Object strategy. We describe the principles behind LOAT, outline its design, and give clues about how it may be used by instructors to create learning ob-jects in their own disciplines.This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. The work of J.H. Canós and M.C. Penadés is partially funded by the Spanish MEC under grant TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-03).Ezzat Labib Awad, A.; Penades Gramage, MC.; Canos Cerda, JH.; Gómez Llana, A. (2015). Enforcing reuse and customization in the development of learning objects: a product line approach. ACM. doi:10.1145/2695664.2695991SIEEE LTSC, http://ieee-sa.centraldesktop.com/ltsc/Cisco Systems. 1999. Reusable information object strategy, "Definition, Creation over view, and guidelines".Cisco Systems. 2003. Reusable learning object strategy: Designing and developing learning objects for multiple learning approaches, Version 4.5 {white paper}.Merrill, M. D. 1983. Component display theory. In: Instructional design theories and models. Erlbaum Associates.Clark, R. 1989. Developing technical training: a structured approach for the development of classroom and computer-based instructional materials. Performance Technology Press, New York.A. Gómez, M. C. Penadés, J. H. Canós, M. R. S. Borges, M. Llavador. 2014. A framework for variable content document generation with multiple actors. Information and Software Technology, 2014, ISSN 0950--5849.Bloom, BS (ed.). 1956. "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives". Vol. 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay