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Learning objects, repositories, sharingand reusabilityTony Koppi a , Lisa Bogle a & Mike Bogle aa University of New South Wales , AustraliaPublished online: 23 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Tony Koppi , Lisa Bogle & Mike Bogle (2005) Learning objects, repositories,sharing and reusability, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 20:1, 83-91

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0268051042000322113

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Open LearningVol. 20, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 83–91

ISSN 0268–0513 (print)/ISSN 1469–9958 (online)/05/010083–09© 2005 The Open UniversityDOI: 10.1080/0268051042000322113

CASE STUDY

Learning objects, repositories,sharing and reusabilityTony Koppi*, Lisa Bogle and Mike BogleUniversity of New South Wales, AustraliaTaylor and Francis LtdCOPL200107.sgm10.1080/026805104200032113Open Learning0268-0513 (print)/1469-9958 (online)Original Article2005The Open University201000000February 2005TonyKoppiEducational Development and Technology CentreUniversity of New South WalesSydneyNSW 2052Australiat.koppi@unsw.edu.au

The online Learning Resource Catalogue (LRC) Project has been part of an international consor-tium for several years and currently includes 25 institutions worldwide. The LRC Project hasevolved for several pragmatic reasons into an academic network whereby members can identify andshare reusable learning objects as well as collaborate in a number of ways. Collaboration throughthe LRC3 toolset may be concerned with the development or redevelopment of learning resourcesor for administrative and research purposes. For practical and particularly academic culturalreasons, the ‘catalogue’ itself has adopted a broad perspective on the nature of a ‘repository’. Manyacademic staff do not wish to give away their learning resources by uploading them to a public placebut they may be prepared to describe the resources (objects) and retain control over their use. TheLRC3 therefore includes a ‘distributed repository’ in that the objects may reside in many differentplaces yet can be located through the catalogue which uses IMS-based learning object metadata.The LRC3 also includes uploading of resources for people who wish to avail themselves of a centralrepository for their learning objects. A third aspect of ‘repository’ exists in the collaborative work-space whereby group members can upload their resources to enable sharing and development workwithin the group.

Keywords: Collaborative environment; Learning objects; Resources; Teaching materials

Introduction

Planning of the Learning Resource Catalogue (LRC) Project started in 1999 by asmall group: the Learning and Teaching Technologies Working Party (six members)of the Universitas 21 (U21) Consortium of international research-intensive universi-ties. The group appreciated the benefit of identifying and describing the learning andteaching resources owned by its members. The main driver was to make efficiencygains by minimizing replication and to reuse the existing unpublished learning and

*Corresponding author. Educational Development and Technology Centre, University of NewSouth Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. Email: t.koppi@unsw.edu.au

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teaching resources that are duplicated by universities the world over. The notion wasthat the resources could be described as learning objects and made available indiscrete form for reuse. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) was chargedwith developing the LRC Project, which became operational in early 2000. Thetoolset (identified as LRC3 is the cornerstone of the LRC Project) has been utilizedfor some time by the consortium and was first described by Koppi et al. (2000).

The LRC Project is an ongoing collaboration between members of the internationalacademic community and is now available to all interested institutions upon applica-tion. The project seeks to improve the quality of education through a cooperativeapproach to learning and teaching, and promotes three main principles:

1. Collaboration amongst the international teaching community.2. The identification, sharing, reuse and revision of high quality learning material.3. The pursuit of excellent developments and innovations in the field of learning

objects and educational technology.

There appears to be a growing trend amongst educational institutions to identify andcatalogue their own learning and teaching resources (see Collis, 2001; Collis &Strijker, 2002, at the University of Twente).

The first part of this paper is concerned with attempting to clarify the meaning oflearning objects and repository used in this context. The cultural aspect has beenfound to be a major factor in the engagement and adoption of learning objects, andthis is discussed in some detail.

What are learning objects?

Learning objects were defined as discrete chunks of reusable learning materials oractivities that can articulate with other learning objects to build a learning environ-ment. This is consistent with the definition given by IEEE (2002). ARIADNE (2002)and MERLOT (2000) are other examples of systems concerned with learningobjects.

Just what is meant by learning objects is debatable and they can be defined in manyways (Rehak & Mason, 2003). Reusability is a common attribute of learning objects.While it may be argued that learning activities are not learning objects for reuse(Wiley, 2003), the LRC has a classification of learning objects that includes learningactivities. Learning activities are certainly contextual and arguably therefore oflimited use in other contexts; however they still may represent learning design thatmay be valuable to others: for example Weller et al. (2003) describe how the conceptof reusable learning activities can be effectively utilized.

Another common attribute of a learning object is that it is recontextualizable,meaning that it can be utilized in different contexts as determined by the teacher and/or learner. Reusability of learning objects and their inherent context seem to beinversely related (Hodgins, 2002). In other words, if a learning object is heavilyencumbered with its context then a user may find it impossible to utilize in a different

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Learning objects, respositories, sharing and reusability 85

context. It follows that maximum reusability depends on how readily the object canbe removed from any particular context.

Bradley and Boyle (2003) contend that a learning object needs to contain somelearning ingredient. However, while this may seem obvious (why include the term‘learning’ otherwise?), a ‘raw learning object’ may have no inherent learning attributeuntil it is placed into some context. For example, a photograph of an apple per se canbe considered to be a raw learning object and it takes on different learning meaningsin a biology or physics context.

The LRC includes these considerations and has five categories (classes/types) oflearning object (Koppi & Hodgson, 2001):

● Raw asset, e.g., an image.● Learning asset, e.g., annotated image.● Task or exercise, e.g., research activity.● Learning design with content (containing some or all of classes 1–3).● Generic learning design, e.g., a generic problem-based learning design.

This classification system of learning objects is based on more than granularityconsiderations (see Wiley et al., 1999) and was derived when users found it difficultto quickly ascertain what sort of learning object description they had found in theLRC even though the description of learning objects is provided in standard metadataterms (IMS, 2001–2002 and the more recent IEEE 1484.12.1 LOM standard, 2002).The LRC contains a wide variety of learning objects; most being in the first two cate-gories: raw and learning assets, e.g., collections of biological, medical and geologicalimages, many of which are annotated. The third category is well represented withactivities ranging from staff development to virtual field trips.

LRC3 repository

Strictly speaking the LRC3 itself is not a repository of learning objects if a reposi-tory is considered to be a place where contributors deposit their digital materials.Essentially, the LRC is a metadata repository that provides access to digital learn-ing objects, which are stored on servers accessible through a network. If the learn-ing objects are not digital and/or not readily available on a server, the contactdetails of the owner are provided in the metadata to enable direct negotiation. TheU21 model represents a distributed network where the digital learning objectswithin an institution may reside on any number of servers in different locations.Descriptions of these resources (objects) are added to the LRC by each memberinstitution, and usually by the owner of the material. Furthermore, there areseveral levels of resource (object) visibility, of which the owner may select one:global; institution only; group only (a group within an institution or cross-institutional); personal (for purposes of cataloguing one’s own resources). An insti-tution may therefore have identified many learning resources but only a few areavailable to the entire consortium. This structure was created in response to thefeedback from members.

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Members within an institution have also identified learning resources that could bedigitized and made available on a server. At The University of New South Wales(UNSW) a digitization service has been provided that results in learning resourcesbeing made available on a server and catalogued in the LRC. In effect this representsan institutional repository that is linked to the LRC which provides access to it. Whilethis does not make the LRC itself a repository of learning objects, it can be thoughtof as having a repository component.

Another type of ‘repository’ exists within the LRC in the community area. Thispart of the LRC is concerned with a collaborative working space that enables users tocreate local or cross-institutional groups for learning and teaching, administration orresearch. Groups have the ability to upload and share files within this area. Whilst thisis not a repository in the usual meaning of the word, it does represent a place wherebydigital resources can be deposited for collaborative purposes. An intention of creatingsuch a facility was to promote the development of new learning resources (objects thatcan be catalogued in the LRC) by a group that is able to see what is already ownedby the group members.

Summary of LRC3 features

The LRC3 is a web-application that facilitates the collaborative network of universi-ties comprising the LRC Project, and provides university staff members access totools by which they may collaborate with other teaching staff, catalogue, organize andshare their existing teaching materials, and locate new material to incorporate intotheir teaching.

The LRC3 is an easy to use catalogue. It contains detailed information about eachresource and how to obtain it (often as simple as following a hyperlink to theresource). Links to other catalogues and repositories extend the range of records thatcan be accessed: federated searching is a feature whereby numerous other cataloguesand repositories can be accessed during a search and the metadata returned as oneoperation for the user. Easy to use menus and templates enable academic staff tocreate a new record in less than a minute, without any specialist knowledge of cata-logue systems.

The LRC3 can act as a portal to other educational resources and systems. Becauseit complies with international metadata standard (IMS) methods for describing learn-ing resources, it has the potential to link with learning management systems such asWebCT Vista, and with other catalogues and repositories complying with the samestandards. This allows users to create a personalized library of learning resourcerecords from many sources.

The LRC3 provides a set of collaboration tools for sharing resources, links andfiles. This can be used by groups of academics with common interests. Groups cancollaborate on the development of new resources, conduct web surveys, validateand evaluate materials and even develop formal peer review mechanisms tosupport institutional recognition of teaching developments for promotion andtenure.

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An institution level collaborative feature allows partnerships between any institu-tions that are members of the LRC Project. This facility (known as ‘bubble replica-tion’) enables members of the bubble to exclusively share their resources and to formany number of sub-groups (for teaching, research, and administration purposes)within and between the bubble members over and above being able to partake in thesystem wide functions. This particular feature is intended to cater for the evolvingnature of partnerships between institutions.

LRC usage: the human side

From a technological perspective the LRC3 is an advanced application that providesthe features and functionality that users over several years have requested. However,usage of the LRC3 in general by the academic community of the member institutionshas been limited. There appear to be several reasons for this.

Initially, senior managers of U21 insisted that only high quality learning resourcesshould be catalogued in the LRC. This had a negative effect on some potential userswho felt that their unpublished, everyday teaching materials weren’t good enough tosubmit to a global pool. This is understandable in that there are few readily availablepublic benchmarks for teaching materials within the tertiary education sector. A peerreview system for assessing the quality of educational materials is a feature of theLRC3 whereby users can create their own evaluation criteria and evaluator groups.

Manual metadata entry has always proved problematic with respect to the numberof fields, the time it takes, and who should have the responsibility. The IMS LearningObject Metadata originally utilized about 90 metadata fields of which about 15 weremandatory. Depending upon the type of learning object and the inclination of therecord owner, record creation could take a few or many minutes. Even if minimal datawere to be entered, users expressed unwillingness to make the time. This is probablycoupled with the realization that every teacher owns countless learning objects andcataloguing them all would be a daunting task and therefore uninviting task. Someinstitutions utilized library staff for data entry which involved interviewing the recordowner and therefore took collectively more time and was not a sustainable practice.

The latest version of the LRC3 data entry requires few fields, as some metadataregarding the owner and contact details are automatically generated and some fieldshave default (but modifiable) entries. The owner of the learning object still has toprovide data such as title, brief description and location, and also to specify copyrightrestrictions (if desired) and the visibility of the record, such as the entire system orlocally. Ideally, metadata generation would be entirely automatic but we haven’tresolved the problem of capturing data from the great variety of possible learningobjects that are unpublished and reside with the owners of the materials.

General awareness of learning objects and how they could be shared and re-utilizedis not prevalent in the academic culture. Most academics do not think of their teach-ing resources, learning activities and assessment tasks as ‘objects’ let alone that theycould be shared with others to make efficiency gains by utilizing their colleagues’learning objects. The jargon term ‘learning object’ has to be demystified and related

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to everyday practices before it becomes acceptable. Once that hurdle has been over-come, the non-trivial concept of making unpublished teaching resources publiclyavailable has to be tackled. The prevailing culture is one where teaching materials areconsidered personal and private and even something to be protected. This is inmarked contrast to the concurrent cultural trait of publicizing research findings aswidely as possible. The reason for these opposing traits being held simultaneously byan academic is probably linked to a reward system. Publishing research findings iscompetitive and rewarded by such things as tenure and promotion whereas publiciz-ing teaching resources attracts no parallel reward. Within the prevailing system,spending time on identifying, describing and cataloguing teaching resources may infact be seen as counter productive with respect to earning rewards. Whilst fulfilling asocial responsibility is sufficient reward for some contributors; this is apparently nota common motivator.

Taylor and Richardson (2001) have proposed a scheme for peer reviewing learningobjects but this does not appear to have widespread credibility and recognition at thistime. A discipline based peer review system is also used by MERLOT and includes afive-star quality rating. The LRC3 also includes tools for creating a review system andthey were created in response to user requests.

The use of educational technology within research intensive universities is continu-ing to grow even though most teachers still use the technology in a support or ancil-lary fashion (DEST, 2002). As an example of the use of educational technology insuch a university, UNSW is seen globally as a large scale user of WebCT (with over47,000 student seats in early 2004) and almost half of the teaching staff are utilizingthis relatively popular teaching medium; about half of the staff therefore do not useeducational technology to support their teaching or student learning. The LRC3 is atthe sophisticated end of educational technology usage and considerable awarenessraising and experience needs to be generated in other areas before a critical mass ofLRC3 users develop. This is part of a slow organic change process that will take timeto reach its potential. In the meantime, the LRC Project will continue to be supportedeven though it represents uncertainty (technological and otherwise) for users withmany realistic questions—for example:

● Will learning objects become significant in the design of teaching and learningresources?

● Will the LRC3 still be around in the future?● Will contributions be recognized as evidence of teaching quality and be part of a

reward system?● Is it worth my while investing time and energy in cataloguing teaching resources—

will there be a return on my investment?● Will others also contribute their materials?● Would I be giving away my intellectual property with an uncertain return?

With respect to this last question, the LRC3 utilizes the Creative Commons (2004)license generating tool to directly enter the specific licensing criteria specified by theowner of the material.

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Learning objects, respositories, sharing and reusability 89

A sharing, collaboration and community approach

Initially the LRC Project was purely concerned with identifying, describing andfinding learning resources (i.e., a catalogue). In addition to the catalogue tools, themost recent versions of the LRC3 contain tools for community purposes and acustomizable My LRC. Community tools include chat and email communications,discussion forum, group creation and management facilities for local and cross-institutional groups, a calendar for scheduling events, group file uploading andsurvey and review creation capabilities. It was hoped that the communication facili-ties would promote the development of learning objects that could be added to thecatalogue and shared more widely. Many administrative, research and teachinggroups have utilized the group functions which clearly serve a need but the numberof public learning objects created as a result are very few to date.

Conclusion

The LRC3 Project represents a working technological implementation of a web-based system for (a) simply identifying and sharing learning resources (learningobjects) of different kinds and complexity; and (b) providing a collaborative workenvironment. An international consortium of research-intensive universities hasutilized the system for cataloguing some of the resources (by creating metadatarecords) of individual institutions and making some available to the entire consor-tium. The number of learning object records has not reached a ‘critical mass’ afterfour years of operation. Critical mass would be when users feel that the resourcesavailable through the LRC3 make it a desirable place to visit on a daily basis. Greaterinteroperability between similar databases (that also haven’t reached critical mass)would advance the promotion of learning objects in general. The latest version ofLRC3 has incorporated federated searching whereby several international databasesof learning resources can be searched ‘live’ at each search request. This adds value tothe LRC3 in terms of the critical mass of resources that have been specifically createdfor learning and teaching purposes (as opposed to the results from a general websearch).

At least at present, the use of learning objects seems to work better in some subjectdomains than others. Collectively, the biological, earth, chemical, medical and healthsciences domains are relatively well populated compared with the arts areas. In thesciences, this is probably linked to the use of images (annotated or not) which repre-sent readily reusable components. The ability to define discrete learning objects maybe less obvious in the arts and social sciences.

There are several reasons for the limited use of the LRC3 system, most of themcultural rather than technological. The main cultural characteristic working againstsharing and reusing teaching materials is that which promotes the privacy of teachingmatters. In contrast to research findings, unpublished everyday teaching materials arenot readily publicized and shared (except by exceptional individuals) even when it isobvious that efficiency gains can be made. Where teaching materials are regarded as

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privately valuable, a means of safeguarding them becomes necessary, such as a formof digital rights management. It is interesting to note that research output is notgenerally considered in need of such protection.

Raising awareness and providing reward for publicizing teaching materials are crit-ical issues that require cultural change. Whilst the large scale use of learning objectsin learning design would be evidence of significant culture change (both in usage andlearning design), the enablers that promote change have yet to be established. Thoseenablers include a reward system for creating and sharing teaching materials, as wellas reusing materials created by others. Institutional support from senior managers inpromoting local and cross-institutional activities is also a necessary driver for changeto be taken seriously; endorsement alone will not encourage change or usage.

Technological enablers need to include ready access to the LRC3 and institutionalrepositories for uploading to and storage of learning objects themselves (in additionto the metadata repository) because teaching staff may own digital teaching materialsthat are only stored on their personal computers. A teaching staff personal portal solu-tion would facilitate use of the LRC3 as a central tool rather than being perceived asa separate application.

The utilization of learning object concepts within every-day technologies (such asWebCT) will help raise awareness and promote sharing as a norm rather than as anexception. The value of the LRC will be enhanced by its integration with learningmanagement systems and by providing federated searching of international learningobject databases from the one place. However, the widespread adoption of reusablelearning objects is expected to be a slow process over the coming years.

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